On 2008-12-23 Miss Dane, USA wrote: Of Silent film there are many shoddy written bios (ala Michelle Vogel) and dryily written ones (ala many authors) but this biography exceeds expectations. Not only is it well written, and well researched, its written in an entertaining way and delves into why Mary may have done the things she did, piecing parts of her life together.
Its hard to get into the question ´who was Mary Pickford?´ Her whole life was a press release, most of her pictures were posed or portraits. She was a well crafted idol, and so respected no one ever seemed to get into who she was and why she did what she did. That being said she was utterly fascinating and what we can find is extremely interesting.
My only complaint is there is a lot of Lottie hating in this book. Pickford had an interesting cast of characters around her (a low class but shrewd businesswoman mother, a sister in the shadows, a playboy brother, a drunken abusive husband, Douglas, etc) and everyone seems to get a fair shake...but every sentence involving Lottie is some kind of dig. Mary may not have been close with her sister but this seems unnecessary (and given most of Lottie´s films are lost its unfair to boot). Still I cant complain...this was one of the first Silent film books I read and I loved it. Just reread it and I STILL love it.. And summed up by saying America´s Sweetheart Defined. Currently Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
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The University Press of Kentucky claimed A silent-film star. A woman who played children, wide-eyed and gamine, skipping about in frills and long curls. That´s how most people remember Mary Pickford. In reality, Pickford was a towering figure in movie history, central to the evolution of film acting and the development of the Hollywood motion picture industry. Born in Toronto in 1892, Pickford began acting as a child. She switched from stage to film at seventeen, joining D.W. Griffith´s Biograph Company, and became almost unimaginably popular. This allowed her to dictate the terms of her contracts--power she seized and consolidated. She developed her own production company at Adolph Zukor´s Famous Players, and in 1919 she co-founded United Artists (along with Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks), taking not only creative control but also direction of the marketing and distribution of her films. Eight years in the making, this definitive biography brings Pickford to life as a complex knot of contradictions and establishes her as a groundbreaking genius, casting new light on one of the most influential and least understood artists in the history of popular culture. Eileen Whitfield recreates Pickford´s life in meticulously researched detail, from her trying days in turn-of-the-century Toronto through her reign as mistress of Pickfair, the legendary Beverly Hills estate at which she and Fairbanks entertained the world´s elite, to her sadly moving demise. Along the way, Whitfield explores the intricate psychology that tied Pickford to her mother throughout her life and analyzes Pickford´s brilliant innovations in the art of film acting, her profound influence on the movie business, and her role in the history of fame: once the best known woman in the world, she was the object of a mass adoration that prefigured today´s cult of celebrity.
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