Mary Pickford Filmography

The Rose Parade: Through the Years

Birth of a Legend

Synopsis: Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were the stars of note in Hollywood in 1926. This documents some of the ways in which they gained their status off the silver screen. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

30 Years of Fun

Synopsis: The fourth of Oscar-winning short-subject director Youngson's comedy compilations (the earlier ones were Golden Age of Comedy, When Comedy was King, and Days of Thrills and Laughter) is, amazingly, almost as full and fresh as those earlier efforts, containing highlights from such silent comedy Read More

Love Happy

Crew: Producer

Actors: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Ilona Massey, Vera-Ellen

Synopsis: The Marx Brothers' final starring feature Love Happy began life as a solo vehicle for Harpo. The financiers wouldn't go for this, insisting that all three Marx boys appear on screen. Thus, Chico was hastily written into the proceedings, while Groucho made what amounted to a guest appearance as Read More

Sleep, My Love

Crew: Producer

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Robert Cummings, Don Ameche, Hazel Brooks, Rita Johnson, George Coulouris

Synopsis: This noir mystery thriller was produced by Mary Pickford and her husband Buddy Rogers, and directed by Douglas Sirk. Claudette Colbert stars as Alison Courtland, a wealthy New York socialite who awakens on a Boston-bound train with no memory of how she got there. A kindly older woman, Mrs. Read More

High Fury

Crew: Producer

Actors: Madeleine Carroll, Ian Hunter, Michael Rennie, Anne Marie Blanc, Michael McKeag

Synopsis: In this touching drama, set in the midst of the Swiss mountains, a philandering husband and his idealistic young wife battle it out for the rights to the White Cradle Inn, her familial estate. The man spends much of his time messing with a maid at the inn. His wife spends time helping the village Read More

Little Iodine

Crew: Producer

Actors: Jo Ann Marlowe, Marc Cramer, Eve Whitney, Irene Ryan, Hobart Cavanaugh

Synopsis: Running a mere 56 minutes, Little Iodine was the first of five "streamliners" produced by Comet Productions, a company formed by Mary Pickford, her husband Charles "Buddy" Rogers, and former Columbia exec Ralph Cohn. Based on the comic strip by Jimmy Hatlo, the film stars Jo Ann Marlowe as Iodine Read More

Susie Steps Out

Crew: Producer

Actors: David Bruce, Grady Sutton, Margaret Dumont

Synopsis: The wonderful newfangled world of television provides the backdrop for this musical. The tale begins as an advertising executive has a misunderstanding with his employer's wife and ends up fired. Now her family is left penniless until her younger sister begins impersonating a nightclub singer and Read More

Gaslight Follies

Synopsis: One of producer Joseph Levine's earliest projects, Gaslight Follies is a compilation of silent film footage narrated by Metropolitan Operan stalwart Milton Cross. Unlike the more respectful compilations of Robert Youngson (The Golden Age of Comedy, Laurel and Hardy's Laughing 20s etc.), Follies Read More

The Movies March On

Actors: Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, William S. Hart, Charles Chaplin, Ben Turpin

Synopsis: The Movies March On was Number 12, volume 9 of Louis de Rochemont's March of Time series. Narrated by the stentorian Westbrook Van Vorhees, this fascinating documentary manages to squeeze 40 years of filmmaking into a mere two reels. Beginning with the once scandalous The Kiss (1898), the film Read More

The Gay Desperado

Crew: Producer

Actors: Nino Martini, Ida Lupino, Leo Carrillo, Harold Huber, James "Doc" Blakely

Synopsis: The Gay Desperado is a 1936 musical lampooning the then-popular gangster pictures. Leo Carrillo plays a genial Mexican bandit, Pablo Braganza, who gets nowhere until he and his amigos begin studying gangster techniques -- courtesy of Hollywood movies. Selecting kidnapping as his crime of choice Read More

One Rainy Afternoon

Crew: Producer

Actors: Francis Lederer, Ida Lupino, Hugh Herbert, Roland Young, Erik Rhodes

Synopsis: A remake of the French comedy Monsieur Sans-Gene, One Rainy Afternoon gets under way when film-actor Phillippe Martin (Francis Lederer) heads to a darkened Parisian movie theater for a romantic rendezvous with his married sweetheart Yvonne (Countess Live de Margaret). But our hero sits in the Read More

Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove

Actors: Leo Carrillo, Ted Fio Rito, Eduardo Durant, Mary Pickford, Bing Crosby

Hollywood on Parade

Synopsis: 1932 through 1934 saw the production of "Hollywood on Parade" shorts by Paramount Studios, featuring nearly every big star singing, dancing, or playacting. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Secrets

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard, C. Aubrey Smith, Blanche Frederici, Doris Lloyd

Synopsis: Silent screen legend Mary Pickford makes her final movie appearance in Secrets, adapted from the play by Rudolph Besier and Mary Edgerton. Edgerton plays a 19th century New England belle who accompanies her husband Leslie Howard to the wilds of California. Pickford's first baby is killed when her Read More

Kiki

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Reginald Denny, Joseph Cawthorn, Margaret Livingston, Phil Tead

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1926 with Norma Talmadge, the creaky David Belasco stage piece Kiki served as a curious talkie vehicle for "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford. The star plays the title character, a jazz-age Parisian chorus girl (complete with a molasses-thick French accent). When theatrical Read More

Coquette

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Johnny Mack Brown, Matt Moore, John St. Polis, William Janney

Synopsis: Coquette is Mary Pickford's first talkie, based on the play by George Abbott and Ann Preston Bridgers. The story was already made famous on the stage by star Helen Hayes. At almost 40 years old and lacking her signature curls, Pickford plays the young Southern belle Norma Besant, who is courting Read More

The Taming of the Shrew

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Edwin Maxwell, Joseph Cawthorn, Clyde Cook

Synopsis: As the silent era drew to a close (along with their marriage), Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks made this early talkie, appearing in their first film together as William Shakespeare's rambunctious couple Katherine and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. In this pared down, slapstick version Read More

The Gaucho

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Eve Southern, Lupe Velez, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Geraine Greear, Michael Vavitch, Nigel de Brulier

Synopsis: Douglas Fairbanks' The Gaucho is a curiosity: a traditional Fairbanks actioner with decidedly unsavory, unpleasant and uncharacteristic overtones. For the first time in his career, Fairbanks plays what would have been a villainous role in anyone else's film: An outlaw leader who exploits religion Read More

Kiss for Mary Pickford

Synopsis: The title of this Russian comedy may seem misleading; well, it is, but only slightly. While on a goodwill visit to the Soviet Union in 1926, silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks made a tour of the movie studios. Here, Ms. Pickford was prevailed upon to briefly participate in the Read More

My Best Girl

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Sunshine Hart, Lucien Littlefield, Hobart Bosworth, Carmelita Geraghty

Synopsis: Mary Pickford stars as the "Miss Fix-it" for her eccentric family. Pickford's job at a dime-store keeps her postman dad (Lucien Littlefield), addlepated mom (Sunshine Hart) and loose-living sister (Carmelita Geraghty) from going under. She falls in love with handsome Charles "Buddy" Rogers, never Read More

Sparrows

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Roy Stewart, Mary Louise Miller, Charlotte Mineau

Synopsis: Sparrows, Mary Pickford's 1926 release, superbly combines the two elements--sentiment and adventure--that characterized Pickford's best work. At first glance, the film seems to be a horror picture, as satanic potato farmer Grimes (Gustav Von Seyfertitz) crushes a child's doll with his thumb and Read More

Little Annie Rooney

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, William Haines, Walter James, Gordon Griffith, Hugh Fay, Carlo Schipa

Synopsis: Thirty-two year old Mary Pickford returned to form as America's Sweetheart as Little Annie Rooney, a tough teenager from the streets who gets into mischief with her little gang of ruffians. She has a boyfriend, Joe Kelly (William Haines), whom she is sweet on. But when her father (Walter James) is Read More

Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Anders Randolf, Marc MacDermott, Allan Forrest

Synopsis: "Derr iss too many qveens and not enough qveens!" That was Ernst Lubitsch's response when he turned down the directing assignment for this costume picture starring Mary Pickford. Pickford assumed that he meant that the subplots involving Queen Elizabeth (Clare Eames) and Mary Queen of Scots (Estelle Taylor Read More

Rosita

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Holbrook Blinn, Irene Rich, George Walsh, Charles Belcher

Synopsis: This historical comedy-drama resulted from the unlikely collaboration of girlish silent star Mary Pickford and sophisticated German director Ernst Lubitsch (it was also Lubitsch's first American-made film). But at least the story, adapted from the novel Don Cesar de Bazon, came closer to Read More

Garrison's Finish

Crew: Intertitle Writer

Actors: Jack Pickford, Madge Bellamy, Charles A. Stevenson, Tom Guise, Frank Elliott

Synopsis: Jack Pickford made a strong showing in this romantic drama, adapted from the novel by W.B.M. Ferguson. Two schemers, Crimmins (Clarence Burton) and Lilly Allen (Ethel Grey Terry), dope jockey Billy Garrison (Pickford) and cause him to be disqualified from the Carter Handicap. His bad luck Read More

Hollywood

Actors: Luke Cosgrave, George K. Arthur, Ruby Lafayette, Eleanor Lawson

Synopsis: The premise is clichéd -- it's the usual tale of a pretty girl from the sticks trying to break into movies -- but this satire gives it a number of unexpected turns. In addition, just about every star in Hollywood -- not just those at Paramount, the releasing studio -- has a cameo at one point or Read More

Tess of the Storm Country

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Lloyd Hughes, Gloria Hope, David Torrence, Forrest Robinson

Synopsis: Mary Pickford had recently put out a couple of mediocre pictures and her latest, Little Lord Fauntleroy, wasn't an immediate hit with her audience (although it would gross over a million dollars -- an enormous sum in those days -- some fans initially voiced disappointment in the film). It was time Read More

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Claude Gillingwater, Colin Kenny, Joseph J. Dowling, Kate Price, James Marcus

Synopsis: Mary Pickford was at the height of her fame as "America's Sweetheart" when she took on the challenge of playing two roles -- a mother and her young son -- in this silent drama with comic accents. Cedric Fauntleroy (Pickford) is growing up under difficult circumstances in New York City; his father Read More

The Love Light

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Evelyn Dumo, Fred C. Thompson, Edward Phillips

Synopsis: A visually stunning if somewhat overblown melodrama, The Love Light was directed by Mary Pickford's close friend and confidante, screenwriter Frances Marion. Pickford is Angela, a young Italian lighthouse keeper who can only watch while both her brothers (Jean De Briac and Eddie Phillips) and a Read More

Thru Back Door

Actors: Mary Pickford, Gertrude Astor, Wilfred Lucas, Helen Raymond, C. Norman Hammond

Through the Back Door

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford, Gertrude Astor, Wilfred Lucas, Adolphe Menjou

Synopsis: For her fourth United Artists picture, Mary Pickford once again plays a poor little rich girl. This one, Jeanne, is so neglected that when her mother, Hortense (Gertrude Astor), remarries, she is pawned off on her Belgian nurse. Five years later, when Hortense returns to fetch Jeanne, the nurse Read More

Suds

Crew: Producer

Actors: Mary Pickford

Synopsis: Mary Pickford recreates her ugly-duckling drudge from Stella Maris (1918) in this bright comedy co-starring Charles Chaplin stock company regular Albert Austin. She is Amanda Afflick, the least appreciated employer in Madame Didier's (Rose Dione) French Hand Wash establishment. Even lower on the Read More

Pollyanna

Synopsis: For her first United Artists release, silent superstar Mary Pickford decided to play it safe, even though it galled her to do so. There are few characters she hated more than Pollyanna, the "glad girl," but she knew that her fans would show up in droves to see this picture, which was based on Eleanor Porter Read More

The Hoodlum

Crew: Producer

Synopsis: Amy Burke (Mary Pickford) is as spoiled, temperamental and contrary a lass as her grandfather, Alexander Guthrie (Ralph Lewis), is ruthless and cutthroat a businessman. Amy is bored with the privileged life on Riverside Drive, so when her father, John Burke (Dwight Crittenden), returns to New Read More

Heart O' the Hills

Actors: Sam de Grasse, Harold Goodwin, Mary Pickford, John Gilbert

Synopsis: This film was one of Mary Pickford's attempts to add at least a touch of maturity to her little girl characterizations. She is a Kentucky mountain girl in this romantic adventure film, and Harold Goodwin is the boy who befriends her. Sam DeGrasse was the villain. Future silent-screen idol Jack Gilbert Read More

Captain Kidd, Jr.

Synopsis: This comic tale of buried treasure should have been a winner, but it turned out to be one on Mary Pickford's misses. The credits were solid -- the prestigious William Desmond Taylor directed, and Frances Marion wrote the scenario from a Rida Johnson Young play. The other leading players (Douglas MacLean Read More

Daddy Long Legs

Synopsis: This first of several cinematic adaptations of the Jean Webster play Daddy Long Legs stars "America's Sweetheart," Mary Pickford. The oldest and cutest of a group of orphans, Pickford is provided with funds for her education and well-being by a mysterious benefactor, whom she knows only as "Daddy Read More

Stella Maris

Actors: Mary Pickford, Conway Tearle, Camille Ankewitch, Ida Waterman, Herbert Standing

Synopsis: In a largely successful effort to demonstrate her versatility, Mary Pickford plays a dual role in Stella Maris. As Stella Maris, Pickford is a crippled young heiress who has been raised in luxurious isolation. As Unity Blake, Pickford is a homely maidservant, subject to ill treatment from her Read More

Amarilly of Clothesline Alley

Actors: Mary Pickford, William Scott, Norman Kerry

Synopsis: Coming as it did on the heels of what many consider to be Mary Pickford's greatest triumph, Stella Maris (1918), this film seemed almost too lightweight in comparison. The situation -- a poor girl's introduction to High Society -- was already old hat in 1918, but luckily, the star and her Read More

M'Liss

Actors: Mary Pickford

Synopsis: Previously filmed in 1915, the Bret Harte story M'liss served as one of Mary Pickford's most memorable vehicles. The "terror" of Red Gulch, the hoydenish M'liss (Pickford) spends most of her time dragging her scraggly father Bummer Smith (Ernest Torrence) home from the local bordello. As such Read More

Johanna Enlists

Synopsis: Silent star Mary Pickford once referred to director William Desmond Taylor as "a very charming man who directed me in three very bad pictures." This was one of them. Not that he didn't have help in creating this anemic vehicle -- the story was written by Rupert Hughes and the scenario was by Frances Marion Read More

How Could You, Jean?

Actors: Casson Ferguson

Synopsis: Perhaps one of Mary Pickford's lesser works, this film was nevertheless a funny, extremely well-produced comedy about a socialite who, having lost her fortune, takes a job as a Swedish cook. She falls in love with a chauffeur (Casson Ferguson) who, lo and behold, is a slumming millionaire. Written Read More

Little Princess

Synopsis: This first version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's frequently filmed children's classic A Little Princess starred 23-year-old Mary Pickford as the 10-year-old title character. When her wealthy father marches off to war, little Sarah (Pickford) is left in a girl's boarding school. News arrives that Read More

National Association's All-Star Picture

Synopsis: Compiled by the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry and distributed to theaters across the United States, National Association's All-Star Picture, features selected scenes from various popular films, offering glimpses of many of the biggest stars of the day. Included are clips of Read More

A Romance of the Redwoods

Synopsis: Reportedly, director Cecil B. DeMille and leading lady Mary Pickford did not see eye to eye during the making of this lavish Western melodrama filmed on location among the giant redwoods in northern California. "Little Mary" actually plays a female her own age this time (maybe that was the Read More

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Actors: Mary Pickford, Eugene O'Brien, Helen Jerome Eddy, Charles Ogle, Marjorie Daw

Synopsis: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm was the first film version of the Kate Douglas Wiggin novel and play. Mary Pickford, 23 years old but looking at least ten years younger, stars as the spunky little girl who is left with her tight-lipped aunt Helen Jerome Eddy by her impoverished mother. It's an uphill Read More

The Poor Little Rich Girl

Synopsis: A bittersweet tale of a little rich girl so sheltered by the parents she hardly ever sees that she has no idea of what is going on in the real world sounds like the quintessential Mary Pickford movie. In reality, after 23 films, Pickford had never before played a girl so young -- Gwendolyn, the Read More

The Little American

Crew: Producer

Actors: DeWitt Jennings

Synopsis: It would be easy to assume that combining Mary Pickford's charm with director Cecil B. DeMille's penchant for the spectacular would create an exceptional piece of work. But judging from this picture, and the one made before it -- Romance of the Redwoods -- that just wasn't the case. The bottom Read More

The Pride of the Clan

Synopsis: The title may have been designed to cash in on the success of Griffith's Birth of a Nation (wherein the Ku Klux Klan were the heroes!), but Maurice Tourneur's Pride of the Clan was set not in the American South but in Scotland. Mary Pickford plays the daughter of a Scottish seaman. When her dad is Read More

The Eternal Grind

Synopsis: "Capital vs. Labor" was the theme of the Mary Pickford vehicle The Eternal Grind. One of several films inspired by the tragic Triangle Factory Fire of 1911, the film casts Pickford as a spunky sweatshop worker who butts heads with her bosses over her miserable working conditions. Rather than Read More

The Foundling

Crew: Producer

Synopsis: This silent melodrama was typical Mary Pickford fare, if perhaps not one of her best. She had made a version of the film in early 1915, directed by Allan Dwan, but the negative was lost in a fire. The less talented John O'Brien directed the remake, but he was uninspired and the film proved merely Read More

Less Than the Dust

Synopsis: In this lesser Mary Pickford vehicle -- her first picture under the Artcraft banner -- the star plays Radha, an English girl who was abandoned by her drug-addicted father, a British Army officer, in India. She has been brought up by Ramlan, a native swordmaker (Mario Majeroni), and believes Read More

Hulda from Holland

Synopsis: With Mary Pickford in the lead, it is perhaps superfluous to name the actress who played the title character in Hulda From Holland. When her parents die, little Hulda, the oldest of four children, takes charge of her three kid brothers. The kindly Burgomaster (Charles E. Verner) sees to it that no Read More

Poor Little Peppina

Synopsis: In her longest film to date -- 6 reels -- Mary Pickford starred in this well-made drama as an American girl, kidnapped as a baby and raised in Italy by a peasant family. She refuses to marry the husband chosen for her and stows away on a boat to America dressed as a boy. In New York, she falls in Read More

Cinderella

Actors: Mary Pickford, Owen Moore

Synopsis: Combining the star appeal of Mary Pickford with this fairy tale seemed like a sure thing to Famous Players-Paramount. Releasing it around Christmas time just about guaranteed big box-office receipts. But except for a few inspired moments (in one, the clock's hands strike 12 and promptly shrivel Read More

The Foundling

Crew: Producer

A Girl of Yesterday

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Synopsis: This typical silent rags-to-riches comedy-drama featured Mary Pickford and her real-life brother Jack as sibling orphans sheltered from the world by a maiden aunt (Gertrude Norman). Suddenly, Jane (Pickford) inherits a large sum of money, enabling the two to start "living." Becoming sophisticates Read More

Fanchon the Cricket

Synopsis: Practically the whole Pickford clan showed up in Fanchon the Cricket. Mary Pickford plays the granddaughter of a woman suspected of being a witch. The poor girl is rescued from the torments of her peers by the hero. She reciprocates by nursing him through an illness, and also by rescuing his Read More

Esmeralda

Synopsis: Mary Pickford essays the title character in Esmeralda. She plays a country lass who leaves her home after valuable gold ore is found on her land. She returns home to participate in an arranged marriage, but at the last moment runs off with her true love. At four reels (approximately 50 minutes) Read More

Mistress Nell

Synopsis: Having played a modern actress in Behind the Scenes (1914), Mary Pickford took on the legendary 17th Century Nell Gwynn, the mistress of Charles II about whom it was said, "England would be worse than a Puritan funeral without her." Pickford's Nell dons male garb in order to intercept a letter Read More

Madame Butterfly

Synopsis: Not surprisingly, Mary Pickford failed to look sufficiently Japanese in this five-reel melodrama based on John Luther Long's novel rather than Puccini. The star fought director Sidney Olcott tooth and nails throughout the filming at Plainfield and Bernardsville, New Jersey. Olcott reportedly Read More

Little Pal

Synopsis: Despite having been written by her trusted friends, Marshall Neilan and Frances Marion, this melodrama set in Alaska emerged as one of Mary Pickford's few failures. She played Little Pal, a half-breed Eskimo girl whose prospector father loses his life to the brutal Black Brand (Joseph Manning). Read More

Rags

Crew: Screenwriter

Synopsis: The relationship between a plucky daughter and her brutish father is dissected in this classic Mary Pickford drama set in a mining community. Pickford plays "Rags," a pretty but wild girl who defends her alcoholic father (J. Farrell MacDonald), a disgraced bank cashier, no matter how he mistreats