Mary Pickford was the first movie actress to become an international superstar.  At the height of her popularity she was as well known as Charlie Chaplin, and the most powerful woman in Hollywood.  An accomplished actress with amazing screen personality, Pickford was also an astute business woman and a tough negotiator.  In 2005 the PBS program American Experience aired a documentary on this amazing silent star, entitled, simply enough, Mary Pickford.  That episode has now been released on DVD.

Mary Pickford was born into poverty in Canada in 1892. At the age of seven took to the stage as an extra to help her family earn money.  She soon started earning bigger parts and along with her family, traveled the vaudeville circuits.  This was a hard life involving long hours and little play, sleeping on trains, and poor food.

At the age of fifteen she was a seasoned actress and found herself in New York City.  There she had dreams of making it big in the stage, and though she did appear on Broadway, this was seasonal work.  During the off season her mother convinced Mary to go to the Biograph studios and try to get work there.  This was 1908 and the movies were looked at as a place where failed actors ended up, several steps down from the Broadway shows she had been appearing in.  But she was very close to her mother and did as she was told.

At Biograph she landed a job working for director D. W. Griffith.  She had great screen personality and was soon their biggest star.  Her rise was meteoric, moving from company to company, she started at Biograph earning $5 a day and in a few short years she was bringing home $500,000 a year.

When a group of movie distributors and producers tried to band together to limit actor salaries which, like today, were astronomical for the biggest stars, Pickford met this threat head on.  Banding together with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith, they formed a new motion picture company, United Artists.

About this time Pickford also divorced her estranged husband and married the man she had been having an affair with for several years, Douglas Fairbanks.  They were the perfect Hollywood couple, glamourous, very wealthy and popular, invitations to the parties that they held at their Beverly Hills estate, Pickfair, were coveted throughout Hollywood.

This approximately 90-minute documentary gives a good overview of the actresses life.  Her story is told through narration over film clips and stills of the actress, along with comments from film historians (including Kevin Brownlow).  There is also a few clips from a 1957 radio interview that Pickford gave, and they show clips from the film that was made when she received an honorary Academy Award.  (She was very old at the time, had on way to much make-up and an obvious wig, and wasn't as mentally adept as one would hope.)

The program hits all of the important events of her life, but it does gloss over some things.  I was surprised that her two adopted children (who she snubbed in her will) weren't even mentioned, nor was the fact that for a long time she wanted all of her films burned.  Luckily cooler heads convinced her not to destroy them.
 
One gripe I have with this disc is that the program opens with commercials.  There are sponsor spots for both Scotts (the makers of Ortho) and Liberty Mutual.  Both of these appear before and after the feature.  I'm glad that they help support PBS, but I don't think ads for their companies should appear on the DVD, especially when the disc is priced similar to other documentaries without ads.

Audio:

The stereo soundtrack was good, as you would expect.  Some of the older sound movies and radio interviews had background noise, but the narration and contemporary interviews all sounded clear.

Video:

The full frame image was good overall.  The documentary consists of many vintage film clips from Pickford's movies and many of these have not been restored.  They have scratches and mediocre contrast along with the typical defects that one will find in silent films.  The contemporary footage of historians looks good, about what you'd expect from a recent documentary.

Extras:

The only extra is a filmography.  I was disappointed they didn't include anything else.  The American Experience web page has a Pickford short and extended clips from two other films that can be viewed.  I was hoping that they would include those on the DVD also.

Final Thoughts:

This documentary gives a good overview of Mary Pickford's career and her private life.  It doesn't give you the insight that a good biography would, but it serves as a good introduction to her work.  The only real complaint that I have is that I wish some of the film clips had been longer so viewers could get a better appreciation of the talent that Mary Pickford possessed.  Even so, people who watch this are likely to come away with the opinion that Mary Pickford was a talented actress and a shrewd business woman.  Recommended.

Here are reviews of some of Mary Pickford's films that have been released on DVD:  Heart o' the Hills, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Through the Back Door