Battle Royale #9: Battle of the Silent Queens (The Results)

Well kiddies, here we are at the end of another Battle Royale.  This time you, my faithful readers and true believers, were asked to choose between those two great stars of silent cinema - Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish.  A choice between "America's Sweetheart" and "The First Lady of American Cinema."  And who did you pick?  Well, it was kind of a landslide.  Not quite as bad as our last Battle Royale, where The Marx Brothers trounced The Three Stooges by a score of 38 to 7, but still quite a mandate.  And who was the mandate for, you ask.  Well, it was for Miss Lillian Gish.  With a final score of 31 to 16, or 66% to 34% if you will, the First Lady beat out the Sweetheart.  From the beginning, I figured Gish would end up the winner (she did get my vote I know), but I expected it to be at least relatively close.  Certainly a lot closer than it ended up being.  Well, Mary does have an Oscar to lord over Gish, so there's at least that.  And yes, I know, if the Oscars had been around, Gish would probably have won one as well.  Then again, the year Pickford won hers, Gish gave one of her finest performances in The Wind.  But I am rambling, so I digress.

Usually, at this point in the festivities, I say that we will be back with a brand spankin' new Battle Royale in just a few days - but such is not the case this time around.   We are holding off the next one until after the new year.  This way, you can all enjoy your holidays without any of the added stress of trying to decide who deserves the crown as Battle Royale Champion.  Ya know, because there is so much stress in that.  Anyway, we will be returning with that aforementioned brand spankin' new Battle Royale after the holidays.  After back-to-back landslides, hopefully this new one will go back to biz as usual, and be a closer race - maybe even a photo finish.  Also hopefully, we can get the voter turnout to be a bit better this time around - something we can perhaps write home about, as they say.  Since the beginning, I have been trying to get as many voters involved as I can.  So far, this has been met with only slight success.  My wish is to get our little game into the triple digits on a regular basis.  As of now, our best turnout was a mere 66 votes (courtesy of Astaire and Kelly), and this time we had just 47 voters.  I send reminders to bunches of hopeful voters, but still nothing.  This time around I sent voter invites to over a thousand people on Facebook alone, not to mention regular tweets, but still only 47 decided to come aboard.   So basically, what I am saying is - c'mon people, let's get this thing going.  I have seen other online polls get hundreds, even thousands of votes, so why can't we!!?  Anyway, have a safe and happy holiday (whichever one you so choose to celebrate) and have pleasant and giddy dreams about our new Battle Royale.  We will be traveling to the Far East next time around.

Battle Royale #9: Battle of the Silent Queens

Welcome to the ninth Battle Royale here at The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World.   It is an ongoing series that will pit two classic cinematic greats against each other - and you can vote for who is the greater by clicking your choice over in the poll at the top of the sidebar.

A long time ago, before movies could talk, or at least before they were willing to talk, there lived a time in cinema called the silent days.  Back in these days of yore, there lived two women who were considered the best of the best when it came to acting.  These queens of the silent days - this Mary Pickford and this Lillian Gish - were the end all and be all of this still young medium called the moving pictures - the flickers if you will.  Gish was called "The First Lady of American Cinema," and Pickford, "America's Sweetheart," and now here they are, nearly ninety years past their hey day, and placed in battle - or, more appropriately, placed in Battle Royale.

Mary Pickford, born Gladys Marie Smith in 1892, in Toronto, Canada (and still, to become America's Sweetheart), made her screen debut in 1909, in a Biograph short directed by D.W. Griffith.  She would spend a good majority of her career making films for Griffith, a man that would become one of her closest friends, and would later help form United Artists with Pickford, her then husband Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and good friend Charlie Chaplin.  At one point in 1919 and 1920, Pickford was quite possibly the most well known woman on the planet.  The supposed storybook marriage of Pickford and Fairbanks was what legends were made of, and helped give birth to the fan magazine.  Mary would move into the sound era, and become an Oscar winner for Best Actress in Coquette, in the second Academy Award ceremonies, but would soon retire from acting.  She appeared in her final film in 1933.  After retirement, Pickford would fall into alcoholism, eventually become a recluse, allowing only her stepson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and good friend Lillian Gish, visitation rights.  But still, her memory lives on as America's Sweetheart.  

Meanwhile, friend Lillian Gish, born just a year later, in Ohio, would make her screen debut in 1912.  It too was produced at Biograph, and it too was directed by D.W. Griffith, and she too would spend the majority of her silent career under the tutelage of Mr. Griffith.  She would go on to star in such films as The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms and Orphans of the Storm.  While Mary was the covergirl, Lillian was usually the more lauded for her acting prowess.  Gish, unlike friend Pickford, would keep going well into the sound era, including most notably, in one of the greatest films ever made, The Night of the Hunter, in 1955.   Gish's final film would be the 1987 film The Whales of August, also starring Bette Davis and Vincent Price.  Gish would live until the age of 99.

So there you have it ladies and germs.  Choose your favourite between these Silent Queens.  All you need do is to go on over to the poll, found conveniently near the top of the sidebar of this very same site, and click on who you think is the greater of these two great ladies.  And remember, you can comment all you wish (and please do comment - we can never have too many of those) but in order for your vote to be counted, you must vote in the actual poll.  After doing that, then you can come back over here and leave all your comments.  Who knows, maybe we will get some sort of lively cinematic discussion going.  And also please remember to tell everyone you know to get out the vote as well.  I would like to see us reach triple digits this time around.  Voting will go until midnight, EST, the night of Friday Dec 21st (just over two weeks from the starting gate).  The results will be announced the following day.  So get out there and vote vote vote.

Mary Pickford! America's Freakin' Sweetheart!!

The following look at the most classic of all classic Hollywood stars, the beautiful and talented icon of icons, is my humble contribution to the Mary Pickford Blogathon going on over at Classic Movies June 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

Let's just power right past the fact that the girl known as America's Sweetheart was Canadian-born.  In such a day and age without the constant, omnipotent media we know in these modern times, it was easy for the studio's publicists to control what we did know and what we did not know about the burgeoning community of celebrity that was rising in the latter nineteen teens.  Of course just because the adorable Miss Pickford was born in the Great White North most certainly does not mean that she is ineligible for the title of America's Sweetheart.  At the time of her height of popularity, between 1919 and 1927, she was not only one of the highest paid people in Hollywood (second probably only to good friend Charlie Chaplin) but very possibly, aside from royalty, the highest paid women in the world.  So what I am trying to say is, if America wanted to adopt this beautiful and talented Canuck as their very own sweetheart - so be it.  She actually became a US citizen upon her marriage to Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in 1920, though she did die with dual citizenship.  The girl born Gladys Marie Smith in 1892 Toronto had every right to be America's Freakin' Sweetheart.  And she did it the old-fashioned way - she earned it.  Just take a look at these interesting tidbits.

• Going by the monicker of "Baby Gladys Smith", Mary began her stage career at the age of six.

• Reputedly, Mary was the subject of the very first close-up in film history in the 1912 film Friends.

• She and husband Douglas Fairbanks Sr, became the first stars to put their hand prints in the cement outside of the famed Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Pickford and second husband Fairbanks, along with Charlie Chaplin, were not only the biggest stars of their day, but their fame is what created the entire lore of Hollywood.  These were the first movie stars.  Before Mary and Doug and Charlie, there was no celebrity in Hollywood.  Actually there was really no Hollywood before them.  They ushered in the age of the movie star.  What was nothing more than a struggling new artistic and technical medium when Mary began her Hollywood career at Biograph in 1909 (cinema itself was barely pubescent itself just fourteen years after its debut) was a thriving top art form and beyond huge moneymaking, icon-creating, force to be reckoned with upon her early retirement just twenty-four years later.  Basically, Mary Pickford was one of, if not the most integral part in creating what would be known as the Golden Age of Hollywood.  But still, it was not always something Mary was happy about.

The thing that made Mary a star was playing little girls.  The girl with the curls, Mary found herself pigeon-holed in such roles for must of her career.  The actress, much to her own chagrin, was still playing barely pubescent girls well into her thirties.   She did play adult roles on occasion but her bread and butter was most certainly the teen and sub-teen roles.  In a slew of films from Pride of the Clan to Poor Little Rich Girl to Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms to M'Liss to Daddy-Long-Legs to Heart o' the Hills to Pollyanna to Little Lord Fauntleroy to Tess of the Storm Country, Mary would make a super-successful career (some would even say one of the most successful careers in Hollywood history) out of playing girls fifteen to twenty to even twenty-five years younger than she.  Famously, in a long ago precursor to Keri Russell's own modern day surprise shorning, Mary cut all her famous curls off and, stemming from the quote, "I'm sick of Cinderella parts, of wearing rags and tatters. I want to wear smart clothes and play the lover," put herself in the role of an adult and a lover for her first sound film, Coquette.

The change shocked everyone but it won the actress her only competitive Oscar.  Granted, the Oscar was most likely an award much more to Pickford herself, and much less to the performance.  That and she was one of the founding members of the Academy the year before her victory.  But still, even the Oscar would not help things as her new found freedom of expression was not something her fans wanted.  As the 1930's came around, the fans wanted the now forty year old actress to keep playing eleven and twelve year olds.  They wanted the old, or should I say young, Mary back.   They wanted America's Sweetheart back.  Mary did not want to do this.  Mary Pickford was a strong, independent woman who took a back seat to no man, actor, director, husband, publicist or studio boss.  This being the case, the actress was not about to just go back to something that made her a star but also something that was now much decidedly so in her past.  Mary Pickford would officially retire from acting in 1933, just three films after her Oscar winning performance in Coquette. Although she would always love her fans, she would no longer play the game of being America's Freakin' Sweetheart.

• Mary is a member of both the Hollywood and Canadian Walks of Fame.

• In a possible comeback position, Mary turned down an offer to play Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd.

• She had intended to have all of her films destroyed after her death, fearing that no one would care about them. Lucky for all we film fans, she was convinced not to do such a thing.

But it wasn't just acting where Mary left her mark.  In 1919, Mary, along with soon-to-be hubby Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and friends Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, the latter of which gave Pickford her first job in Hollywood, formed United Artists, a distribution company that can be considered the first ever independent movie company.   United Artists was a successful movie distribution house until its eventual demise and sale to Transamerica (and eventually MGM) in 1967.  For Mary and her friends, it was a fun investment.  Mary said of the company, "We maniacs had fun and made good pictures and a lot of money. In the early years United Artists was a private golf club for the four of us."  In a more modern day piece of trivia, Georgian-born, Irish and English-raised singer/songwriter Katie Melua actually wrote a song on Mary Pickford and the formation of UA.  It is called "Mary Pickford Used to Eat Roses" and you can watch the video on YouTube.  Pickford and Fairbanks were once the epitome of what it meant to be a Hollywood star, a movie industry power couple.  Throwing lavish parties at their appropriately named Pickfair estate in the Hollywood Hills, they were th everything of stardom.  Eventually though, Mary would be mostly forgotten by her fans and would spend the rest of her life, from the mid 1930's until her death in 1979, as a recluse in her beloved Pickfair.  Just a little thing (5 feet and one half inch - the exact same height as my own lovely wifey) Pickford was a powerhouse in the land of Hollywood - both as an actress and as the shrewdest of businesswomen.  She will certainly not be forgotten by this admirer of classic Hollywood.  I will leave you with a few of my favourite Mary Pickford quotes, followed by, for no other reason than it's sheer unlikely adorability, a picture of Mary washing a baby bear (!?).

• "Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo."

• On her second husband: "In his private life Douglas always faced a situation in the only way he knew, by running away from it."

• In her old age: "I saw Hollywood born and I've seen it die."

Mary Pickford (Used to Eat Roses)

I must admit to never having heard of Katie Melua before, but after stumbling across her video on YouTube, while searching for some of Mary Pickford's early short works (not the best place to see them but when they are unavailable elsewhere...), I have become somewhat obsessed with her - or at least her one song, Mary Pickford (Used to Eat Roses) - watching it several dozen times over the past few days.  One must wonder why someone would write a pop song about the formation of United Artists, but hey, my love of film history, and my current passion about America's Sweetheart (and the fact that it is a surprisingly catchy ditty) makes me somewhat gaga over it (not to mention Melua isn't bad to look at either).

Watch the video HERE.