Gladys Smith who co-founded United Artists
Mary Pickford (1892–1979), born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, was silent Hollywood’s most beloved star and a power broker who co-founded United Artists in 1919 with Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Griffith. She helped found the Academy in 1927 and won Best Actress for her first talkie, Coquette (1929).
Born 8 April 1892 at a Toronto address on University Avenue, she grew up in the poor Ward district; at four the household sat under infectious quarantine, and a Catholic grandmother arranged baptism. After father John Charles Smith’s death in 1898, mother Charlotte took boarders; a theatrical manager suggested stage work for seven-year-old Gladys and sister Lottie. By 1901 the family toured the United States in The Fatal Wedding, billing Baby Gladys Smith as Little Mother.
In New York she hounded producer David Belasco for months until he cast her in The Warrens of Virginia in 1907 at $25 a week and gave her the stage name Mary Pickford. When her savings ran dry in 1909 she tried the Biograph studio, where D. W. Griffith screen-tested her on 19 April. Biograph listed no actors, yet viewers spotted her within weeks, and cinemas advertised The Girl with the Golden Curls on sandwich boards. She wintered with the crew in Los Angeles from January 1910, moved briefly to Carl Laemmle's IMP, and in 1913 quit the stage to film exclusively for Adolph Zukor's Famous Players. Hearts Adrift (1914) was such a hit that she demanded the first of many publicised pay rises, and by 1916 only Charlie Chaplin edged her in popularity. As Mary Pickford she became a silent-era phenomenon across five Hollywood decades, then leveraged fame into ownership. United Artists gave stars control of their work; Academy founding membership put her inside the institution that later awarded her a competitive Oscar for Coquette and, eventually, an Academy Honorary Award. Producer credits matched her on-screen “America’s Sweetheart” brand with real corporate muscle.
She died 29 May 1979, having bridged Canadian childhood poverty, cross-border touring, and studio empire-building. Few performers of her generation wrote the corporate rules as well as the close-ups. The curls were the brand; the contracts were the revolution.
Source: Mary Pickford
