The Power of Her Legacy Endures...
As producer and actress, Mary Pickford was the driving force behind over 200 films. The following list is our ongoing effort to compile all of Mary Pickford’s films, both “lost” and existing. We will be adding clips from rare films as well as screenings featuring live musical accompaniment to some of the titles.
Released September 10, 1913
Role: Nance Olden
Co-stars: David Wall, House Peters, Grace Henderson
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: J. Searle Dawley and Edwin S. Porter
Screenwriter: B.P. Schulberg, adapted from the 1907 play by Channing Pollock, based on the 1904 novel by Miriam Michelson
Note: In the Bishop’s Carriage was remade in 1920 by Realart Pictures with Bebe Daniels in the Nance Olden role.
Original review from The Moving Picture World, Sept. 20, 1913:
It is several months since picture lovers have seen on the screen Mary Pickford in a new film. In this refined melodrama they will see Little Mary in a new light. “In the Bishop’s Carriage” is a crook play; nevertheless its treatment is so artistic, so delicate, so finished, that it will please every division of society.
Released November 10, 1913
Role: Mercy Baxter
Co-stars: Owen Moore, Ernest Truex, Ogden Crane
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: J. Searle Dawley
Screenwriter: Based on the 1884 play by Howard P. Taylor
Note: Originally a stage hit with Minnie Maddern Fiske in the lead role, Caprice was so popular that Paramount re-released it to theaters in 1918.
Original review from the Los Angeles Times (Nov. 15, 1913):
“Little Mary” of Biograph fame … will appear in “Caprice.” Mrs. Fiske’s former success. No better play could have been selected for her inimitable daintiness. It is a delightful comedy-drama of love and society, with an echo of the hills mingled with the voice of the city. Mary Pickford in “The Bishop’s Carriage” broke all records at Tally’s Broadway. “Caprice” should prove even more of a drawing card.
Released February 10, 1914
Role: Nina
Co-stars: Harold Lockwood
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: Edwin S. Porter
Screenwriter: Mary Pickford, based on the 1911 novel As the Sparks Fly Upward by Cyrus Townsend Brady
Note: Hearts Adrift was the first feature produced by Famous Players on the West Coast. Novelist Cyrus Townsend Brady sued Famous Players for using his story without his consent; modern sources credit Townsend.
Original review from The Moving Picture World (January 1914):
Mary Pickford, the celebrated film favorite, makes her reappearance in the productions of the Famous Players in Hearts Adrift, a tragic epic of the deep… The pathos of this drama is softened by Miss Pickford’s charming and piquant portrayal of the role of the little half-savage Nina. At frequent periods in the story Miss Pickford attains high dramatic power, and strikes a distinct note in her delicate rendition of her supreme sacrifice of self for love.
Released March 01, 1914
Role: Juliet
Co-stars: Ernest Truex, William Norris, David Belasco
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: Edwin S. Porter (and J. Searle Dawley, uncredited)
Screenwriter: Based on the play by Austin Strong, adapted from the French play Un bon petit diableby Rosemonde Gerard and Maurice Rostand
Note: In 1913, Mary had appeared in David Belasco’s stage version of A Good Little Devil, along with Lillian Gish.
Original review from Variety (March 6, 1914):
Here’s one film on which the movie exhibitor of the country can’t go wrong. … There’s a lot of good, wholesome fun in “A Good Little Devil” and there’s fantastical trimmings of the fairy land sort and real pathos of the typical kind that motherless little kids encounter each day that combine in making the play a movie worth while. Miss Pickford does bully work as the blind girl and makes the role stand out as a lovable, childlike sympathetic bit of acting that is irresistible.
Released March 20, 1914
Role: Tessibel “Tess” Skinner
Co-stars: Harold Lockwood, Olive Golden, David Hartford
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: Edwin S. Porter
Screenwriter: B.P. Schulberg, based on the 1909 novel by Grace Miller White
Note: An enormous success at the box office, Tess of the Storm Country would be re-made three times; Pickford’s own 1922 update, a 1932 Fox talkie with Janet Gaynor, and again at Fox in 1960 with Diane Baker in the title role.
Original review from Variety (March 27, 1914):
In “Hearts Adrift” and “A Good Little Devil,” Mary Pickford had no opportunity to demonstrate her true value as a movie actress. In “Tess of the Storm County” … Little Mary comes into her own and her work in this five-part movie production so far o’ershadows her work in the other films there’s no comparison. As the little, expressive-eyed tatterdemalion of the Lake Cayuga shores, Miss Pickford sticks another feather in her movie crown which will help the Famous Players reap a benefit in more ways than one.
Released July 10, 1914
Role: Anemone Breckenridge
Co-stars: James Kirkwood, Ida Waterman, Robert Broderick
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: James Kirkwood
Screenwriter: Eve Unsell, based on the 1914 novel by Anna Alice Chapin
Note: Jack Pickford appears briefly as a young clansman. Long considered lost, a print of The Eagle’s Mate was acquired by the George Eastman House in 2000.
Original review from Variety (July 10, 1914):
Mary Pickford … is one of the few picture actresses, or actors for that matter, who can interject personality into a negative. She breathes the role taken, and it fits her, up, down and all around. … “The Eagle’s Mate” is a lively feature without a real kick – but it has Mary Pickford, better than the best kick or punch that could have been put in, for Mary Pickford is the Ruth Chatterton of the movies.
Released September 21, 1914
Role: Queen Anna Victoria
Co-stars: Carlyle Blackwell, Harold Lockwood, Russell Bassett
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: Edwin S. Porter, Hugh Ford
Screenwriter: Hugh Ford, based on the 1909 stage play by Channing Pollock
Note: Originally produced at Broadway’s Hackett Theatre in 1909, Such a Little Queen was remade by Realart Pictures in 1921, with Constance Binney in the lead.
Original review from The Moving Picture World (Oct. 3, 1914):
Miss Mary Pickford has the role of Queen Anna Victoria of Herzegovina; and her performance is that of rare quality which we always expect from this star. Comedy and drama are alike to her. She is as delightful in the one as she is moving in the other. As a comedienne she seldom does the anticipated; and therein to a great degree lies the charm of her work.
Released October 26, 1914
Role: Dolly Lane
Co-stars: James Kirkwood, Lowell Sherman, Ida Waterman
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: James Kirkwood
Screenwriter: Based on the 1911 play by Margaret Mayo
Note: Behind the Scenes is notable in being one of the few films in which Mary portrays an actress.
Original review from Variety (Oct. 31, 1914):
In this feature Miss Pickford is seen from every angle in all of her camera moods, and to those who are Pickford fans it will be a feast. … The cuteness of Mary Pickford is proverbial. She alone can carry this picture, and that she will to big returns goes without saying, for besides Pickford, it has “the stage” from the inside.
Released December 28, 1914
Role: Cinderella
Co-stars: Owen Moore, Isabel Vernon, Inez Marcel
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: James Kirkwood
Screenwriter: Based on the 1697 story by Charles Perrault
Note: Known prior to its release as The Stepsister, Cinderella features Mary’s then-husband Owen Moore as Prince Charming.
Original review from the Los Angeles Times (Jan. 3, 1915):
Miss Pickford portrays every phase of the fairy heroine’s career, from pathetic cinder girl to bejeweled princess, with equal charm and winsomeness, and every scene is made more appealing by the beauty and grace of the beloved little film star.
Released May 10, 1915
Role: Fanchon, the cricket
Co-stars: Jack Standing, Lottie Pickford, Gertrude Norman
Prod Co: Famous Players Film Company
Director: James Kirkwood
Screenwriter: James Kirkwood, Frances Marion (uncredited), based on the 1849 novel La Petite Fadette by George Sand
Note: Mary’s brother Jack and sister Lottie also appear in Fanchon, the Cricket. According to Fred Astaire, scenes were shot on location in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, where the young Astaire met all three Pickfords.
Original review from The Moving Picture World (May 22, 1915):
The charm of the cricket has made its appeal to the poets from the days of Anacreon, but there was never a sweeter cricket than Fanchon and let me hasten to add there never was a Fanchon like Mary Pickford. Yes, I know that the greatest of the French and the English and the American stars have attempted and have successfully rendered Fanchon, but I stick to my belief that none ever surpassed and few approached the work of Mary Pickford.
* Indicates that the film is lost
** Indicates that Mary wrote the screenplay