The Mary Pickford Foundation is pleased to announce it is joining forces with the already thriving Marie Dressler Museum in Cobourg, Ontario to help create Canada’s Women in Film Museum highlighting the lives and careers of Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer and Marie Dressler.
These Canadian born stars were three of the first four winners of the Academy’s Best Actress Oscars and each forged their own paths to cinematic success. Marie Dressler was a vaudeville star before she became the first actress to star in a feature length comedy, Mack Sennett’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance, in 1914.
Several years ago, community leaders of Cobourg came together to save and renovate the home that was Marie’s birthplace. Working with the Museum Studies department at the University of Toronto, they created an informative, interactive and exciting center that draws tourists year round. Maximizing space allowed for room to expand the museum and so they returned to the Museum Studies Department to gather together a new group of young women studying for their Masters. The idea of young women working together to bring the story of these three Canadian film pioneers to new generations of women personifies Pickford’s belief in fostering a creative community and “taking care of our own.” The Pickford Foundation is pleased to work with these women and the citizens of Cobourg and will be providing film clips, photographs and the historical background and knowledge to tell the personal and professional story of Mary Pickford.
The Mary Pickford Foundation is pleased to participate in the 21st annual RiverRun International Film Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina held this year from April 4-14. As a part of their tribute to the 100th anniversary of the founding of United Artists, the newly restored Little Annie Rooney will be screened on April 6 and introduced by the Foundation’s own Elaina Friedrichsen. On April 7, Fanchon the Cricket will be screened with a panel focusing on Modernizing the Silents, featuring Friedrichsen, composer Julian Ducatenzeiler, a Lolipop Records recording artist and front man for the rock band Mystic Braves, and Chris Heckman, Professor of Film Music Composition at UNCSA.
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The process of restoring and scoring this Little Annie Rooney took several years. The original tinted nitrate print in Mary Pickford’s personal collection at the Library of Congress, made from the camera negative in 1925, was brought to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences archive in Los Angeles.
February 28th, 2015