Skip to main content

Link to Smithsonian homepage

Smithsonian Music

Main menu

  • Calendar
  • Listen
  • Learn
    • Ask Smithsonian
    • Collections Spotlights
    • Music Stories
  • Watch
  • Blog

Mary Pickford

Object Details

Exhibition Label
In 1909, the young stage actress Mary Pickford was having difficulty finding work in the New York theater, and although she considered it a professional step down to do so, she decided to investigate acting jobs with silent filmmaker D.W. Griffith. Griffith told her, "You're too little and too fat" but hired her anyway, and so began the rise of the silent screen's first major female star. Playing the exquisitely frail but spunky heroine in one melodrama after another, Pickford ultimately found herself hailed as "America's Sweetheart." By 1916 she was earning ten thousand dollars a week, and for many years after, she remained one of the movie industry's top box-office draws. The Pickford mystique took a sudden spike upward in 1920 when she married fellow screen idol Douglas Fairbanks. Together they became Hollywood's reigning royal couple.
Data Source
National Portrait Gallery
Artist
Baron Adolph de Meyer, 1 Sep 1868 - 6 Jan 1946
Sitter
Mary Pickford, 8 Apr 1892 - 29 May 1979
Date
1920
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Dimensions
Image/Sheet: 23.2 x 18.2cm (9 1/8 x 7 3/16")
Mat: 55.9 x 40.6cm (22 x 16")
Type
Photograph

Featured In

  • 1920: A Year in the Collections
  • Entertaining Women: American Women on Stage and Screen
  • Let's Go to the Movies
  • Let's Go to the Movies:Silent Era
This image is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Open Access page.
International media Interoperability Framework
IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more.
View manifest View in Mirador Viewer

Link to Smithsonian homepage

  • About
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
Back to Top