Mary Pickford — Sans Grease Paint and Wig (1913) 🇺🇸

December 29, 2024

Mary Pickford’s dark eyebrows and hazel eyes were quite as I had imagined them, but the blonde curls that bobbed from under her straw hat were a distinct shock, as I had always believed Mary to be a brunette.

by Mabel Condon

Not that anybody had ever told me she was; I just imagined it from my acquaintance with her on the screen and the screen, you know, has the faculty of converting blondes into brunettes with neither excuse nor Pickford. warning to the blonde so converted nor the picture patrons so deceived. So Mary is a blonde. “Have a chair,” invited Mr. Schulberg, he of the publicity department and the scenario editorship of the Famous Players’ Company; also the Mr. Schulberg of the honeymoon flat over in Jersey, and who is so new a groom that he still brings unexpected company home to dinner. “When Mary is through with this scene she’ll take you to her dressing room,” continued Mr. Schulberg, and with that promise I accepted the chair and sat back to watch Mary’s debut at boarding school and to forgive picture screens in general their deception as to Mary’s curls.

The scene being rehearsed was one from the story, “Caprice.” Six times did Mary bob and smile her little “love-me” smile in introduction to the stylish young ladies who were to be her schoolmates and who had lots of fun at the expense of Mary’s pathetic jacket, her rustic hat that tied under her chin and the beruffled skirts that dipped five or more inches at the back; six times did Mary lovingly brush her father’s carpet bag with the front gore of her skirt and six times did she throw her arms about his neck and caress the sleeve of his coat in a brave farewell.

Then, but not until then, did the brow of Director J. Searle Dawley rid itself of four or more superfluous lines and he bellowed the signal, “Go!” Three clangs of a bell brought carpenters and everybody else in the studio, but not in the scene, to a full stop. Mr. Dawley poised himself on the outside edge of the stage setting in readiness to hurl forth instructions and the camera man loomed up as “the man of the hour.”

It was all over in one and one-third minutes and eighty feet of film, and Mary walked from under the blue-green lights to where a plump, dark-haired lady was sitting. As we approached I heard Mary say, “Hello, Mother dear.” The dark-haired lady answered. “Hello, Mary darling,” and then I experienced the full wonder of a Mary smile as Mr. Schulberg introduced us. “If you don’t mind, we can talk while I dress for the next scene,” suggested Mary. I didn’t mind, and in a few minutes Mary was seated in front of her dressing table brushing her thick curls over her left forefinger and telling me that she had been working hard — just as I had seen her — since 9 o’clock that morning, but that she didn’t get tired — not very tired, anyway — because she likes picture work so well.

“While I was playing in his ‘Good Little Devil.’ Mr. Belasco used to read interviews in which I’d say I liked pictures better than the stage,” laughed Mary. “But I do like them better — though I’m going back with Mr. Belasco’s company in the fall; meanwhile, I’m doing the work I like best.”

“And what do you do when you’re not working?” I asked from the depths of the most comfortable chair I’ve ever seen in a dressing room.

“Live in a bathing suit,” replied Mary, putting down her white-backed brush and beginning to pin up her curls. “We have a house at Beechhurst, Long Island, and I stay in my bathing suit all day; that is, the one day of the week that I’m there,” she amended, as she applied a second amber pin by way of a reprimand to the little curl over her left ear. The little curl promptly slid back into its original position, and Mary continued:

“It’s glorious out there in the evening, too — only for the mosquitoes! I don’t believe they eat a bite until I arrive and then they all pick on me —”

“Why, Mary, what’s that?” came the alarmed voice of Mary’s mother, as she appeared in the doorway.

“Mosquitoes,” answered Mary demurely, and Mary’s mother breathed a relieved “Oh” as she took possession of the rocker under the electric fan.

“And it’s so dreadfully quiet there nights that it’s spookey. Last night —” Mary paused to insert a final pin where she thought it would do the most good, then turned around and continued — “I was sure somebody had broken into the house —”

“For what?” Mary’s mother wanted to know in a calm voice.

“Oh, for — I don’t know what for,” Mary went on, “but, anyway, I was sure somebody had broken in; I could even hear him walking around downstairs and I wanted a drink so badly, but I was afraid to get up and get it, so I just waited until it was daylight and then I got two.”

“And the man who ‘broke in?’” I suggested expectantly.

“Well, he wasn’t there this morning,” Mary’s muffled voice informed from the wardrobe bag into which her head was poked in the effort to choose a costume for the next scene.

“No, nor last night either,” said Mary’s mother, and that settled it.

Mary emerged from the bag with a pearl-gray suit and a sheer white waist with a quantity of ruffles on the collar and down the front.

“Hope this won’t make me look fat,” she remarked, as she studied the effect of the ruffles in the glass and arranged the waist line of the gray skirt with its white silk drop. “I wouldn’t be ‘little Mary’ any more if I got fat,” she smiled. “I try not to look any littler than I can help — though I like that title the people gave me, ‘little Mary.’ because I feel they call me it through liking, and I love to please the people. There —” donning her coat and turning around for her mother’s inspection, “am I all right, mother?”

“Yes, you look very nice,” her mother answered. “What hat are you going to wear?”

“Mercy! I didn’t bring a hat with me,” wailed Mary.

“Try mine,” Mary’s mother advised, removing her small white hat. Mary sat it jauntily upon her curls. It looked as though it belonged there, and Mary said: “Now, I’m ready. Will you come out and watch this scene and come back with me again?”

“Delighted,” I answered, and Mary hurried away to the blue-green lights of the stage setting and Mary’s mother and I found chairs where we could see everything, and I asked Mary’s mother how and when Mary started her stage work.

“In the Valentine Stock Company when she was five years old,” said Mary’s mother, who really looks very much like Mary, or Mary looks like her, rather. Mary’s mouth is distinctively her own, however; it’s the only one of its kind in the world, I’m sure.

“The man who owned the company saw Mary and asked to have her for a part he had in mind. He said, ‘I think you could do it, Mary,’ and Mary said, ‘I’m sure I could.’ So she did and has played every stockchild part since then.”

“Do you want to tell me how old Mary is?” I asked, and she replied: “Yes; Mary doesn’t mind. She is nineteen and was born in Toronto, Canada.”

A roomful of girls burst into the set and rehearsals were on. It was the closing of the school year and everybody was saying good-bye to everybody else, and parents and guardians were calling for their girls. And Mary offered a big contrast to the Mary of the preceding scene. Only two rehearsals were necessary this time and when the camera man had taken two “stills” and some of the girls were wondering if that would be all for that day, Mr. Dawley announced, in a voice that could be heard on Broadway (almost): “Get ready for the dormitory scene. Get your nightgowns on — and remember, girls, no street clothes underneath!”

There was a dismayed “Oh-h-h-h-h!” from a group of “extras,” but Mr. Dawley paid no attention to it, and Mary, her mother and I returned to Mary’s dressing room, where Mary had to take her hair down and make ready to carry a girl through the hall and down the stairs of the dormitory, which was to be set on fire.

“I hope you don’t get your hair burned, Mary,” worried her mother. “If I were you, I’d pin it up.”

“No, that wouldn’t look like really and truly night time,” said Mary, and then: “Gracious! I’ve lost my stockings — my white ones! I simply must have stockings —” as she hurriedly went through a suit case and traveling bag and her mother investigated the hooks on the north wall. “And I have only a few minutes —”

There was a violent rap at the door and a man’s voice called: “Mary, I want to borrow your nightgown.”

“All right,” answered Mary, and handed it out through a crack- in the door. “That’s the property man. I have to have another exactly like it for the next scene and he bought that one yesterday, so he knows where to gel the other. But if I don’t find my stockings “

“Here they are,” and Mary’s mother advanced triumphantly from the vicinity of the north wall hooks.

“Oh, thank you, mother. Yes, I remember now that I hung them just there.”

During the wait for the property man to return her gown Mary asked if I thought she resembled Mary Fuller. She had been told repeatedly that she did.

There is a resemblance, but it is more striking in the pictures of the two Marys, as then their hair looks to be the same color.

“I admire Mary Fuller very much. I’ve never met her, though I tried to on Edison night at the Exposition, but she had gone home. Sometimes —”

The knuckles of the property man sounded on the door and when the gown had been admitted and donned, Mary resumed her position on the sofa; and continued: “Sometimes I stop and think of all the motion picture people who are working at that very minute, and I wonder just what Alice Joyce is doing and what parts are being played by the people of the Western companies. I think it’s wonderful, the bigness of it all.” I admitted it was wonderful and was sorry Mary happened to glance at the clock just then, as it reminded her that it was about time for the next scene.

“Maybe I’ll see you in Chicago this winter,” she said, slipping a long coat over her dishabille. “I’m going to play there for a month, you know.”

“Everybody ready?” called Mr. Dawley. I wasn’t going to stay for the dormitory scene, so said good-bye to Mary outside her dressing room door. With a handshake and a smile, Mary joined the groups of white-robed figures that came from the various dressing rooms and I returned to my hotel feeling much the richer by virtue of having met “little Mary,” received two of her very latest photographs and known the fascination of Mary’s “love-me” smile which makes everybody do just that.”

—

Wisconsin Association Organized

About fifty exhibitors of the State of Wisconsin met in the colonial room of the Plankinton House in the city of Milwaukee on August 31 for the purpose of receiving a report of its delegates to the New York convention. After hearing the report of Charles H. Phillips, national president of the International Motion Picture Association, corroborated by W. J. Sweeney, national director of the International Motion Picture Association, and other delegates to the New York convention, the manly action of the Wisconsin delegates was unanimously ratified, and the International Motion Picture Association of Wisconsin was immediately organized by the election of the following officers: Roy Cummings, of Madison, president; B. K. Fischer, of Milwaukee, national director; Henry Trinz, of Milwaukee, first vice-president; A. F. Baum, of Manitowoc, second vice-president; George Frellson, of Waukesha, secretary; Frank Cooke, of Milwaukee, treasurer.

The meeting was enthusiastic and a great deal was accomplished owing to the interest taken by the members present, due principally to the fact that the delegates to the national convention took the manly stand against the gag and one man rule display in the old organization.

Resolutions were passed favoring a censor by the National Board of Censorship of all pictures displayed in the motion picture theaters in the state of Wisconsin; also favoring three reels for five cents. Many other important resolutions were adopted, affecting the rights and interests of the motion picture exhibitors in the state of Wisconsin. A committee on constitution and by-laws was appointed for the purpose of drafting the constitution and by-laws for the Wisconsin Association.