Pickford, Mary, originally Gladys Mary Smith 1893-1979
US actress

Born in Toronto, Canada, she first appeared on the stage at the age of five as 'Baby Gladys', and in 1909 made her first film, The Violin Maker of Cremona, directed by D W Griffith. Her beauty and her image of unsophisticated charm soon won her the title of 'America's Sweetheart' and she played the innocent heroine in many silent films, including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Pollyanna (1920) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921). She won an Academy Award for her first talkie, Coquette (1929), and retired from the screen in 1933. She co-founded United Artists Film Corporation in 1919, the year in which she married Douglas Fairbanks, Snr, her second husband.

Bibliography: Robert Windeler, Sweetheart (1974)