• ACTRESS & STUDIO EXECUTIVE
• Born Gladys Louise Smith, her father died when she was five years old, and she worked as a child actress to help support the family
• Had her Broadway debut at the age of 14, changing her name to Mary Pickford
• Convinced D.W. Griffith, head of the Biograph film company, to hire her; by the end of her first year she'd been cast in 51 Biograph movies
• Became famous after starring in Poor Little Rich Girl, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and The Little Princess
• Leveraged her popularity to obtain creative control over her films, and insisted on including her name in the credits, challenging the contemporary practice of leaving actors' names out, and therefore becoming the FIRST true movie star
• By the time she was 25 years old, she was earning $350,000 per movie -- that's more than $7.5M in today's dollars!
• Cofounded the United Artists movie studio in 1919 with Griffith, fellow movie star Charlie Chaplin, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks, becoming the MOST POWERFUL woman in the industry
• Earned her first Academy Award in the 1929 talkie, Coquette
• Helped with the war effort during World War I by selling $18 billion in Liberty Bonds
• Cofounded the Motion Picture Relief Fund (now the Motion Picture & Television Fund), whose mission is to "support the entertainment community in living and aging well, with dignity and purpose, and in helping each other in times of need"
• Established the Mary Pickford Foundation, which preserves old films and memorabilia, provides scholarships for students in industry-related fields, and donates to organizations that support the elderly
• The International Press Academy created the Mary Pickford Award in 1996 in her memory, which honors "a lifetime of achievement, and is the IPA's most prestigious honor"

Bibliography: Drachman, Virginia G. Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Print.
Shen, Ann. Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2016. Print.
Whitfield, Eileen. "Pickford, Mary." The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, 2008, 457.
International Press Academy. Mary Pickford Award. http://www.pressacademy.com/mary-pickford-special-achievement-award/
Mary Pickford Foundation. About the Foundation. https://marypickford.org/mary-pickford-foundation/about-the-foundation/
Motion Picture & Television Fund. About MPTF. https://www.mptf.com/about/

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