![]() ![]() Before 1920, more women worked in creative and influential positions than at any other time in motion picture history. The pioneer of social consciousness in film was a woman. The first film editor to receive solo screen credit was a woman. The highest-paid director in the days of silent films was a woman. The first director to tell a story on the screen was a woman. There were several other talented women behind the screen, screenwriters as well as directors, who played an equally vital and innovative part in the silent era. ![]() As a highly successful actress and businesswoman, the well-respected Pickford became one of the most powerful women in the film community.īut she wasn’t the only one who was able to pull a few strings. By then, for quite a few years already, the foursome were considered to be the most successful creative brains in Hollywood. A decade later a superstar, she also became one of the founders of United Artists, along with husband Douglas Fairbanks, Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin, to have full control and autonomy over their own creative work. Mary Pickford was not only one of the first leading ladies of early American cinema, becoming ‘America’s Sweetheart’ during the silent era after she started appearing in films in 1909, earning $40 a week at D.W. Not only are they early Academy Award winners-Mary Pickford as Best Actress for “Coquette” (1929), one of her final films before she retired from acting, as well as an Honorary Oscar in 1976, while Frances Marion won twice out of three nominations, for Best Writing (Achievement) for “Big House” (1930) and the following year for the Best Original Story she wrote for King Vidor’s “The Champ.” However, behind the screen, they were among the most powerful and influential personalities in the very early days of the silent era who paved the way for many other women who all conquered Hollywood one way or another. What do these two prominent and legendary ladies of the screen-both Hollywood pioneers of the silent era-actress Mary Pickford (1892-1979) and screenwriter Frances Marion (1888-1973) have in common? (Photograph on top: Marvin Paige Motion Picture and Television Archive.) As it turns out, much more than meets the eye.
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