Want to know the best Mary Pickford movies? How about the worst Mary Pickford movies? Curious about Mary Pickford box office grosses or which Mary Pickford movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Mary Pickford movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information and much more.
Mary Pickford (1892-1979) was an Canadian actress, who the American Film Institute ranked as one of the Top 50 Screen Legends of all time. Pickford is ranked as the 24th best actress, right behind #23 Carole Lombard and right before #25 Ava Gardner. Pickford’s IMDb page shows 251 acting credits from 1909-1933. This page will rank 31 Mary Pickford movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Every full length Pickford movie from 1919 to 1933 is listed in the following table. All of her short films and some of her full length movies from 1913 to 1918 were not included.
Want to know how popular Mary Pickford was back in her heyday? Combine Sandra Bullock’s box office muscle, with Meryl Streep’s acting acclaim, with Angelina Jolie’s paparazzi status and Reese Witherspoon’s girl next door persona..and you might get close to how big she was from 1910 to 1930.
Drivel part of the page: We have written hundreds of these movie pages. Not finding box office information is not unusual. Picking a movie subject, that made most of their movies, before the Oscars® even existed is rare but has happened before. What has not happened before, is getting shut out when it comes to movie reviews. That however, is what happened while researching this page. Many of the Pickford movies have not been seen by anybody in over 80 years. Way too many of her movies are considered “lost forever”. Hard to rank her movies when we are missing all three main factors in our movie ranking formula!
Mary Pickford Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort Mary Pickford movies by year the movie was made
- Sort Mary Pickford movies by co-stars of her movies
- Sort Mary Pickford movies by actual domestic box office grosses (in millions)
- Sort Mary Pickford movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Mary Pickford movies by how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and Oscar® wins each Mary Pickford movie received.
- Sort Mary Pickford movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score. UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
- Use the sort and search buttons to make this table very interactive.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Mary Pickford Table
- Twenty-two Mary Pickford movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 70.96% of her movies listed. Daddy Long Legs (1919) was her biggest box office hit.
- An average Mary Pickford movie grossed $137.20 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 24 of Mary Pickford’s movies are rated as good movies…or 77.41% of her movies. The Little Princess (1917) was her highest rated movie while Rosita (1923) was her lowest rated movie.
- One Mary Pickford movie received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 3.22% of her movies.
- One Mary Pickford movie won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 3.22% of her movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score is 40.00. 30 Mary Pickford movies scored higher that average….or 96.77% of her movies. Daddy Long Legs (1919) got the the highest UMR Movie Score while M’Liss (1918) got the lowest UMR Movie Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Mary Pickford
1. Gladys Louise Smith was born in Toronto, Canada in 1892. Stage producer David Belasco gave Mary her stage name in 1908. “Gladys” did not suit the diminutive actress, “Smith” was too common, “Marie” (her baptized middle name) was too foreign. “Marie” became “Mary”. “Pickford” was her mother’s maiden name.
2. Growing up Mary Pickford’s next door neighbor was fellow AFI Screen Legend, Lillian Gish.
3. Mary Pickford was married three times and had 2 children. She was married to Douglas Fairbanks from 1920 to 1936. Their marriage was talk of the town. Pretty much the “Brangelina” of the 1920s and 1930s. The mansion the two lived in was called Pickfair. Pickfair for a very long time was considered the 2nd most famous house in America…only the White House was more famous.
4. Mary Pickford was Joan Crawford‘s mother-in-law, while Crawford was married to Pickford’s son, Douglas Fairbanks Jr..
5. Mary Pickford’s path to fame: (1) In 1907 she won a supporting role in a Broadway play. (2) In 1909 D.W. Griffith screen-tested her for a movie, but did not give her the part. (3) Griffith, however did start using Pickford in his short films. From 1909 to 1911 they made 87 shorts together. (4) Pickford became known worldwide as the “Girl With The Curls” (4) In 1913 she started appearing in full length feature films. (5) Her 5th full length movie, 1914’s Tess of the Storm Country, was a monster hit. (6) Pickford would remain a star the rest of her life.
6. Mary Pickford nicknames: “The Girl with the Golden Hair”, “The Glad Girl”, America’s Sweetheart,
Little Mary and “Girl With The Curls”
7. Mary Pickford was the 2nd actress to receive an Academy Award®; she won the Best Actress Oscar® for 1929’s Coquette. Pickford only made 4 “talkies”…Coquette was one of those four movies.
8. Mary Pickford’s first television appearance was when she gave Cecil B. DeMille his Oscar® for 1952’s The Greatest Show On Earth. She and DeMille made two movies together in 1917.
9. Mary Pickford firsts. First star (along with husband Douglas Fairbanks) to place hand and footprints in the cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. She was the first movie actress to receive a percentage of a film’s earnings. The first artist to have her name in marquee lights.
10. Mary Pickford formed United Artists company with Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and Charles Chaplin. She had intended to have all of her films destroyed after her death, fearing that no one would care about them. She was convinced not to do this….but by the time she turned over the prints to her movies many were beyond restoration and were lost forever.
Check out Mary Pickford’s movie career compared to current and classic stars on our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page.
America Film Institutes’ Top 25 Screen Legend Actress and UMR’s Links That Rank All Of Their Movies.
Academy Award® and Oscar® are the registered trademarks of the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences. Golden Globes® are the registered trademark and service mark of the Hollywood Foreign Press.
Steve’s Mary Pickford YouTube Video
Mary Pickford has a case for being called The Greatest Female Box Office Movie Star of All time. Historically she is the highest ranked actress in the Quigley yearly polls of the most popular movie stars in the US and Canada having achieved 13 entries overall in the Quigley Top 10’s followed by Julia Roberts/Doris Day/Betty Grable and Barbra Streisand all on 10 entries each; and Liz Taylor on 9 entries.
She is often heralded as the first true female MEGA star of the cinema; and [and as Bruce illustrates above] she is one of the few silent era stars to be included in the American Film Institute’s renowned list of the 50 Greatest screen legends of all time.
Steve’s video profile of silent star Mary comprises a fine run of high quality old-world vintage collectors’ item category pictorials 99% rated by me.
Hi Bob, 2020 is nearly over and we’re still alive [Bob grins] let’s hope we make it to 2021 and see the back of this horrible year.
Thanks for the review, generous rating (ooh), info and trivia, much appreciated. Glad you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
I have to confess I haven’t seen any of her films but I have of course watched clips from her movies in various documentaries.
I think she was the prettiest of the silent screen queens but she must have been fed up with playing little girls well into her 30s. She even played little lord Fauntleroy for Lensman’s sake! She was tiny just a little bit taller than Veronica Lake. How did Peter Pan escape her? 🙂
There are no 10s from Mary’s filmography but there is one scoring 9 out of 10 – Stella Maris. Eight films scored 8 out of 10 including Sparrows, My Best Girl and Pollyanna.
Interesting, Bruce has The Little Princess as her no.1 film on the critics chart, it didn’t even make the top 10 on my chart. But we have the same films at 2 and 3.
Pickford on Douglas Fairbanks – “A little boy who never grew up.”
Pickford on Charles Chaplin – “That obstinate, suspicious, egocentric, maddening and lovable genius of a problem child.”
“I think Charlie (Chaplin) descended, I think he should never have played Hitler for instance. He could’ve gone on until he was 90 years old playing the little tramp. He personified everything that is miserable, all over the world, he was a poor little human being, but had the philosophy to overcome all of the other things that attacked him. And then when he became Hitler and a murderer and Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight I was sad about, I didn’t want to see Charlie as an old man.”
“I left the screen because I didn’t want what happened to Chaplin to happen to me. The little girl made me. I wasn’t waiting for the little girl to kill me. I’d already been pigeonholed. I know I’m an artist, and that’s not being arrogant, because talent comes from God. My career was planned, there was never anything accidental about it. It was planned, it was painful, it was purposeful. I’m not exactly satisfied, but I’m grateful.”
HI STEVE: Welcome back and thanks for your feedback on my Little Mary posts. I found your quotes from Mary very interesting especially what she said about Chaplin.
According to Brando Charlie was a disgusting human being. His son Sydney Chaplin had a supporting role in A Countess from Hong Kong directed and written by Charlie who also composed the music and starring Brando and Loren with Charlie himself in a small cameo role. Brando claims that Chaplin treated Sydney abominably taking every opportunity to humiliate his son on set in front of cast and crew.
Anyway below are stats that I have discovered for a handful of classic era Hollywood stars who were able to enter the United Kingdom box office Top 10 charts in their day. The list might be of special interest to you as a True Brit; but sorry I couldn’t extract the Manchester figures from the UK-wide ones!!!
1/Alan Ladd 9 entries 1946-1956. – No 1 in 1954
2/Bette Davis 7 entries 1942-1951
3/Deanna Durbin 6 entries 1938-1942 – No 1 in 1939
4/William Powell 4 entries 1931-1938
5/Liz Taylor 3 entries 1960-1963
6/Burt Lancaster 3 entries 1954-1957
7/Joan Crawford 2 entries 1931-1934
8/Ingrid Bergman 2 entries 1946-1947
9/Katherine Hepburn 1 entry in 1934
10/Myrna Loy 1 entry in 1948. Neighbors look on in amazement as the roof blows off the Cogerson home, lifted sky-high by the rousing cheering coming from within the house.
One takeaway from this list: Laddie walked tall in the United Kingdom in the 1940s and 1950s. Keep safe and take care.
Myrna Loy! Yay. Oh and the others were popular too I see. 😉
Thanks for posting that Bob, didn’t realise how popular Alan Ladd was. Where’s the Duke? John Wayne wasn’t big in the UK?
Surprised they’d heard of Durbin [Bob snarls] oh come on I barely knew her until I joined Bruce’s UMR.
I jest, course I knew her. She sings right?
Bob, who were the biggest home grown talent of that time? I know James Mason was huge here before he went to Hollywood. Stewart Granger? Margaret Lockwood?
HI STEVE: The selections in the list that I gave you are highly random and their source is Wikipedia. That site is neither consistent nor comprehensive in the stats that they provide even about the US/Canada box office performance of Hollywood stars never mind the popularity of those stars abroad. In short: there is no readily-identifiable information that I could see about The Duke’s overseas popularity on Wikipedia, which concentrates on his domestic box office rankings and they go into THAT subject at great length.
Leaving aside those Brits like Mason and Granger who found worldwide fame and status by going to Hollywood [though Granger’s Tinseltown heyday was short whilst Mason ultimately became an internationally recognised actor of great prestige]. In part two I list the major homegrown stars of the 1940s and 1950s according to my own recollections aided and abetted by comprehensive lists on Wikipedia.
The ones that I have listed are those whom I most associated with the British cinema as distinct from their enjoying serious Hollywood prestige though a few of them did ultimately break out of their shell usually to a limited extent, arguably the most successful in that respect being Sir Alec via Kwai’s Col Nicholson and of course [your no doubt idol] Obi-Wan!
You will see that I mention in the list Dinah Sheridan. She was the top-billed star of the classic British 1953 comedy Genevieve which made a star of Kenneth More. [I recall going to see it on Xmas Day 1954 on a double bill with Rory Calhoun’s top-notch western Dawn at Socorro. I wrote to WH about Dawn at Socorro some weeks ago but he never replied to me].
Anyway Dinah was the mother of Jeremy Hanley who was Conservative Party chairman during 1994-1995. Under direct rule here from Westminster Jeremy was the Minister of my civil service department and I used to attend official meetings with him. When chairing those meetings he would always “kick the can down the road” by saying to organisations who came to him with difficulties “I am taking views within my Department about your problem”.
The last time that I heard about him was some years ago when he was a Conservative local government Minister back at Westminster and the Evening Standard published a report of a meeting that he had just chaired and at the bottom of the report was a photo of him with written underneath it “Jeremy Hanley – taking views about the problem”! He was a very nice fellow though and apparently quite a proficient professional chess player as a sideline.
SELECTED TOP HOMEGROWN STARS OF THE BRITISH CINEMA
MALES 1940s
Michael Redgrave/Robert Newton/John Mills/Eric Portman/George Formby/Arthur Bowden Askey/Michael Wilding
FEMALES 1940s
Anna Neagle/Margaret Lockwood/Phyllis Calvert/Patricia Roc/Gracie Fields [“Our Gracie”]
MALES 1950s
Jack Hawkins/Alec Guinness/Richard Attenborough/Richard Todd/Anthony Steel/Dirk Bogarde/Kenneth More/Donald Sinden/John Gregson/Norman Wisdom/Alastair Sim/Jack Warner/Ronald Shiner/Stanley Baker and again John Mills
FEMALES 1950s
Glynis Johns/Jean Kent/Dinah Sheridan/Diana Dors/Belinda Lee/Virginia McKenna.
NOTE: as the 1950s progressed the ladies became less prominent as serious box office stars with Glynis and Virginia. Glynis was the daughter of Mervyn Johns actor. I last saw her in an episode of TV sitcom Cheers as Diane Chambers’ mother. maybe being the two biggest. Of course in the 1960s Sir Maurice [with Harry Palmer and Alfie] and Sir Sean [via Bond] brought Brit Hollywood stardom to a whole new level
“When I crossed to Hollywood among the major parts that I got was the 2nd lead in 1953’s adventure yarn Botany Bay starring Alan Ladd. It was there that I got to observe the Ladd phenomenon close-up and discovered the reason for it: he was the most athletic specimen that I have ever seen on a movie set and he could move like lightning around the set.” – James Mason.
Great posts Bob, thanks. I noticed many of the names you’ve listed did not make it big in America. I wonder if they were popular in the rest of Europe?
I read James Mason’s autobiography a month ago and he wrote that a lot of Brits were angry at him for moving to America to try his luck there. He was quite popular here in the late 40s, a matinee idol. One of the biggest hits he was in was The Wicked Lady, the critics sneered at it but I think it was the most successful film of 1946 in the UK. Both Mason and leading lady Margaret Lockwood thought it was rubbish, there you go. 🙂
Hi STEVE Thanks for the additional box office information. The last 2 movies in which I saw Margaret Lockwood were 1953’s Laughing Anne and 1955s Cast a Dark Shadow a Hitchcock-type thriller with Dirk Bogarde. Margaret sang two songs in Laughing Anne and I used to have one of them in my record collection – “The World is Mine”. Here is Wikipedia’s list of Margaret’s British box office chart entries
1943 – 7th most popular star in Britain
1944 – 6th most popular star in Britain
1945 – 3rd most popular star in Britain
1946 – 3rd most popular star in Britain
1947– 4th most popular star Britain
1948 -3rd most popular star in Britain, most popular female star in Canada
1949 – 5th most popular star in Britain
“Paul Newman must now be considered the greatest proponent of method acting Brando having made such a b***s of his career.” James Mason some time in the 1960s
The Bob, great share. these stats help explain your enduring love of Alan Ladd and Deanna Durbin as they were the U.K.’s and your silver screen idols 60+ years ago. over any American except bette davis. Myrna Loy not so much!
HI BOB
Thanks for your feedback. I am always interested in your views which you normally express in a welcome lively manner.
Take care and keep safe
Hello,
To day is my date, four comments,
Mary Pickford, i think is one the most important lady of the America screen, because she was an actress, very populaire in all over the world at a time where the movie where silent and in the main time international;
I saw a documentary when she came with her husband Douglas Fairbanks in Europe the were like a King and a Queen with so many crowd in London, in Paris and everywhere.
She was with Griffith, Chaplin and Fairbanks at the fondation of the United Artist which was something incredible at that time;
When i came in LA for the first time in my young life, it was in 95 i should like to see some place, and of course one of my first request was to see PICKFAIR , and i ask it but in two seconds my request was destroyed because Pickfair was simply destroyed and i did not understand because in Europe we try to keep all the memories.
I have to say i never saw a Pickford film except some extraits but i am interrested now because Laurent s work in silent BO america;
Bonne soirée et à bientot, desormais je finirai toujours en Francais
Pierre
Hey Pierre…..very cool….4 comments in one day….I am impressed. Good thoughts on Mary Pickford. I think it is impossible to realize how big she was in her heyday. That sounds like a good documentary to watch. Sorry Pickfair did not exist when you got there in 1995. I have not seen many Pickford movies either. You are correct…Laurent has done so excellent work on the films of the 1920s. Good stuff.
Wow do not see many people talking Pickford these days. She was the first true superstar. Really really liked this page.
Hey Levinthal…..glad you liked this page. I agree with you that she was the first superstar….and then she became an awesome business woman too. Thanks for the comment.
Fantastic! Thank you for this.
Thanks for checking out my Mary Pickford page…really glad you enjoyed it.
Stella Maris” and “Sparrows” are my top two faves…Thanks for sharing this!
Hey Bruce B. Thanks for sharing your favorites. Stella Maris is the one I want to see the most. Many consider it to be her greatest performance. Thanks for the comment.