When KC over at Classic Movies invited me to participate in the Mary Pickford Blogathon, I had to make a shameful admission. I'd never actually seen a Mary Pickford movie. I mean, I profess a knowledge of movies and haven't seen anything by the movies' first superstar? It embarrasses me to even write this. Oh, I've known about Mary Pickford. I knew that she was one of the founders of United Artists and that she and her second husband, Douglas Fairbanks invented the Hollywood celebrity power couple. I knew that she won the second Academy Award for Best Actress (for Coquette). I "knew" that she occasionally played children and that she was "The Girl with the Curls" and that she was "America's Sweetheart." I know all of this. And it's not like I have an aversion to silent movies. Not at all. But I still hadn't seen any of her movies.
And so, head hanging so as to hide my shame, I picked one of the available films at random. The movie I wound up with was Tess of the Storm Country (1914, directed by Edwin S. Porter), in which Pickford plays the titular daughter of a fisherman whose entire community of squatters is being squeezed out of their homes by the local land baron. Finding that he has no grounds to evict them, the baron conspires with the local government to outlaw net fishing, thus depriving the squatters of their livelihood. When they turn to poaching, Tess's father is arrested. It's up to Tess to save him from prison and the gallows. Having accomplished this, she then falls into a romance with the handsomest (and richest) man in town, who is attracted to her pluck, her perseverance, and her steel. But she has to fight for her man, because, well, she's totally from the wrong side of the tracks.
Posts
