Remembering Hollywood's First Millionairess

Note to feminists - the very first "movie star" to sign a million-dollar contract was a woman - on June 24, 1916, the Paramount Pictures film studio agreed to pay 24-year-old Mary Pickford $1.040 million. At the same time, her husband, the universally beloved actor Douglas Fairbanks, even in the early 1930s received "only" up to $300 thousand per film. Note that, despite her age, Mary, who was born in Toronto, Canada on April 8, 1892, was still playing poor orphan girls. In real life, she was a girl with an iron business acumen, who, unlike other actors (not to mention actresses), knew how to "squeeze" money out of filmmakers. Back in 1909, having debuted with Griffith, who was later recognized as one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, she managed to get him to pay her $10 a day, instead of $5 like the others.

A year later, during which she starred in more than 50 films for Griffith (silent films of 10 minutes), she moved to another film studio with a contract of $175 a week. There she starred in more than 30 films, but their quality did not satisfy her - and she managed to break the old contract through the court. The studio began to pay her $225 a week and even made her first husband, actor Owen Moore, a staff director, but in the end Pickford still returned to Griffith in 1912. whom, however, she left the following year.

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From Griffith, the actress moved on to another future film classic, Adolph Zukor, and in 1914 she played in 7 full-length films. In 1916, she was already receiving $2,000 a week from Zukor. and, most importantly, half of the box office profits - and her popularity with viewers was crazy. In 1919, Pickford revolutionized Hollywood - together with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and Griffith, she founded the United Artists company. (Recall that Hollywood was founded by people far from creativity - for example, the aforementioned Adolph Zukor started out as a furrier).

After 30, Pickford decided to move on to adult roles. However, the public did not accept them, and then the era of sound films began - and Pickford, as befits a star in her twilight years, began to be capricious. For example, she fired the cameraman, and even her friend (Pickford was also the producer of her films) just because he wanted to reshoot a scene that the actress was happy with. She completely destroyed one of the films with her participation, and the next two flopped (at least by the standards of the former Pickford) at the box office.

In 1933, she left the cinema - but remained in its history forever.

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