Author Archive: Retro

Pickford in dual role as Stella, a beloved, crippled young girl who has been brought up by adoring relatives and servants, and as Unity, a cruelly treated orphan. Dir. Charles Riesner.

Pickford in dual role as the American orphan who finds out he’s the heir to an English dukedom, and the Little Lord’s mother (!) in this classic rendering. Dir. John Cromwell.

Tough, Irish tomboy Pickford mothers her policeman father while getting into trouble with the ethnically diverse denizens of the ghetto. Dir. Charles Chaplin.

Mary attempts to bring her new sweetheart home for dinner with disasterous results.

A young girl travels west to live with her uncle during the California Gold Rush only to find that he has been killed by Indians and his identity assumed by an outlaw.

Young girl is adopted by two stern aunts to relieve her overworked mother, but her girlish ways make the austere aunts send her packing to boarding school. Dir. John Emerson.

Woman cares for nine orphans while trying to fend off starvation and kidnappers. Dir. Victor Saville.

When her mother remarries, a young Belgian girl is left behind with her nurse, but when Germany invades the country, she is sent to America to find her mother.

This film was one of Mary Pickford’s attempts to add at least a touch of maturity to her little girl characterizations. She is a Kentucky mountain girl in this romantic adventure film, and Harold Goodwin is the boy who befriends her. Sam DeGrasse was the villain. Future silent-screen idol Jack Gilbert also had a small role.