MARY PICKFORD, MONEYMAKER.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 February 1920, Page 12

MARY PICKFORD, MONEYMAKER.

HER SHREWD BARGAINS. Writing in the London Daily Express of the celebrated moving picture actress, Mary Pickford, Langford North says:— I have seen this great little lady a score of times, but I have never penetrated the sceret of her artifice. Never in life or on the "movies" was such a natural girl as this, with her innocent, exquisite face, her slow, dazzling smile, her big lucent eyes, her tender gravity, her quick gaiety, her melting pathos, her winsome air of being queen of all the roses and lilies in the world's garden of girlhood. , Will ii shock her admirers to know that Mary Pickford is the cutest little business women in two continents, that her sole aim in life is to accumulate by her art as much of the root of all evil as her dainty hands can pick; that sh» is the hardest of shrewd bargainers and the most cautious of investors? Here is the story of her life at first hand. It may help to reveal why she looks like an angel and thinks like a money-lender who is dissatisfied with the meagreness of his first £1,000,000. Mary is earning a bare £300,000 a year now, and is still desirous of bettering herself. The best known, best loved, best paid girl in the world to-day began life in a factory at Chatham, Ontario. Mary was Gladys then—Gladys Smith. The stage names came later. At Chatham there was a cinema centre, and the child from the factory spent every leisure minute there, till she was as well-known as the permanent pianist. She gave imitations before her mother and the family friends of things she saw on the films. Those impersonations were quite wonderful, as may be imagined, and the manager of the Chatham cinema was not long in giving her a chance. Mary (no one has any use for the Gladys now) made good from the word go. Canadians are quicker spenders than Englishmen for good investments, and in a little while the new prodigy was making £IOOO a week. She did not get vain-glorious or extravagant. She had her lunch every day in a cheap little vestaurant off Broadway. It was a restaurant frequented by film artists, but they paid no attention to Mary Pickford, although they knew perfectly well who she was and what kudos and dollars she was'making, and she paid no attention to them. An enterprising American manager, Sam Shannon, asked her how much she would require to appear in "Odds and End*," Her telegraphed reply was a model of keen-edged terseness:—"Mary Pickford wottW ponsider £2OOO a week. Salary for her mrwna.l staff. Maoa^er

to provide all costumes and guarantee i fifty-two weeks; £40,000 to be depositled as guarantee of good faith." In her I early twenties Mary Pickford is empress of the cinema world, a world greater than that conquered by Caesar or Napoleon. In remote Burma, on the verge of the African jungles, away in mysterious unknown China, she sways her millions of subjects. She is proud of this, but she is just as proud of swinging her millions of dollars. I am told that Mary Pickford has not a cent involved in cinema properties outside her own immediate orbit, and that all her capital is in New York bonds. It has been hinted that she is a stiff bargainer. She is so insistent on having her due monetary rights that she fights for them tootli and nail, and in the event, of coming across a harder negotiator than herself she complains that she is being robbed. It has been rumored from time to time that Mary Pickford is leaving the cinema stage. Possibly she is concentrating on a fortune that will cover a long life of leisure and luxury. It is difficult to imagine, however, that such a vivid and terrific worker and financier will ever contentedly seek a garden and eat lotuses with expensive gold tips.