One of many "Baby Gladys" buttons. This one for the Valentine Co.

Gladys in the "Silver King".

One by one she carefully placed each of the toy wooden blocks in place. She had been instructed to sit in place on stage and remain quiet as she played with the blocks. Instead she reached for the toy horse she had been given and ran it through the blocks, making a terrific noise. Just a few feet away her fellow actors were startled, breaking character. The audience roared with laughter. Even then little Gladys Smith was stealing the show. She was six years old when she made her stage debut at the Princess Theater in Toronto in a play as part of the Cummings Stock Company called "The Silver King". She played two parts, the first a "villanous little girl" who was mean to the lead character's daughter Cissy Denver, whose one line of dialogue and Gladys' first spoken words on the stage were "Don't speak to her girls, her father killed a man!", whereupon she would stamp her feet.

The latter was a non-speaking role as Ned Denver, the hero's small son in which she was to set nonchanlantly as mentioned above while the actors playing her father and mother were speaking. After the play, the stage manager went to Gladys and commented on how clever she was to get the audiences attention. "You were a very smart little girl to think of that piece of business", he told her. "Thank you sir", Gladys replied. "You created the biggest laugh of the night." "Thank you sir", she repeated to him. The he began to berate her. "But don't ever steal a scene away from a fellow actor again!" "Oh I would never do that sir!". He continued, "As long as you stay in the theater you must never draw attention away from the main action". "Yes sir", came her apologetic reply. But he was nonetheless impressed by her mischeivious improvisation enough to make it part of the play thereafter. It was a lecture she would never forget. Gladys was given the role of "The Littlest Girl', where she would be carried onto the stage

Gladys, "The Littlest Girl".

and passed from the arms of one actor into the lap of another. She was paid fifteen dollars a week. When her mother Charlotte read that the Valentine Stock Company was preparing for its version of "The Silver King", she immediately dressed Gladys up in her best dress and said "We're going down there to see whether they'll take you for the same parts again". But Gladys was becoming ambitious. On arriving at the theater, she asked to play the role of Cissy Denver. Undaunted by her boldness, the theater manager, Miss Anne Blanke replied, "I don't see any reason why she shouldn't." Surprised by her daughter's sudden determination and even more so by her acceptance by Miss Blanke, Charlotte responded by assuring her, "But Miss Blanke, she can't even read and its a long part." At this point, Gladys took Miss Blanke's hand and looked at her with pleading eyes. "Please lady, let me try." According to Mary, "this melted my mother" and she soon relented. "Well, there's no harm in trying but I know she can't remember a long role." In Gladys' young mind there grew a determination that she could play the part once her lines were learned. She only needed to prove it to her mother. When production ended on the play in late November of 1900, she had earned the title of "Official child actress" for the company.

As little Eva in "Uncle Tom's Cabin",1901

Shortly after the play ended, Gladys came down with a serious cough and high fever, which turned to pneumonia. The family doctor administered her back to health and although still weak from its effects, she was offered the part of "Little Eva" in "Uncle Tom's Cabin". As "Little Eva", she played the part of a young girl full of idealism and purity of thought. The play ends with the saintly Eva's dying pleas to her father that he free his slaves. Such was the scope of Gladys' early roles that relied heavily on melodrama and morality to draw attention to a great wrongdoing and somehow through righteousness and love, make it right again. With each part she was beginning to take notice of how a play was created, produced and performed. Her mother, whose reputation as a stage mother in

later years would precede her, asked, "What were you thinking about tonight darling? I didn't believe you. If you can't believe it yourself, you can't make the audience believe it." Still a little girl, Gladys found herself sourrounded by theater props, exotic looking scenery, all of which made for her a terrific playground full of toys and places to hide. It was the only time she could be a "normal little girl and have fun playing". But now she was the breadwinner whom they now relied upon to help the family survive. Money was still tight but with each performance and more important parts, Gladys began to make more money. With "The Little Red Schoolhouse", she would share the stage for the first time with her younger sister Lottie. She would play the part of Mabel Payne

In "The Little Red Schoolhouse".

with Lottie playing her boyfriend Johnny Watson. The author of the play, an American writer, Hal Reid was so taken with her portrayal that he invited the whole Smith family for roles in a new run of the play which was to tour the States later that year. In her memoirs, Mary recalls her mother selling all of their furniture in preparing for their eventual move to the States. But as the days passed they would wait in vain it seemed for Mr. Reid to send for them. As their hopes began to fade, they learned with heavy hearts that Mr. Reid had sold his play to a producer in New York, completely forgetting his promise to Gladys and her family. Now in New York, Gladys' role had been given to another child actress who would later become a lifelong friend, "a very beautiful little girl" named Lillian Gish. Lillian had been in the role until one day her guardian became sick and required immediate attention, forcing Lillian to withdraw. The producers immediatley telegraphed the Smith famly desperately in need of little Gladys, writing, "We need Gladys, only Gladys", to which her mother shrewdly responded, "If you want Gladys, you'll have to take Lottie, Jack and Mother too!". They were hired immediately at twenty dollars a week. Now in New York, the Smith's and the Gishes would board with each other in a small building on 8th Avenue and 39th Street in Manhatten. Gladys, Lillian and her sister Dorothy would while away the hours playing as their mothers worked tirelessly sewing their costumes together.

Theater ad for "The Fatal Wedding"

Still the "father" of the family, Gladys took Lillian and her sister under her wing caring for them as if they were her own siblings. Years later Lillian would tell an interviewer "There was never any question when she told us to do something, we did it." She had one of those cute little Irish tempers. She'd get mad and everybody would adore her for it." Gladys then perfromed in a series of plays including "The Child Wife", "In Convict Stripes", and "Wedded But Not Wife". For "The Fatal Wedding", Charlotte had negotiated a starring role for her daughter. Advertisements were made up with handbills and buttons circulating to attract theater-goers. Upon finding one of these Gladys began to think herself a "very important person". While inspecting a dressing room for an upcoming showing of "The Fatal Wedding", Gladys looked at the filthy room and exclaimed, "The idea of expecting me, the star, to dress in a filthy place like this. I simply won't

go on." Her mother, busy with a towel cleaning a table, turned and looked at her daughter with a stern face, "I want that speech repeated." After hearing her daughter feebly repeat it once more, Charlotte told her daughter, "I'm grateful that no one in the Company heard you. You're not the star of the Company! You're nothing but a naughty, spoiled, swell-headed little upstart." Gladys hanged her head in shame. Her mother continued, "That I should have lived to hear such a revolting speech by my own daughter! You're quite right about one thing, you are not going on tonight. You are not going on until you learn humility and behave yourself like any normal nice little child." It was another lesson she took to heart. By the age of fifteen, Gladys Smith was a veteran performer of the stage but was not satisfied. She had made up her mind that by age twenty, she would either make it to Broadway or quit the whole theater business altogether. She would take up dressmaking, working during the day and going to school at night to learn her trade. But Broadway was calling her and when she read "The Girl of the Golden West", by David Belasco was showing in a Brooklyn theater, her mind became fixed on meeting Belasco. Her first attempts at a meeting with him proved unsuccessful. She would show up promptly at the theater lobby with other hopefuls only to be sent away and told to come back the following day. Determined to have her meeting with Mr. Belasco, she burst into the lobby, finding her way up the stairway to his office only to be stopped by an office boy. "My life depends on seeing Mr. Belasco!", she pleaded. After several days of what must have been an agonizing, nerve-racking wait, she received word to meet with Mr. Belasco in the theater lobby after a performance one evening. "Whats your name?", Mr. Belasco asker her. "At home in Toronto, I'm Gladys Smith, but on the road I'm Gladys Milbourne Smith." "We'll have to find another name for you. What are the other names in your family?" She named off several before mentioning the name Pickford. "Pickford it is then. Is Gladys your only name? Have you any others?" As was her custom throughout her life, she dispensed with the hated middle name of Louise and said, "I was baptised Gladys Marie...." before she could finish, Belasco told her, "Well my little friend, from now on your name will be Mary Pickford." Thus Mary Pickford was born. The following day after an impromptu audition in which she acted out a scene before Belasco, he joined her on stage, smiled and asked, "So you want to be actress little girl?". Meeting his gaze, Mary responded with one of the most brilliant lines in all of entertainment history, "No sir. I have been an actress. I want to be a good actress now". That night, the newly christened Mary Pickford sent a letter to her mother which read, "Gladys Smith now Mary Pickford engaged by David Belasco to appear on Broadway this fall."

Ad for "The Warrens of Virginia"

As fate would again smile upon her, Belasco was searching for someone to play the role of Betty, a young daughter in "The Warrens of Virginia", written by William DeMille, brother of the famed Cecil De Mille, a then relatively unknown personality. In November of 1907, Mary Pickford made her Broadway debut in New York City.

For two years she toured with the play making thirty dollars a week. But it was while in Chicago that she discovered something that would not only change her life, but the world as she knew it. A phenomena called the "flickers".

Back to Chapter 2 Childhood

Next: Chapter 3 America's Sweetheart