Mary Pickford- Oscar Titan

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 Coquette (1929 US) It's #FemaleFilmmakerFriday and todays entry is this pre-code drama about a father who doesnt want his daughter to date a boy from the wrong side of the track. Mary Pickford stars as the daughter who was actually 30 plus years old when this was made. Pickford won a Best actress for this, her first talkie film. She did great. Actors at the time were really struggling with how to act in talkies. Pickford made it work. The others, hmmm, lets just say they tried. Although, Pickford didn't have too much creative control in this film, she was a titan in the industry and one of the founding members of the Academy. Pickford spoke about the transition from silent to talkies as being "very chaotic". So being Pickford she brought people together to help professionals talk to each other and ease the transition. Thus the Oscars were born. I can understand the chaos. The tech came out of nowhere. Audiences wanted it.  The theaters had to be refitted, studios had to be redone and people needed to learn how to manage this. Imagine if someone from WB created 3D holgraphic projection. Id want to see that. But imagine the wrench that would throw into the system. how do you capture it? How do you edit? How do you project it? Holo projectors of course. Anyway, Pickford was there being a steady, calm and enlightened voice for a fledgling industry. Pickford grew up pretty quickly after her father passed away. She was quite young but quickly became the bread winner for the whole family working in theater. I think she kept the caretaker archetype throughout her life. Remember that school group project where only one person is doing the work and the rest cruise through it. Pickford was that one person in the group project and in doing so she defined an industry in so many ways. The industry as we know it today is mostly based on her will. She was that powerful. I could literally go on for awhile about the "firsts" and the input she had. Lets just call her the OG power player.  If you would like to learn more about her there is a foundation for that. https://marypickford.org/about-mary/ Find Coquette on YouTube. 

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