ARCHITECTURE IN HOLLYWOOD: Pickfair

Pickfair was know around the world as the home of the First Couple of Hollywood, back in the days of silent pictures . . . Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

Maven has been fascinated with the first couple to be superstars the world over, even in Communist Russia.

So Maven has been collecting books, articles and photographs - and now www.youtube.com clips! - about Pickfair and Pickford and Fairbanks so that the time has come to share them!

For starters is an idea of how Pickfair is laid out:

PICKFAIR’S LAYOUT[1]

Ground floor

porte-cochere

red laquered front doors

entrance hall

Wild West "saloon"

First Floor

reception room

living room

dining room

breakfast nook

kitchen

screening room

sun porch

servants quarters

Second Floor

master suite and 5 guest bedrooms

Third floor attic

the Oriental Room - gifts from Doug & Mary's travels and costumes from their movies

[1] http://www.squidoo.com/pickfair

Maven has begun a new page for Pickfair and Douglas for more about them and their movies at MARY PICKFORD AND DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS

Maven has come across a interesting clip about Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and their home, Pickfair. One could call it an mini-introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1YPXFA2YwI

And brother Jack Pickford can be seen (free!) in one of Maven's favorite movies, The Bat (1925, based on a story by Maven's favorite author, Mary Roberts Rinehart*) at http://www.archive.org/details/TheBat1926.

*The book made from the movie is at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2019/2019-h/2019-h.htm. Mary Roberts Rinehart based the movie from her 1920 play which, in turn, was based on her 1908 The Circular Staircase. It can be found at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/434/434-h/434-h.htm.

The Pickfair Auction Preview:

Part One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbhnYLNjG-A

Part Two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuK97VRBxIY&feature=related

Part Three: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYK87jeAFSs&feature=related

Pickfair

Inside Pickfair

A Tour of Pickfair

Some Interiors of Pickfair

Pulicity Articles and Such

Post Pickfair History, as It Were

Mary Pickford, the Muse of the Movies

Pickfair Mansion Ghosts

MARY PICKFORD'S ACADEMY AWARDS

Mary Pickford received her first Academy Award in 1929 for Coquette when she was approximately 36.

There are three clips from Hala Pickford's www.forgetthetalkies.com to give us something of Pickford's performance:

http://www.forgetthetalkies.com/2009/10/coquette-clips.html

A clip that includes Pickford getting her honorary Oscar in 1976 is at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vXhqrbSeOE
Gene Kelley introduced the award's audience with a history of the legendary Hollywood pioneer and segued into a tape that had to have been made earlier . . . at least in part. Why earlier?!

First, Pickford was very frail of after reputedly confining herself to her bedroom for years.

Also the segment showed a traveling shot through the Pickfair gates to the port cochere into the house and upstairs to a waiting and obviously frail Mary Pickford.

She died only three years later.

For those who aren't too familiar with Pickford's third husbland, Buddy Rogers, Maven is including a link to a clip of him in a movie short from 1933. It's for Franklyn D. Roosevelt's New Deal:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn0QN5zXz9w

Charles "Buddy" Rogers lived for some twenty years after "America's Sweetheart." He and Mary had discussed his building a much smaller place on the grounds that was eventually called "Pickfair Lodge." Rogers also remarried, a lady called Beverley Ricono.

Pickford Lodge

Buddy Rogers

Buddy Rogers, Clothes Horse

Buddy Rogers

Beverly Ricono Rogers

Lottie Pickford

Maven has just come across a blog entry about Mary Pickford's sister Lottie and her daughter. Lottie's daughter had originally named Mary Pickford Rupp but later was renamed "Gwynne."

If anybody knows what happened to Gwynne, please let Maven know at theoldmoviemaven@yahoo.com,

Introducing . . . Lottie Pickford

POSTSCRIPT PICKFAIR

Part Two:

Much of the lives of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks can be seen through the home - the lodge that Fairbanks bought and then gave to Pickford as a awedding present: ARCHITECTURE IN HOLLYWOOD: Pickfair.

Ironically, the original building described as a "hunting lodge" that became Pickfair lather spawned the "Pickfair Lodge."

Pickfair Lodge was built on the corner of the Pickfair estate for Buddy Rogers after Mary Pickford died.

"Pickfair Lodge was a home built on a corner of the Pickfair grounds by Buddy Rogers after the death of Mary Pickford. This small but beautiful mansion housed many of Mary’s keepsakes until 2003, when it too went on the market. Some of its features recalled the original Pickfair, including a western bar that Buddy had fashioned from the old Pickfair bomb shelter, which was on the Pickfair Lodge section of the property."

This is from http://www.marypickford.com/faqs.html and errs. Pickford had the western bar installed off the port cochere of Pickfair as a Christmas present for her then husbland, Fairbanks.

Just don't ask Maven where they got the idea there was a bomb shelter on the grounds, much less in the house proper!

That sounds more like the misinformation that has come out of Pickfair since Meshulam Riklis and his wife, Pia Zadora, bought the house. They torn down most of Pickfair "because of termites."

Many people today think that the Pickfair they see is the original home of Fairbanks and Pickford.

Trust Maven . . . . It ain't!