June 24
MILLION-DOLLAR DEAL DAY
On this day in 1916, the most lucrative movie contract to the time (and for a long time to come) was signed by actress Mary Pickford. She inked the first seven-figure Hollywood deal. Pickford would get $250,000 per film with a guaranteed minimum of $10,000 a week against half of the profits, including bonuses and the right of approval of all creative aspects of her films. It cost $1,040,000 and two years of movie making for Adolph Zukor at Paramount Pictures.
Mary Pickford was the subject of many Hollywood firsts other than this million-dollar deal. She was Hollywood’s first bankable name, commanding a star-status salary of $275 a week as early as 1911, and $500 a week in 1913 when producer B.P. Schulberg named her America’s sweetheart.
Her signature curls were the first film fashion fad. (After the million-dollar deal, she had more curls added by makeup artist George Westmore, who used hair from Big Suzy’s French Whorehouse’s ladies of the evening.)
Pickford starred in the first screen play (The New York Hat) written by now-famous playwright Anita Loos. And, along with Norma and Constance Talmadge and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary was the first to leave footprints in the cement fronting Hollywood’s Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. She was also one of the first women in Hollywood to gain control over her own movies, forming her own production company, United Artists, with Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin. Mary Pickford sold her stock in United Artists in 1956.
America’s sweetheart won her first Oscar for Coquette [1928-29]. In 1975 she received a special Academy Award recognizing her legacy to the world of film.
Not a bad deal for the former vaudeville and stage actress, who once appeared on Broadway with Cecil B. DeMille in The Warrens of Virginia for a measly $25 a week.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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