Letters from a well-known woman: domesticity and professionalism in Mary Pickford’s ‘Daily Talks’ (1915–1917)

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn the mid-teens of the twentieth century, when cinema had just reached its status as ‘big business’, one of the silent screen’s most prolific and powerful stars, Mary Pickford, addressed her large and growing audience through a syndicated celebrity advice column, ‘Daily Talks’ (1915–1917). These columns, often in the form of ‘letters’, reveal how Pickford’s star image was in the midst of being constructed and adjusted both textually (in the columns and other print publications) and visually (in her films and photographic material in wide circulation). They also illustrate how early forms and discourses of movie star celebrity culture addressed serious matters such as gender politics in the largest sense and reflected on and conversed with social, political and economic trends in contemporary culture. As such, the discourse in ‘Daily Talks’ attempts a precarious balance between Pickford’s working-class girl origins and her successful businesswoman stature, between proto-feminist or progressive attitudes on gender and work and a peculiar a-feminist, conservative reflex, which would become increasingly at odds with her own career and private life.