Two Day Magazine

5. Before Pickfair, Beverly Hills was mostly a boon-dock of dusty lots and empty wilderness. Fairbanks and Pickford entertained princes, moguls, Albert Einstein and Babe Ruth, and of course, fellow movie makers. The most popular films of the 20s flowed from Pickfair. The acting tours de force “Little Lord Fauntleroy”, “Stella Maris”, “Sparrows” by Mary; “Robin Hood”, “The Black Pirate”, and “The Three Musketeers” by swash-buckling Douglas -- part Rudy Valentino, part Walker Texas Ranger. Fairbanks was like pre-WWI America: a little embarrassed by their mongrel heritage, both wanted to flex their muscles in public; they had something to prove.

The only thing Pickfair had never given their fans was both Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood in the same feature, until he was in his forties and she in her thirties. By then, the honeymoon had been over for a long time. The floor plan of Pickfair illustrated the tension in that bedroom. Between the two canopied beds was a photo of Doug’s mother-in-law. Doug was never as important to Mary as her mother was, even after she died, at which time Mary turned for support, not to Doug, but to drink.
Doug (a staunch teetotaler) began to see Mary’s films as products not of Pickfair, but of Pickford. Doug grew jealous, just as Owen had, of Mary’s greater fame, as well as of Mary’s new co-star, Buddy Rodgers. During this tense period, Doug chose to co-star Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” with Mary – not the best choice of projects with their marriage on the rocks.

All couples who work together can take a lesson away from a tour of Pickfair. By now, Doug and Mary, both auteurs, had established very different work ethics. Mary’s films were the result of long, hard effort. Doug’s were the by-product of his playing games with his roughneck entourage. Doug goofed off on the set of “Shrew”, belittled Mary in his still-burning jealousy, and began trying to upstage her demure subtlety with his flamboyance. 

“Shrew” was the beginning of the end for them. Doug began to cheat more, and Mary, to drink more, and they divorced in 1936, both making few further films. In addition to inventing innumerable cinematic innovations, they created Silver Screen glamour as the original film-fairytale romancers, on-screen and off, and founded the institution of Hollywood Royalty. None of the princes and princesses have since received the exclusive and worldwide devotion to the King and Queen of Silent Pictures.