Helen's Blog /

Nicholas Eliopoulos – Producer/Director/Editor "Director's Statement" on Mary Pickford :

Like most of us, I never got to meet Mary Pickford. I did have the privilege of knowing and interviewing her late husband Buddy Rogers. Buddy starred in the first motion picture to ever win a "Best Picture" Oscar…William Wellman's 1927 Silent Classic Wings.

Buddy first introduced me to Mary's films and I was proud to call him my friend. If anything proves the adage "art transcends the ages", it is the film work of Mary Pickford. Watching her it is easy to forget time. We are no longer aware of the intervening decades. We just see the "Mary" that shines forever brightly through her movies. Dare we say it… we become Mary's friend as well. And even if many of us know her films, one thing we don't know is Mary Pickford's voice. Maybe we've even seen her talkies, but that’s not the personal, confiding voice –the voice of the real Mary – the one who was there as the midwife, as the muse for the birth of the American movies. It is that voice that is in our film.

You may be amazed, and I hope even delighted at her insights, wisdom and the clarity that she brings, not only to her work and the films she made, but also to her own personal life. I have to thank people like Kevin Brownlow and Professor Arthur Freedman UCLA who recorded their interviews with Ms. Pickford, no matter how poor the quality of their tape machines were at the time.In our research, we traveled to London, and dug into the BBC archives, as well as the Chaplin Foundation in Paris, and the George Eastman House in Rochester. When my other Producer, Elizabeth Wood Coldicutt, came on board and funded this project she made it possible to restore all these old recordings. We found additional rare material at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Library of Congress in Washington. And Buddy allowed us to use clips from Mary's films that she had purchased and collected in her own film Library at the Pickford Foundation. But without Elizabeth, this documentary would never be.

Also in another way this film transcends the ages because the music we hear, the commentary by Michael York, the efforts of writers, researches, archivist's and Mary's own friends who are interviewed in this documentary, all connect Mary's world with ours. We are able to bring her into our moment,our time, and in this way her story and her films haven’t ended at all. They continue…and Mary is never-ending. So welcome to you, the viewer… not to a world of yester year, not to a life that’s passed on… but welcome to this New World and this New Woman who ever creates right here and now just for us. I am also sure she'd like to meet you too!