Mary Pickford: News Report of Her Death - May 29, 1979

Silent Film Icon, actress Mary Pickford, has died. She was 87 years old.

Gladys Louise Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American film actress and producer with a career spanning 50 years. She was a co-founder of the Pickford–Fairbanks Studios with Douglas Fairbanks and the United Artists studio with Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith, and she was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which presents the yearly Oscar Awards ceremony.

Pickford was known in her prime as "America's Sweetheart" and the "girl with the curls". She was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. She was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name, and was one of the most popular actresses of the 1910s and 1920s, earning the nickname "Queen of the Movies". She is credited with having defined the ingénue type in cinema.

She was awarded the second Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound film role in Coquette (1929), and she also received an Academy Honorary Award in 1976 in consideration of her contributions to American cinema. The American Film Institute ranked her as 24th in its 1999 list of greatest female stars of classic Hollywood Cinema.