Best remembered as "America's Sweetheart," silent-film star Mary Pickford (1892-1979) was once the most famous woman in the world, a genuine American folk heroine adored by the masses for two decades. Yet today's audiences have little knowledge of the more than fifty feature films she made during her remarkable career, let alone her enormous behind-the-scenes power in early Hollywood. A pioneering independent star/producer and cofounder of United Artists with Charlie Chaplin. D. W.

Griffith, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks, Pickford exercised complete control over her films and earned the loyalty of her collaborators, who were among the best of the industry's early directors, cinematographers, and screenwriters.

Selected from the collection of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences's Margaret Herrick Library especially for this book, the rare film stills, production shots, and personal photographs - most never before published - reveal Pickford's great versatility as an actress and attest to the high quality of her productions. The text is full of entertaining anecdotes about the star and her circle, offering a window into the process of filmmaking in the silent era.