“Pollyanna”: Mary Pickford at the rivoli
Mary Pickford. The Sun, January 18, 1920, p. 44.
One hundred years ago today… Pollyanna, starring Mary Pickford, opened at the Rivoli Theater, 1620 Broadway at 49th Street.
The Rivoli, NYAgo.org reports, was designed for programs that alternated live music with cinema screenings. It was “a Greek Revival building designed by Thomas W. Lamb, first opened to the public on December 28, 1917.”
Pickford, known as “America’s Sweetheart,” was one of Hollywood’s brightest stars in 1920, belowed for her all-American personna (she was born in Canada) and for having raised war bonds during the Great War.
Pickford was also an advocate for legal rights of cinema creators; in 1919 she had founded United Artists Studios along with DW Griffiths, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks (her husband). Pollyanna was her first UA release.
The film is adapted from the 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter, who would die on May 20, 1920.
The screenplay was by Frances Marion, who wrote screenplays for over three hundred movies, some adaptations, some original works. She was the first screenwriter to win two Academy Awards, for The Big House and The Champ.
The Sun, January 18, 1920, p. 44.
The Sun puffed the Rivoli’s January 18th cinema program, which included two film shorts (one by slapstick master Mack Sennet) and a band: “Pickford jubiliates .. spectators will be glad they’re lucky to be alive at the end of it.” The redundant wording is presumably a comment on the story, a portrait of a girl who plays an eternal optimist. “Pollyanna” and “pollyannish,” have entered the US lexicon to describe a relentlessly optimistic attitude.