The House That Shadows Built (1928)

i88 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT “Did Adolph tell you that?” he faltered. Himself, he had never told. They passed the “low spot”; although Zukor had to juggle his finances, receipts were now flowing in. Also, Mary Pickford had begun to come into her kingdom. When as a mere child she worked for Biograph, Griffith had usually cast her for parts a little older than her age; at fourteen, she was enacting eighteen. Now, when she had reached twenty and stood ready to impersonate young love. Famous Players began to cast her as a child. It was an immediate and furious hit. A benevolent trick of nature had given her the ankles of a slim little girl. And mentally it was as though those hard early experiences had mixed up inextricably her childhood and maturity. Put her into pinafores and she was eight years old again. She stood and walked and ran and managed her head like a child; she even held her hands like a child. Presently, a French dramatic critic was calling her “the greatest ingenue in the world.” A Good Little Devil and Tess of the Storm Country, wherein her shadowself seems perhaps fifteen or sixteen, established her as a great star. Then Famous Players bought the film rights to Eleanor Gates’s play The Poor Little Rich Girl. This production carried Mary Pickford’s name and her shadow image even to the clearings by the African jungle, the atolls of the South Seas, the river settlements of China. It made her the most famous