Promoting and Containing New Womanhood in the Pages of Photoplay:

The Case Of “Little Mary” Pickford and Her Mediated Alter Egos on the Cusp of the Roaring Twenties

Abstract

Actress Mary Pickford is perhaps best remembered for her silent-screen persona “Little
Mary.” But there was another important aspect to her Hollywood career that is frequently
overlooked today: Pickford’s rise to power and fame corresponded with the era of the “New
Woman” in U.S. society. This article explores the mediated construction of new
womanhood as communicated through the coverage of Pickford’s career between 1918 and
1921 in the pages of the fan magazine Photoplay. It demonstrates how Photoplay used
coverage of Pickford to promote the ideal of new womanhood until 1919, when she became
the most powerful woman in American moviemaking by co-founding United Artists with
three men. After that, at the start of the Roaring Twenties, the magazine sought to contain
new womanhood by presenting Pickford almost exclusively as a child, without continuing
to acknowledge her abilities as a savvy movie mogul and grown woman as it had regularly
done in the past—until significant changes in her personal life required another noteworthy
shift in the magazine’s coverage patterns of this star.