Motion picture academy partners with Mary Pickford Foundation

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Mary Pickford Foundation on Tuesday announced a multi-year partnership to promote the legacy of the silent screen superstar Mary Pickford and the silent era.

The partnership includes an annual film screening, preservation initiatives for silent films and the digitization of portions of the academy’s Pickford collection.

The partnership kicks off Sept. 11 with a 10th anniversary celebration of the academy’s Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study. The academy and the foundation will host a sold-out “Inside the Vaults” tour of the facility on Vine, as well as present the Los Angeles premiere of the Academy Film Archive’s newly restored print of the 1920 classic “The Mark of Zorro,” starring Pickford’s second husband, Douglas Fairbanks, and the rare 1912 Pickford short “The New York Hat. “

(There will be a standby line for the tour and the screening before the event.)

Pickford, who died in 1979 at the age of 87, was one of the legends of the silent era. Among her memorable films were 1917’s “Poor Little Rich Girl” and 1926’s “Sparrows.” Despite her young girl screen persona, Pickford was a shrewd businesswoman and producer. She was one of the founders in 1919 of United Artists with Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, and a founding member of the academy. She won the lead actress Oscar for 1929’s “Coquette,” for which she cut off her trademark curly locks.

Success was fleeting for her in the early era of the talkies and she quit films in 1933.

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