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Mary Pickford was a key figure in movie history, both as the first major silent-film actress and as a founder of United Artists, which made her the first major female film executive. Perhaps the first actress to convey realistic emotion on the screen, she was known as America's sweetheart from 1916 on, enchanting moviegoers with her amusing portraits of golden-haired princesses as well as her moving portrayals of sad-eyed waifs. Eileen Whitfield re-creates Pickford's life in vivid detail, from her poverty-stricken childhood in turn-of-the-century Toronto through her reign as mistress of Pickfair, the Beverly Hills estate where she and her swashbuckling husband, Douglas Fairbanks, entertained in the 1920s, to her sadly moving demise in 1979. Along the way Whitfield casts a new light on one of the most important -- but least understood -- artists in the history of American film.