The Most Interesting Hollywood Biography

As this EW piece on Mary Pickford points outs, in her day she was the most famous woman in the world, arguably the most famous woman the world had ever known. However, the article only hints in a couple of sentences towards the end how ultimately tragic her life was. "She remained a fierce producer, but as an actress she was losing her clout, when she got older. Then she became a recluse."

Mary Pickford co-founded both United Artists and the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, had unparalleled wealth, fame, and personal happiness, and who, in just a few short years, lost it all (except the wealth). In rapid succession she lost her mother (with whom she was almost preternaturally close), her husband, her career, and her talent. Once it was gone, she failed at everything she tried, including adoptive parenthood. The final years of her life were lived as a sad, Howard Hughes-like recluse.

It is a fascinating portrait of a life lived that embodies the ominous warning quoted at the end of Patton, something Patton apparently never actually wrote, but would certainly have agreed with,

The conqueror rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children, robed in white, stood with him in the chariot, or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror, holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.