Not that Hollywood had been the goal. When Pickford was five and still named Gladys Smith, her widowed mother Charlotte allowed a travelling theatre couple to put her on stage for a fee. The applause was great; the cash was better. Pickford was driven by success, almost frighteningly so, even in her first years as an actress. She’d stab her cheeks with a hair pin to imitate the older blushing beauties. School was out – Pickford only attended for three months – and instead learned how to read from the billboards she’d spot on the road. (She claimed a lifelong hatred of cerise, the dark-red colour of train seats.)

She’d met deMille when she performed in his play on Broadway at the age of 15. His younger brother Cecil (who capitalised the family name to make it ‘DeMille’) was another cast member. Both men would become big names in Hollywood – years after Pickford showed the doubters that it could be done. She arrived in 1910, the month before Hollywood even got its official name, as the rising star of DW Griffith’s Biograph Company.

Fan fiction

The movies were her mother’s idea. At first, Pickford had hoped Griffith would say no. But in those first days, directors were desperate for actresses, so he dragged her into his studio, painted her face black and white – “I looked like Pancho Villa,” she groaned – and ordered this teenage theatre veteran to overact. She refused, and their relationship dynamic never changed. Griffith was determined to break Pickford’s will, mocking her as “the Great Unkissed” – and she was the only actress who fought back, because she had her stage career as a safety net.