Pickfair

Pickfair was the name of the mansion built to house the glamorous 1920s couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford.

In December 1919, the Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford bought a hunting lodge at 1143 Summit Drive, Beverly Hills.  The couple extensively remodelled the house as a 22 room mansion.

Fairbanks and Pickford were the celebrity couple of the 1920s.  In 1919 when they purchaser Pickfair they were not married: Pickford was still married to the silent film actor Owen Moore, divorcing him on March 2, 1920; Fairnanks had divorced his first wife, Anna beth Sully in late 1918. Fairbanks and Pickford had met in 1916 and soon embarked on an affair.

The couple lived at Pickfair until the early 1930s when Fairbanks embarked on an affair with the model and socilatie Sylvia Ashley.  After a long separation, they divorced in 1936 but Mary Pickford remained at Pickfair until her death on May 29, 1979.

During their residence, Pickfair was the most sought-after invitation in Hollywood with parties full a A List stars.  As two of the founding members of United Artists (along with Charlie Chaplin and David Grifffiths), they were at the heart of the Hollywood film industry in the 1920s. Their media profile was so considerable that they were the face of America.

There have been two Hollywood stars named Douglas Fairbanks, Douglas Fairbanks Sr and his son Douglas Fairbanks Jr.  On this page we are talking about Douglas Senior.  (Douglas Junior was his son by his first wife, not Mary Pickford.)

Fairbanks came to fame in the late 1910s as a silent movie star, working mostly in comedies.  During the 1920s, he was the swashbuckling all-action hero of films like The Mark of Zorro and The Three Musketeers.

He and Pickford starred together in one talkie, The Taming of the Shrew but it was the beginning of the end for both of their careers.  Fairbanks made his last film in 1934.

I have a very full biography about Douglas Fairbanks Sr, his life and movies, if you are interested in knowing more.

Although her name is less well-known today that Douglas Fairbanks, in the 1920s she was equally famous and the star of many silent movies like Polyanna (1920) and Rosita (1923), both of which grossed more than $1m, a very large sum for a movie in those days.

Pickford was Canadian, not American, but she loved her adopted country and it loved her right back.  During the Great War she toured America with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressley selling Liberty Bonds with great success.  Arguably she was as successful in business and fund-raising as she was as a movie star and she and Fairbanks were two of the founding directors of United Artists.  Even though she retired from acting in 1933 with the advent of talkies (and faced with the ever-present problem that actresses are most in demand when young and beautiful), she continued to produce pictures for United Artists and was a director until 1956.

After the death of Mary Pickford, in January 1998 Pickfair was sold to Meshulam Riklis and Pia Zadora. The couple demolished the old house, claiming it was dilapidated, terminte-ridden and impossible to repair. They build a new and biggger mansion on the lot. The demolition of Pickfair was references in Iggy Pop / Debbie Harry cover of the old Cole Porter / High Society song Well, Did You Evah?

Iggy: ...I hear they dismantled pickfair.
Debbie: they did.
Iggy: it wasnt elegant enough. hehe!
Debbie: yeah. probably full of termites.
Iggy: yeah.

In 2005, Pickfair was sold again, this time to UNICOM Systems Inc..

In November 2008, Pickford's heirs auctioned many of the objects from Pickfair.  In total there were more than 700 lots of fine & decorative art, furnishings, jewelry and memorabilia.  The video below is just part 1 of a series of 4 about the auction.