After 18 years on the screen, actress Mary Pickford was wrapping up the last movie where her voice would not be heard in theaters. The release of October 31,1927's "My Best Girl" marked the final silent film "America's Sweetheart" appeared. The premier of the movie, based on a Kathleen Norris novel of the same name, opened three weeks after "The Jazz Singer," cinema's first feature film with dialogue. Pickford was confident the new technology would have no affect in her career, claiming "adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo."
The irony is this Pickford-produced effort is considered one of her best films in a long career of spectacular movies. Cinematographer Charles Rosher, the actress's favorite cameraman, had been a major influence for director F. W. Murnau's "Sunrise,' just released a month before. His expertise is readily seen in "My Best Girl." He was nominated for an Academy Award for this film, along with "Sunrise," for the golden statuette.
Pickford teamed up with actor Charles 'Buddy' Rogers as Joe Grant, the son of the owner of the thriving Merrill Department Store. In "My Best Girl," Joe, using an alias, takes a job as a stock boy at the store to familiarized himself with its operation as well as to prove to his father he's capable of rising up the ranks in management. There he spots Pickford, a charming stock clerk who Joe falls for, despite his engagement to a rich socialite. The age difference in real life, Pickford's 35 and Rogers's 22 years, doesn't appear to create an anomaly in chemistry between the two on the screen. In fact, the astute viewer can detect an underlying mischievous romance developing during its production that in real life had the beginnings of a long relationship off the set.
Rogers possessed that unique screen persona that oozes of honest sincerity. Because of his personality on and off the set, the public nicknamed him "America's Boy Friend." Just a year into his film career he played opposite Clara Bow in the maga-hit and the first Academy Award's 'Outstanding Picture' "Wings." Pickford and Rogers secretly began seeing each other soon after filming wrapped up in "My Best Girl" when the actress' marriage to Douglas Fairbanks was hitting a rough patch. As soon as Pickford divorced her husband in 1936, she and Rogers married in June 1937. Despite Pickford devolving into depression and alcoholism, a family trait, when her acting career ended, Rogers faithfully stood by the reclusive Pickford until her death in 1979.
The budding romance was obvious to those inside and outside the Hollywood bubble. Pickford biographer Jeffrey Vance aptly summed up what millions of viewers sensed they were seeing at the theaters. "What makes 'My Best Girl' special is that it captures the miracle of two people falling in love with each other as their characters do. It is challenging to capture genuine emotion on a cold piece of celluloid, but falling in love is beautifully immortalized in My Best Girl."
So romantically intertwined the two were in this thoroughly breezy rom-com, the American Film Institute nominated it as one of 100 Most Passionate Movies of All-Time.
The irony is this Pickford-produced effort is considered one of her best films in a long career of spectacular movies. Cinematographer Charles Rosher, the actress's favorite cameraman, had been a major influence for director F. W. Murnau's "Sunrise,' just released a month before. His expertise is readily seen in "My Best Girl." He was nominated for an Academy Award for this film, along with "Sunrise," for the golden statuette.
Pickford teamed up with actor Charles 'Buddy' Rogers as Joe Grant, the son of the owner of the thriving Merrill Department Store. In "My Best Girl," Joe, using an alias, takes a job as a stock boy at the store to familiarized himself with its operation as well as to prove to his father he's capable of rising up the ranks in management. There he spots Pickford, a charming stock clerk who Joe falls for, despite his engagement to a rich socialite. The age difference in real life, Pickford's 35 and Rogers's 22 years, doesn't appear to create an anomaly in chemistry between the two on the screen. In fact, the astute viewer can detect an underlying mischievous romance developing during its production that in real life had the beginnings of a long relationship off the set.
Rogers possessed that unique screen persona that oozes of honest sincerity. Because of his personality on and off the set, the public nicknamed him "America's Boy Friend." Just a year into his film career he played opposite Clara Bow in the maga-hit and the first Academy Award's 'Outstanding Picture' "Wings." Pickford and Rogers secretly began seeing each other soon after filming wrapped up in "My Best Girl" when the actress' marriage to Douglas Fairbanks was hitting a rough patch. As soon as Pickford divorced her husband in 1936, she and Rogers married in June 1937. Despite Pickford devolving into depression and alcoholism, a family trait, when her acting career ended, Rogers faithfully stood by the reclusive Pickford until her death in 1979.
The budding romance was obvious to those inside and outside the Hollywood bubble. Pickford biographer Jeffrey Vance aptly summed up what millions of viewers sensed they were seeing at the theaters. "What makes 'My Best Girl' special is that it captures the miracle of two people falling in love with each other as their characters do. It is challenging to capture genuine emotion on a cold piece of celluloid, but falling in love is beautifully immortalized in My Best Girl."
So romantically intertwined the two were in this thoroughly breezy rom-com, the American Film Institute nominated it as one of 100 Most Passionate Movies of All-Time.