Doris Lloyd

Mary Pickford’s final film, Secrets (1933) was a fitting swan song, offering Pickford’s best performance in a talking film, in a bravura role that takes her character from flirtatious girlhood through maturity and old age. It’s a much better performance than her Oscar-winning one in her first talkie Coquette (1929), which today looks hammy and stilted. Based on a popular 1922 Broadway play by Rudolph Besier and Mary Edginton, Secrets is the story of the marriage of Mary and John Carlton, played by Pickford and Leslie Howard. Mary, the headstrong daughter of a New England shipping magnate, elopes to California in the 1860s with her father’s employee. The young pioneers face many hardships both on the journey west and after their arrival, as they create a life, a family and a future together. Years later, John gets involved in politics, and some of the couple’s secrets emerge, threatening the marriage and his career.