Mary Pickford – America’s Sweetheart – Just Like A Woman – The Girl With The Curls

Today is the 131st birthday of Mary Pickford, who was America’s Sweetheart in the silent movies of a distant departed world. Mary was famous as The Girl With The Curls before her name was known.

That was long before Second Wave Feminism helped bring a sexual liberation that then broke the shackles of the Hays Code, leading later to the modern culture of hardcore online pornography. And it was long before Third Wave Feminism had hit so many of us with its bitter hatreds.

In 1912, Mary Pickford starred in a movie called “Just Like A Woman” again long before Bob Dylan wrote his strangely passionate, haunting 1966 song. (It is Al Gore’s favourite Dylan song.)

“I was hungry and it was your world.” wrote Dylan – in a very different time –

and

“Nobody feels any pain
Tonight as I stand inside the rain
Ev’rybody knows
That Baby’s got new clothes
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls ……. “

Perhaps, like Dylan in 1966, we still yearn for the type of woman that Mary Pickford, The Girl With The Curls, was for America.

Lest We Forget.

We can be good.

Geoff Fox, 8th April, 2023, Down Under