Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford was born to a Methodist father and a Catholic mother and was originally baptized in a Methodist ceremony, although I've read that her Catholic grandmother had her re-baptized in a Catholic ceremony. She was already a major star when she began an affair with Douglas Fairbanks Sr during a World War I war bonds tour. Her divorce from her first husband, Owen Moore, caused a scandal in 1920, in part because she evaded Nevada's six-month residency requirement, and it may not have been valid.

Pickford married Douglas Fairbanks on March 28, 1920. (Fairbanks's first wife divorced him in 1918 on grounds of infidelity.) Accounts differ on who married Pickford and Fairbanks; the Freedom for St Mary's timeline reports a common tradition that the marriage was officiated by Fr Neal Dodd, the founding Rector of St Mary's, while another site says it was performed "at the Glendale, Calif. home of Rev. J. Whitcomb Brougher." This is typical of the urban myth that surrounds much of the parish's history. (A Rev James Brougher Jr, a Baptist, died in 2003 at the age of 101, but this would have made him 18 years old at the time of the wedding. The officiant, if this story is true, may have been Brougher's father.)

However, during the 1920s, Pickford did sponsor at least one fundraiser for construction of the current St Mary's parish building. As of 2011, there were framed Hollywood-style glossies in the hallway leading to the St Mary's sacristy of Pickford kneeling prettily at the communion rail. These photos have her in her shorter hairstyle and probably date to about 1930, when the building was completed. By then, her film career was well into decline, and I could never quite shake the feeling that this was basically a product endorsement. Whether these photos remain in the hallway is an open question.

Pickford's commitment to Episcopalianism, if it ever existed, appears to have been uncertain. In 1933, she divorced Fairbanks. At some point, Fr Dodd apparently asked her to stop attending St Mary's. It appears that Dodd took divorce seriously and would not marry a divorced couple on screen, which also calls into question the story of him presiding at the Pickford-Fairbanks wedding. By 1934, she published a booklet, ghostwritten by Adela Rogers St Johns, Why Not Try God? endorsing Christian Science; she published another Christian Science tract in 1935.

There are other urban myths and penumbras surrounding the parish, including the story that Bishop James Pike was either confirmed (Pike's biographer says Dodd confirmed him) or married (presumably to his first wife) at St Mary of the Angels. Although Pike married Jane Alvies in Los Angeles in 1938 and attended college and law school in Los Angeles from 1932-36, Fr Kelley says he has never been able to locate any record of Pike at the parish.

Mary Pickford, though, has at least one other somewhat dodgy connection with The Episcopal Church: in 1949, Pickford formed a production company with Malcolm Boyd, then a Hollywood publicist and producer, to investigate radio and TV opportunities for her and her third husband, Buddy Rogers. Boyd, who later became an Episcopal priest, achieved his 15 minutes of fame by appearing in coffee houses and on the Today program touting his 1965 book, Are You Running With Me, Jesus?. He later became a prominent spokesman for gay causes in The Episcopal Church and passed away only in February of this year at the age of 91.