2 months in one post

If there is a good thing in not having a famous blog is that you don´t feel guilty if your time is consumed by other activities and you neglect to post. "No readers, no responsability" is my motto.

The couple of months have been though. I have been reading a lot about the women wage gap and the the glass cliff effect, mostly in relation to two women that anybody should admire: Jennifer Lawrence and Ellen Pao.

And it made me angry. I explain:

Jennifer Lawrence wrote a very revered essay for a newsletter called " Lenny", by Lena Dunham. J-Law is what, 25 years old, that already won Oscar ( not for the movie she deserved to have won, but that is another issue) and is steadily building a career as a female action movie star and serious actress, all in one. A very acomplished woman. And yet she wrote that after the emails between the production team at Sony Pictures were made public , she realised that she had failed as a negotiator. She listed, among other reasons, two that tell a very sad story:

1) She felt she did not want alienate the producers by being too though, she did not want them to see her as " difficult". She wanted to be liked by them;

2) She understands that she is basically being paid for something she loves doing, which is a luxury most of mankind , and women in particular, don´t have. She felt that she better not ask to be paid the price she was worth it as she wanted to be part of a team and not be too " greedy".

Ellen Pao is a lawyer and former (key word) CEO of Reddit. She became known after she filled a gender discrimination suit against her former employer in 2012, sparking a debate on how women were being treated in Silicon Valley. During her tenure as CEO, she implemented a new hiring policy at Reddit; basically elöimating the salary negotiations form the table, as she felt this was detrimental to women, who often have very poor negotiation skills. Reasons? Mostly the ones Jennifer Lawrence gives us. She also made sure Reddit would apply more rigorous measures against bigotry and online harassment. Sounds good, right? Well, she faced such a violent blacklash and the board of directors, for reasons we can only imagine, reacted demanding results in user growth in the next 6 momths, higher than what she thought she could deliver. 

And how exactly reading about the very elitistic problems of two high profile women in 2015 made me angry? Because looking back at 1915 there was a female powerhouse called Mary Pickford who did not give a shit about not being "likeable" when sitting with producers to discuss her salaries aspirations and never doubted herself in terms of Box Office, knowing pretty well she was worth what she was being paid because she did deliver the goods. 

She was both actress and the CEO of her production company and the most powerfull woman in the movie business by age 25. Of course, she cultivated a sweet image, but the sweet part was never lacking of the sheer force of her personality. Adolph Zucker was delighted to have met such a though young woman, who would fight him with arguments and earn not only his respect, but also affection. Charlie Chaplin hated her and complained bitterly that although she was well versed in all corporate talk and could speak face to face to bankers and producers, she was not so smart: she just knew her price and made sure she got it. When her Box Office results started to show that audiences had moved on, she closed her shop so to speak, and just handled her corporate interests. She died very, very rich, but a bit bitter. But there is a lesson she taught us, modern women of 21st century and it is:

Know your price and make sure you get it, no apologies and no excuses. 

Mary Pickford-a wasted life in the limelight?

I have been always fascinated by " rags to riches" tales , so common at the dawn of the movies. Never wondered why, because I know the reason: a secret desire to have lived and experienced the making of a new medium and industry, to have shared moments of creative power and witnessed breakthroughs in first hand. But it was not to be, and I must say I am glad I live in the present. Cannot give up rock n roll, not even for a shot at the Jazz Era.

The Pickford saga, from abject poverty in Canada to worldwide stardom, is nothing short of sensational. I admit I don´t care much for her films ( or Jack Pickford´s for that matter) , but I admire the woman who, more than any other, invented acting for the screen. Her life, her choices and her drama are all to similar to of other women who fought to achieve fame and success. That she frankly thought it would last forever was her personal tragedy, also shared by so many.

Scott Eyman on his esplendid biography " America´s sweetheart" tells it all. She was born on April 8th , 1892 in Toronto to a young couple. Her father died some years later, leaving wife Charlotte, and three children behind. It seems he was an alcoholic, working on a bar of all places. "Momager" Charlotte heard of opportunities in the theater business for children and did not think twice:school out, work in. I never got the sense that Mary regretted having lost her infancy working like a dog  on the road to support her family, on the contrary: there was always a sort of pride there, the same one a child who is allowed to eat at the adult´s table for the first time would experience. Later in life she set out to get an education and to refine herself, learning french and travelling extensively, but those were interests, hobbies rather than passion. Her true and only passion was to be irreplaceable , or at least thought of as such, and the stage gave her confidence that she was, in fact, necessary.

The only time in her life, I find, that she showed a sort of devotion for the "art" of acting was when she stalked David Belasco, insisting she wanted to become " a good actress". She did not want to go and get the 5 dollars a day offer to work within the infant movie industry as her mother insisted. She was , in fact, mortified. It was a disgrace for a serious actress, as she now saw herself. But she was, once again, necessary . The future of her family, staying together, through the theatrical off season, depended on her. So she went. And sealed her-and mind you, her family´s- destiny.

Now, the whole thing of playing " little kids" did not kick off until she was a well establish entity, so to speak. She started out as a young woman, playing...young woman. However,  I strongly disagree with critics like Jeanine Basinger, who seems to favor Pickford´s portrayal of childhood  over Shirley Temple´s. Granted, the Fox movies of the 30´s were problematic even at their time ( ask Graham Greene about it) , but somehow seeing a woman in her late 20´s or 30´s in pigtails do nothing for me. We have to remember that the audiences were, in fact, pleased with the results...but putting things in perspective, they were also pleased with , err, let´s say Theda Bara as a "vampire"; Richard Barthelmess as a " yellow man" and Wallace Beery as a " swedish maid".

It seems she was so effective in playing the so called " little girls" because she was denied her childhood ( see the PBS documentary on Pickford on this) and she had a sort of "second chance" in front of the cameras. Sounds plausible. And, to be fair, as far as I know, middle-aged women gave good performances as Peter Pan. On stage. On film it is very difficult to pull it off. One thing, though, nobody can deny: Mary playing children is never a caricature of children. She is far good  actress and she respected her audience far too much to simply not give a sincere performance. The problem is, simple: she was, obviously, a very sexually charged woman, very attractive and self-pleased, qualities that do not translate well in this case. Maybe audiences were more sophisticated than I think and they did not associate the character to the  actress, but somehow I could not overlook it.

Her fate was to be the first: the first Super-Star; first CEO of her brand; she was in the first Power Couple. She even managed to be some sort of "Cougar", marrying Buddy Rogers, more than 10 years her junior. Was she happy? The simply answer was : No. As she said, she was "thankful". But this I would also like to put in perspective. Some people do not know how to age, how to let go of things. She was definitely one of those. No matter what they do, what they achieve, how they lived, there is always a bitter taste in the end.