Mary Pickford finds her way on to the pages of chapter ten of Barefoot on the Cobbles, when Daisy visits the cinema, or picture palace. I needed a suitable film for Daisy and her friend Winnie to be watching in 1918. I was excited to realise that the first Tarzan film had recently been released and I was all set to send them off to watch that. Just in time, I discovered that this took eighteen months to reach the UK. I quickly substituted Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, which starred Canadian actress Mary Pickford. Like Daisy, I watched the film, although I had to rely on YouTube, so was deprived of the atmosphere of Torquay’s Pavilion cinema.

Mary’s real name was Gladys Louise Smith and she was born in 1892. She was one of the most famous leading ladies of the silent films of the 1910s and 1920s. Famous for her curly hair, she was known as ‘the girl with the curls’ but also as ‘America’s Sweetheart’ and ‘Queen of the Movies’. She grew up in Toronto, where her mother took in lodgers after being deserted by her alcoholic husband. One of the boarders was the stage manager at Toronto’s Princess Theatre and through him, Gladys was given small roles. In 1909 she was taken on by the Biograph Company and began churning out a film a week. By 1916 she had joined the company that was to become Paramount Pictures. Mary and her second husband, Douglas Fairbanks, were the celebrity couple of their day and when Daisy was watching her, Mary was at the height of her career. Her fame began to wane with the introduction of the ‘talkies’. Interestingly, Mary Pickford caught the Spanish flu in 1918 and as she leaves the cinema, Daisy begins to feel unwell…….

‘Winnie was impatient to see her idol, Eugene O’Brien, in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. She hurried Daisy along, anxious that the crowds had made them late. Daisy was daydreaming of having wonderful curls, like the film’s heroine, Mary Pickford. She patted her own straight hair that was caught in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. She still hadn’t plucked up the courage to have it cut short.’

Barefoot on the Cobbles will be published on 17 November 2018. More information about the novel can be found here. Copies will be available at various events in the weeks following the launch or can be pre-ordered from Blue Poppy Publishing or the author.