There's a difference between knowing a story will be a sure hit and the laborious hatred in composing that story into a screenplay. This was writer Frances Marion's dilemma when sitting down to pen the script for Mary Pickford's "Pollyanna." First off, calling someone a 'pollyanna' is not the most complementary term, which means a person who is wildly over-optimistic and incapable of facing the reality of a bad situation.
"We (Pickford and Frances) proceeded with the dull routine of making a picture we both thought nauseating," recalled Marion. "I hated writing it, Mary hated playing it."
But when the movie version of the 1913 Eleanor Porter book and the play it was based upon was released in January 1920, "Pollyanna" became a huge hit. This was Pickford's first United Artists-produced movie, and it made well over $1 million at the box office, an astronomical amount in those days. The national censor board and the clergy loved its wholesome message. In one memorable showing in Hartford, CT, the promotional tour of the 'glad' film garnered over one thousand children and six crippled dogs in the audience during a special matinee.
The downside for the actress, however, was because of its enormous financial success, Pickford was exiled to playing 12-year-old orphaned children for the next six years, despite being in her late 20s and aging every day. The motion picture proved to be the actress's defining picture, one that even today's movie buffs, if they had to name one film of hers, automatically recite "Pollyanna."
The story was reprised in 1960 as a Hayley Mills/Walt Disney vehicle as well as a 2003 made-for-TV version. The 1920 movies was nominated by the American Film Institute as in its 100 Most Cheerful Movies Ever Made.
