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This Chapter is from Emeralds in Tinseltown: The Irish in Hollywood, written by Steve Brennan and Bernadette O'Neill, and published by Appletree Press
Owen Moore and Mary PickfordHollywoodland - part 1 of 2Most of the film outfits, frustrated by the shortcomings of artificial lighting in their cramped studios of New York or Chicago were sending out scouting parties to Los Angeles. A few had even set up permanent operations as early as 1908. The citizens of Hollywood were curious about these moving picture makers and costumed actors who would descend into their midst and vanish again, motoring back to headquarters in Los Angeles. But curiosity turned to keen interest when in 1911 a film pioneer called David Horsley came to Hollywood and stayed. Horsley leased a vacant tavern and set about making his motion pictures. Other film companies followed his lead and Hollywood, motion picture capital of the world, was born. A little more than a decade later Irish-American advertising executive John Roche would lead a posse of workers and mules into the Hollywood Hills and erect a series of fifty-foot high letters made of timber. Seen from the town below they spelt HOLLYWOODLAND. Later, the LAND portion of the sign would be taken down and one of the world’s most recognised landmarks made its bow. D.W. Griffith, impressed by what he had heard about California and its seemingly limitless sunlight and scenery, wangled permission from his bosses to transport a film unit out to Los Angeles. Moore and Pickford were to have been part of that pioneer venture, but Moore demanded a hefty salary increase if he was to move. He was quite determined in this matter. Griffith was equally as determined to refuse and it became a battle of wills. Moore’s squabble over the ten-dollar-a-day pay hike continued until the company, including Pickford, was boarding the ferry for New Jersey, the first port of call on the way to Los Angeles via Chicago on the California Limited. Moore’s bluff was called and he was left behind on that first Hollywood venture. The Biograph expedition returned from California three months later and the couple picked up the threads of their interrupted romance. But the redoubtable Mrs Charlotte Pickford was having none of it. She forbade her daughter to see Moore except on the set as work required. She barred the young Irishman from her home. Ironically, this was one of the couple’s most productive periods together as an acting team, working together in dozens of one-reeler melodramas including the romantic tales In Old Kentucky and The Peach Basket Hat. The frustration of this clandestine love affair got the better of Moore and he decided to take the initiative: he proposed marriage. When Pickford suggested that her mother might turn murderous at the prospect of having Moore as a son-in-law, he threatened to leave Biograph and New York… never to return. Faced with this ultimatum, Pickford accepted his proposal. But she thought it might be wise if mother didn’t know. They must elope; the wedding must be their secret. It was a mad plan and destined for doom.
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