How Screen Star Mary Pickford Became The Most Powerful Woman In Hollywood

In 1919, she co-founded United Artists with movie pioneers Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks (whom she married the next year). The goal was to make and distribute their own films, and then rake in the profits. They built a big office building in Los Angeles (today it’s an Ace Hotel), and the adjacent theater — ornate, Spanish Gothic, with murals, sculptures and lobby fountains — was for showing their films.