Here's a little fun fact to start off your Friday: one of early Hollywood's brightest female stars was born in Toronto. Yep, the great Mary Pickford who helped build the American concept of movie star and transcended movie stardom by co-founding the film production company United Artists with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks was Canadian. And so this groundbreaking actress will be toasted at this year's Toronto International Film Festival by writer-director Jennifer DeLia to promote her soon-to-shoot biopic about Pickford titled The First.
The celebration will showcase some rare footage on loan from the Pickford Foundation as well as some of The First's cast, including Lily Rabe (American Horror Story) and the newly added Michael Pitt (Boardwalk Empire) as reported by Deadline. The film will chart Pickford's unlikely rise through the boys' club of Hollywood business through the creation of United Artists, which was intended as a tool to give Chaplin, Fairbanks and Pickford more power over their output. Rabe will play Pickford, while Pitt will portray her first husband silent film actor Owen Moore.
We first got word of this production last May, and at the time Jude Law was said to be in consideration for the role of Fairbanks, who was not only Pickford's business partner but also her second husband. (Scandalously, their romance began while she was still married to Moore.) However, this latest update on the project makes no mention of Law's involvement nor names another player for the part of Fairbanks. But with The First eyeing a production start date in 2013 and a great platform for big announcements at TIFF, casting confirmations on the project should come soon.
