User Reviews

This movie was released the same year as the Oscar winning British film Cavalcade. I've seen them both, and yet Cavalcade was more celebrated then - and now - than "Secrets", even though Secrets is similar to Cavalcade in many ways. Secrets tells the story of a couple through 50 years from their secret courtship in New England and elopement, to their days building up a farm in California, through the husband's rise in politics and then their old age. It really is strongly structured into three acts, but that neither adds to nor subtracts from the film. I thought Mary Pickford still seemed young enough to play the youthful part at this point, and Leslie Howard gave a strong performance as her husband.

Even though this film was well acted, ably directed by Frank Borzage, and had an interesting storyline, it failed at the box office. Perhaps it was just not what Depression era audiences wanted, or perhaps Pickford fans still couldn't get used to Mary in talking roles. At any rate, because Pickford financed her own films, this hit her hard financially. She had started making this film in 1930, stopped production, and then started over, finishing three years later. Thus, this was Mary Pickford's last film, although she remained active behind the scenes as a producer for many years.

If you like films like "Cavalcade" or "Giant" that tell epic stories of families over time, you should like this one. It does show that Mary Pickford did very well understand how to take on a talking film role.

This in 1933 was Mary Pickford's last movie though she would not have known it at the time. Historically this is a particularly special movie for Mary's personal life.

Mary used this movie to make a statement to her husband Doublas Fairbanks (they were separated at this time and seemingly finished as the intense and deeply passionate couple they were). She at this time was telling Douglas Fairbanks she could forgive his meanderings and in fact the tenor of the whole movie is also about these sorts of choices.Mary was in fact seemingly desperate to get back together with Douglas. I think Mary chose this movie because it spoke to her current marital problems with Fairbanks.

Douglas Fairbanks responded to Mary in his last movie in 1934 - appropriately in the role of Don Juan in 'The Private Life of Don Juan'. His response - that he was tired, he needed to rest and to sleep. In real life Douglas Fairbanks in the end couldn't get Mary Pickford out of his heart and made a number of attempts to restart their relationships, but Mary had hardened her heart. And when eventually Mary did relent and decided she couldn't live without Douglas she was a few hours too late. Fairbanks in the end gave up, resolved himself that Mary wouldn't come back and booked himself on an overseas cruise. Mary sent him a message but it was too late, he had already left. And thus it was one of the great and passionate relationships of Hollywood finally died. It should not be under estimated how much these two loved each other. It was something neither got over for the rest of their lives.

Secrets was an odd movie that apart from the message it directed at Douglas Fairbanks certainly show cased some of Mary's great skill at comedy and at evoking an emotional response from the audience not to mention the last we got to see some her acting habits that created an attachment between her and the viewer. Mary's acting has always been effortless, always natural with a natural tempo. A study of her movies through the years is a revelation. Lillian Gish always thought Pickford the greatest of all actors.

Right from the beginning in 1909 Mary Pickford worked out and stated clearly many times that Stage Acting was NOT the way to act in moving pictures. Pickford pioneered method acting and the skill of silent acting, inventing a new type of acting for film, - where very subtle movements, gestures facial use and so forth had to be used to tell a story and engender emotion. She became the greatest and most skillful silent actor of all time. Revealing also are around 24 newspaper interviews she gave during her early and mid career that showed, that even the very young Mary Pickford made a very careful study of acting for the silver screen and her development of method acting. Even the teenage Pickford took the job extremely seriously.

Another thing people viewing this movie must remember about 1933. Sound was still new to film and the film technology for it still very young and the means of recording actors still in it's development stage, sound quality was not very good. In Mary's movie Coquette, her first talkie, sound microphones were stationary. Actors couldn't speak until they were in proper range of the microphone which created all sorts of problems and curiosities in the earliest talkies. They would speak their line, remain silent until the moved to the next designated spot where a fixed mike was and speak their lines and so on. Mary's other talkie Kiki wasn't a success at the time, though now it is thoroughly entertaining and in some parts great fun and one of the funniest comedic dance scenes you will run across in movies.

The success of Mary Pickford's talkie movies wasn't about Mary but what the public wanted Mary to do. She went in to totally different and unfamiliar roles. But one has to understand what was going on in Mary's life at this very time. She lost her deepest love and closest friend, her mother, which caused her to cut her hair for the first time every - totally changing her image and to reassess her life. She was devastated. Her other family members sister and brother were also in great troubles through alcoholism and sickness and of course she was having trouble with her husband. On top of this her studio UA needed to put out movies to make some money, this being the Great Depression, and Chaplin wasn't pulling his weight at the time. Pickford was under huge emotional, family and business pressures at this time.

Pickford never decided to make this her last movie - it just turned out that way as other business and family pressures kept her too busy and eventually she thought not to bother with it anymore - wrongly thinking that her popularity had gone past its use by date.

In this movie the comedic undressing scene bespeaks the effortless grace, timing and organizational skill of Pickford. The death of the baby silent scene fittingly gives us one last glimpse of the great actress.

It was a pity that Pickford never returned, she still had much to give and all the skill in the world to apply. Her acting was as good as anybody and probably would have reached its great heights again.

The main reason Mary Pickford never made movies again one feels, despite all the other reasons, is the loss of Douglas Fairbanks. If these two had reconciled, rejoined, it is inevitable their great passion and love of life would have seen Mary back in movies, instead this time being a great pioneer of the talking movies. Her career in acting spanned from the age of 5 when she traveled by train day after day, year after year, learning her trade.

Yes, it's dated now, but it has moments that are riveting by any standard. Both Mary Pickford and Leslie Howard are very good, and give the film an authenticity that is rare indeed.

Pickford goes from somewhat naive young Eastern girl to frontier housewife in convincing manner, endures the hardships, bolsters the reticent Howard, and raises her family that over the roughly 50 years, transitions to success.

Her scenes in the cabin, under attack, are not to be missed. I think her experience in silents helped her in these, because even without dialogue, she conveyed panic, terror, resolution, grief, yet determination within seconds. Not many actors could have done it.

One terrific part, is that all the costumes and armaments were original. None of the hats had the silly "cowboy roll" of later years, the gun-belts I hope made it to collections.

An odd film, but it has several terrific moments thanks to the great Mary Pickford.

She plays a sheltered New England girl who runs off with Leslie Howard rather than marry the stuffy Englishman her father has picked out for her. We see the couple trek across the country in a covered wagon and set up ranching in California, and finally we see Howard run for political office. The film covers 50 years of their lives together, all in 3 acts (as was done on the Broadway stage).

The film is uneven but Pickford gives a tremendous performance in her final film. She's very funny in the undressing scene before the elopement and she has an Oscar-worthy moment in the final scene where they are being attacked by cattle rustlers. Truly remarkable. Howard is also very good.

Co-stars include C. Aubrey Smith, Ned Sparks, Blanche Frederici, Doris Lloyd, and Mona Maris.

Pickford's talkie career was brief and not very successful despite her Oscar win for COQUETTE. But she is excellent in this film and also in KIKI.

Pickford's screen swan song is her best talkie, admittedly not a high bar, that moves at breakneck speed through its tale of the romance, marriage, struggles and ultimate success of its main couple. It crams too much into its 83 minute running time but as early sound films go it's not bad.

At 42 she's unconvincing as a young belle at the beginning of the film but after about ten minutes she's out of that guise and from then on her performance is quite good. Unsurprisingly her strongest moments, as well as the film's, are the one's without dialog. It gives a peek at why she was one of the queens of silents and it seems regretful that just as she was adjusting to sound she chose to withdraw.

The film wasn't a hit on release and Mary, nothing if not canny, sensed that though the parade had not passed her by as of yet it was just around the corner. So she retired, enormously wealthy and a power broker behind the scenes.

In director Frank Borzage's 1924 original version of this film, the character "Mary Carlton" (played by a matured Norma Talmadge) looks back on her life, and its "Secrets". For this re-make, Mary Pickford (as Mary Marlowe) is initially photographed to appear as young as possible. Later, Ms. Pickford is "aged" (although, she is photographed in soft focus throughout). So, the entire "framing" of the film - as about an old woman looking back on the "Secrets" of her life - is lost. Moreover, the movie misses an opportunity to startle audiences by opening with an "aged" Pickford.

"Secrets" is not a bad film - but, it is frustrating to look at a miscalculation, in this last career appearance for Mary Pickford. Both Pickford and Borzage should have had the storytelling wherewithal to go ahead with the "old age" framing. Borzage had success with Talmadge's version, and Pickford supported Charlotte Smith (her mother) in Thomas H. Ince's similarly structured "Sweet Memories" (1911). Without the framing, the story blindly lurches, uncomfortably, through the years.

Pickford surely knew audiences weren't responding well to her recent features, and likely made what she thought were wise decisions about the filming of "Secrets". So, it is a first class production. This shows in Pickford's selection of director Borzage, photographer Ray June, and co-star Leslie Howard (as John Carlton). Mr. June's photography is beautiful. Mr. Howard, a stage star close to Pickford's own age, is a smart choice for leading man. Ironically, Howard looks much younger than his years.

Pickford's choice of vehicle and co-star reveal her continued belief in "stage" acting as a way to succeed in talking pictures. To her portrayal, Pickford adds some of the cutesy mannerisms which came to be expected by fans, but plagued much of her later work. These factors help mar her overall performance. Yet, watch for a stand-out scene featuring Pickford and a baby, played silently, during the film's "western" portion. Pickford and Howard would never appear on film into their 70s, which makes the ending of "Secrets" a sweet farewell.

****** Secrets (3/16/33) Frank Borzage ~ Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard, Mona Maris, Allan Sears

This is an average movie as movies go and it is only the presence of the glorious Pickford and the fascinating Howard that makes it worth the while, not to mention of course the two scenes that everybody remembers, both of them by Pickford.

Others have mentioned here and elsewhere that this movie was also a vehicle for Pickford to make a statement to her estranged husband Douglas Fairbanks, and his reply in his 1934 movie is the stuff of Hollywood legend, as was their relationship.

This film is important for it being the last of Mary Pickford's many movies.

We are fortunate to have still available many of Pickford's movies, stories about her films and acting from contemporary media and colleagues and her own interviews then and later.

The extreme talent of Pickford is easily revealed by the fact that for twenty years the whole world was deeply in love with her (from China, to Russia to Australia), not just for what she was, a movie star, but for the person they thought she was through watching her movies. People were convinced that this acting Mary had to be the real Mary and that this acting Mary was a very special person indeed. It is testament to her skill that through silent films Mary could affect so many so deeply in such a way.

She was attractive, a little short and dumpy at times but never the stereotypical tall glamorous elegant type.

Mary was no fool, already a tough heavily traveled veteran of stage for 12 years by the time she came to film at the age of 17. A woman with her head screwed on tightly, deeply thoughtful and analytical and assertive. But equally as sweet and gentle and fun loving.

Mary came into early film, saw how it looked and very early transformed it into something entirely new. Her gift was not only knowing how to act and convey a message in silence but when to apply what techniques, and art in itself.

Her last movie Secrets gives a few looks at her skills though the movie itself was struggling with the new technology which badly affected its directing. Nevertheless, Mary was still the natural.

Pickford was the first and last of the greats, in fact the only real great. All learned their art from her template. She was being Chaplin before Chaplin got going, she was at times a Katherine & Audrey Hepburn, she was the sweet and gentle Lillian Gish.

Last of all she was one of the toughest businesswomen of the times, never intimidated. For two decades she was the heart of the nation.

SECRETS was the last movie Mary Pickford would appear in as an actress. In it she displays a much greater ease with the microphone than she did in her earlier talkies. Her performance is really quite superb, and should have paved the way for a long career as a character actress. She was 40 when she made this film, and it does stretch credulity a little to see her playing a virginal debutante in the early scenes - however, as the film goes on, and her character ages, she displays a tremendous range as an actress. And she's beautifully matched by Leslie Howard, who gives a very charming performance as her lover/husband.

Under the skilful direction of Frank Borzage, Mary is allowed many moments to do what a silent screen actor could do better than any other actor - express emotion without words. There is one scene, involving the death of a child, that is amongst the most moving scenes I have ever witnessed - and it is virtually a silent scene. All the emotion comes from Mary. All actors should watch this scene and learn what great screen acting is all about.

The screenplay is a little meandering, and peculiarly episodic. Based on a stage play, I get the impression that the film follows the three act play structure - First Act:light romantic comedy, Second Act:Western melodrama, Third Act:relationship drama - and finally an epilogue to tie-up all the loose ends. It's not an unentertaining structure, but it does seem a little odd. Through it all Pickford, Howard and Borzage stride with great skill, to create a memorable film, and a triumphant farewell to one of Hollywood's greatest stars.

Mary Pickford's farewell to the screen was this film Secrets which seems like a cut rate version of Cimarron with a little bit of pre-Code infidelity thrown in. Whole chunks of the film I viewed tonight seem to have been edited out unfortunately and the viewer has to piece together what is missing.

I will say that Pickford did give a good performance in her farewell film, she ages quite nicely from the young ingénue she normally plays all the way up to being a little old lady, a queen of Washington society besides.

Her leading man in Secrets is Leslie Howard, an earnest young fellow in the employ of her father C. Aubrey Smith who's arranging a marriage with a stuffy English title in a suit. Mary's got eyes only for Howard though and they elope with proper ladder and all right out from under the noses of Smith, mother Blanche Fredirici, and the empty suit title Herbert Evans.

Smith has the power to make sure Howard's name is mud in New England so Howard and Pickford go west by wagon train the way Yancey and Sabra Cravat do in Cimarron.

Leslie Howard's as much not home on the range as he was in The Petrified Forest. But he does have grit and so does she.

There's also a question of infidelity which would not have gotten by the Code in a couple of years. It reflects the real life marital problems that Pickford was having right about then with her storybook marriage to Douglas Fairbanks ending. On screen Howard is having a fling with Mona Maris and he mentions there've been others. Still Mary stands by her man, unlike in real life.

One should see Secrets for no other reason than seeing Ned Sparks in the role of sidekick to Howard. He's less home on the range than Leslie. Who'd have thought both their screen credits would include a western or semi-western as the case may be.

The way the musical score was played during the film it was very reminiscent of silent films. Probably something Mary Pickford arranged as she was the producer as well.

Secrets is not a great film, though the stars perform more than adequately. It was too old fashioned for public taste when it was released in 1933, let alone now.

For reasons best known to posterity this thoroughly delightful comedy-drama has been almost totally forgotten despite starring none other than Mary Pickford, (it was her last film), and a young Leslie Howard, (before he grew stiff). It was directed by the great Frank Borzage who already had two best director Oscars under his belt and it was written by Francis Marion who also had two Oscars under her belt by the time this came along. Everyone is at their best here, whether it's in the full-blown comedy of the early sequences or in the melodramatics that follow as the somewhat over-egged plot progresses. Something of an undervalued gem and a well-kept secret.

There is a certain old-fashioned charm to this strangely truncated historical epic. Running just 83 minutes, this 1933 film offers the last performance given by silent screen legend Mary Pickford, and one feels conflicted about her performance here. On one hand, she produces some poignant moments and surprising comic ones with her character - a headstrong, late-19th-century debutante named Mary Marlow intent on marrying John Carlton who heads west in a covered wagon to raise cattle. On the other, Pickford is over forty and looks it - playing first a teenager and then a young bride and mother. Gauzy lenses aside, she never quite convinces, especially since her accentuated acting style is so reflective of the silent era.

Even with revered director Frank Borzage ("Seventh Heaven") at the helm and a script co-written by Frances Marion ("Dinner at Eight", "Camille"), there is no getting around the fact that it feels like a vanity production for Pickford to present her as relevant in the sound era. By all accounts, the effort failed. The plot follows Mary and John's courtship in New England under the suspicious glare of her tyrannical father. They head west where they face cattle rustlers and a rather lugubrious shootout at their ranch with tragic consequences. The disjointed story abruptly flashes forward years later where they now have four grown children and John becomes a contender for Governor of California. A nasty senorita shows up at a formal reception threatening to expose John's infidelities – an odd plot development since we are given no hint of this character flaw before. The movie flashes forward again where John and Mary are now elderly and facing a life without obligations.

The irony with casting Pickford (whose voice bears a striking resemblance to Jean Arthur's) is that as Mary ages, she looks more physically appropriate, but she gradually loses much of the on screen vitality for which she was known. That's why the early scenes are far more entertaining even if she looks too mature for them. There is an extended, wordless scene in the cabin with her baby that does showcase why she was a fine silent screen actress. Cast against type as rowdy John, Leslie Howard comes across as much younger than Pickford even though they were almost the same age. C. Aubrey Smith ("Wee Willie Winkie") is great in the early scenes as Mary's father, while sour-voiced Ned Sparks ("Imitation of Life") shows up for typical comic relief. When the camera shows Pickford as an old lady in the Model T, there is a genuine feeling of finality to her career. The 2008 DVD is a welcome reminder of Pickford's legacy, but her earlier work will provide you with a better indication of her onscren talent.

Today ,I'm still wondering how Frank Borzage could make so many wonderful movies for so many years !Think of it!"Secrets" came after "A farewell to the arms" and just before "a man's castle" followed by "no greater glory" and "little man what now?"!And there were plenty of masterpieces in the silent era and there were so many to come afterward.Who can compete with him?I'd like to know! "Secrets" is more of the same : the lovers against the hostile world,two lovers who will "see it through for their love is true".It is composed of three parts ,apparently disparate ,but when the movie is over ,you feel it's a seamless whole ,mainly after the old folks want to be alone to share their secrets .

First part displays echoes of Romeo and Juliet ,complete with ladder ,a bourgeois family and a romantic escape;in the second part ,Borzage shows us the heroine in a less comfortable house where drama gives way to tragedy:this scene in which Mary Pickford is holding her dead child is one of these heartrending moments which abound in Borzage's canon : other examples can be found in "no greater glory" when they carry the dead little soldier home or in "the mortal storm" ,when James Stewart holds Margaret Sullavan's body or in "young America" this drawing which shows the two boys flying.The last third can seem weaker by comparison but further acquaintance shows this: Borzage had already anticipated the future and its great sagas/serials which appeared in the fifties :and he made this in about 40 minutes whereas the others would take two or three hours.

Borzage was certainly equaled,but never surpassed.

This is by far the best performance Mary Pickford gave in a talking film; in fact, it is one that needs no apologies from anyone for it. If she was a bit too old for the early scenes, well so was Leslie Howard (actually he and Pickford were the same age, but nobody seems to mention him in this respect), she still carried them off very well and, indeed, if you didn't already know she was 40 at the time from outside sources, you really would not know it while viewing the film.

The film suffers badly from a lack of continuity. All kinds of things appear to have happened at various stages of the story - most especially the husband's adultery - and we never know it until someone comes upon the scene and practically bellows it forth - but as others have said, this film is very much in the tradition of the old three-act play, where one act may not have very much to do with what comes before or after that act, especially when encompassing a half-century of story. Anyway, it does appear that an entire film might have been structured out of all the important story lines pretty much left out of this one. Still, old-fashioned or not, it holds the interest throughout, played first for comedy, then for drama and tragedy, and finally for pure sentiment, and both Pickford and Howard are perfect throughout the fifty years the story covers.

James Agee, a film critic many consider a great one (I do not, but will hypocritically reference him here when it suits my purposes) made one of his most memorable comments on acting when, in reviewing moments of John Wayne's trek across the parched desert holding a newborn baby in his arms, determined to save its life because of a promise he made to the baby's dying mother, a total stranger to him (THREE GODFATHERS, 1949), he said that you could read pages out of all the great acting manuals and never begin to describe what Wayne achieves in those moments, and that constitutes great screen acting. That came to mind immediately in the scene of the cattle rustlers' attack on the Howard/Pickford home in this film, one that results (without our realizing it at first) in the death of their infant baby. The scene of Mary finding the baby, thinking it is asleep, slowly realizing it is not breathing, sitting down drained of every emotion except grief, suddenly getting an idea and going over to get a face mirror to bring back, put in front of the baby's mouth in the hope that she is wrong and that it is still breathing, the ultimate realization that her child is indeed dead, her combination of both stoical and expressed grief, and then her placing her baby back in its crib and going through the door into the next room to help load ammunition for her husband's continuing fight against the rustlers, must be one of the greatest 'silent' acting moments in the history of the screen, and it should be shown in acting classes to demonstrate what silent acting, even in a talkie, could encompass. Just wonderful!

Secrets (1933)

** (out of 4)

Mary Pickford's final film isn't nearly as bad as its reputation but at the same times it's way too dated and I'm sure people in 1933 felt this way as well. In the film she plays a rich girl who turns her back on her father's money and an arranged marriage so that she can run off with the poor boy (Leslie Howard) she loves. The two head out West where we see the next fifty-years, which includes many highs and lows including an attempt for him to run for Governor only to have a lover come out to try and destroy the family. When you bring this film up to film buffs a big fight usually starts as to whether or not Pickford should have called it quits after this. Some will argue that her voice and acting style didn't blend well in sound pictures and others will say that she was perfect in this picture and will bring up the fact she won her Oscar for a sound movie. I'm somewhere in the middle because I feel she has some incredibly wonderful scenes here but the majority of them are during silent moments. There's a heartbreaking scene she has with her kid during a shoot out that is among the best work I've seen from her. The part of her performance that doesn't work is early on when the star, who was pushing 40, tries to act like a teen. I know American loved this but it was clearly out of style by 1933 and her voice, also trying to act younger, just doesn't work and comes off very silly. Howard is very good in his role and manages to handle the comedy as well as the drama. C. Aubrey Smith plays Pickford's rather silly father and seems to be having a great job with it and especially in one sequence where he calls Howard's character countless bad names. The biggest problem with the film is its pacing, which is extremely slow for the first hour but finally picked up in the last thirty-minutes. The original director was fired by Pickford so I'm not sure how much of this might be his fault. Another problem is that the film seems to want to be an epic but it's cut down to a rather brief 84-minutes, which means we're jumping around way too much. We go from the two of them being happily married and then cut to nearly twenty-years in the future when Pickford learns that her husband has been cheating on her. There's not too much character development and things just happen way too fast. With that said, there's still enough here to make this worth viewing as fans of Pickford and Howard will certainly want to check it out.

Just recently viewed this film and was pleasantly surprised to enjoy Mary Pickford's last film. Apparently this film was not reviewed very well in the public's eye in 1933 and this film turned into a bomb which was completely financed by Mary Picford at a great loss. This story deals with Mary Carlton, (Mary Pickford) who came from a rich family and her father was intending for her to marry a man she does not love. Mary runs off with a young man who wants to go to California named John Carlton, (Leslie Howard) and Mary gives up a soft way of living for a very hard struggle to the West and the loss of family members. This is a nice loving film with a great ending. Enjoy.

I can see how fans of Mary Pickford would appreciate "Secrets," as in some ways it's an appropriate farewell film that parallels her own career and life and is about the passing of time--a lifetime. It's not good, though, and seems rather derivative. As well as being an adaptation of a play that had already been made for the screen in 1924 by fellow silent-film star Norma Talmadge, its episodic lifespan plotting and romance of Manifest Destiny is similar to other films such as 1931 Best Picture "Cimarron." Both are turgid. Fortunately, Pickford, having somewhat embarrassed herself in the talkies beginning with her Oscar-awarded part in "Coquette" (1929), followed by "The Taming of the Shrew" (1929) and another Talmadge remake "Kiki" (1931), gives one last dignified performance here. It also helps that sound synchronization technology had improved, and that co-star Leslie Howard is more Rhett Butler than Ashley Wilkes this outing.

The film is broken into three distinct acts and an epilogue, with montages to transition between them and to represent the passing of time. The first part has the 40-years-old Pickford playing a character who is likely half her age or younger (ditto co-star Leslie Howard, but not so many seem to care about men's ages). Thankfully, Pickford manages to pull it off better than she did in "Coquette" and other late films in her career where she continued to play young parts. Moreover, Pickford fans will be used to her playing parts much younger than herself, as with the help of screenwriter Frances Marion, who also penned this adaptation, Pickford became "America's Sweetheart" with childhood roles such as in "The Poor Little Rich Girl" (1917). Moreover, the first act is my favorite because of its light and comedic treatment--a rom-com of its day. There's some cutesy flirtation between Pickford and Howard, which is partly portrayed by pantomime with a light musical score--playing to Pickford's strengths. Mary wears some ridiculously extravagant and wide hoop or elliptical Victorian-era dresses, two of which Leslie helps her get in and out of in a humorous scene. The biggest drawback of the first act, methinks, is its stereotyping of New Englanders as stuffy, with Mary running away from a forced engagement with a monocle-wearing fop, who's much like her father. Although, this does provide the film's best eye-rolling line, of "There's nothing quite so enduring to a man as a wee bit of ankle," and it sets up the film's underlying Manifest Destiny doctrine and romanticizing of the rugged West.

Things take a turn for the worse in the second act, as melodrama enters in the form of a battle with cattle rustlers, although it still features a good shootout sequence and the best shot of Mary in the film, as she walks through a burning doorway while carrying her dead baby. I wish "Secrets" had ended there. The short third act and epilogue are much worse, as the film shows Mary standing by her man as he's unfaithful and runs for public office. The other woman is a wretched movie cliché of a scorned, ambiguously-foreign Jezebel, and, given the later famous novel, it's unfortunate that she's named "Lolita." It also doesn't help that this twist of hubby's infidelities comes out of nowhere. Perhaps, much like Pickford's marriage to Douglas Fairbanks, who was also a reputed philanderer.

The Eastern penny farthing to wagons West and, eventually, to a car ride adventure plot is uninteresting, but the Western trajectory does slightly mirror Pickford's own life from the Broadway theatre and Biograph film studio in the East to founding Hollywood with the wild independent film producers (later to become the major studios) in California. Although this was her last film on screen, like her character in the last act of "Secrets," she continued to work behind the scenes, including as a producer, for the industry she helped create.