The light that came - movie film screenshot

Mary Pickford was a Canadian-American actress, writer, and producer who was one of the first movie stars in the world. She was known as "America's Sweetheart" and "The Girl with the Curls" because of her signature hairstyle. Mary was born in Toronto, Canada, on April 8, 1892. Pickford began her career in the film industry at the age of nine, and over the course of her career, she appeared in more than 250 films. She co-founded the film production company United Artists with Charles Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and Douglas Fairbanks, and she was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She was also an early member of the Motion Picture Directors Association. Mary was of English and Irish descent. She began in the theater at age seven. In 1907, she adopted the family name Pickford and joined the David Belasco troupe. In 1909, she appeared in 40 movies for D.W. Griffith's American Biograph company. In 1913 she joined the Famous Players Film Company of Adolph Zukor. She then joined First National Exhibitor's Circuit in 1918. Since 1919, when she helped to establish United Artists, she worked as a producer and co-founder, with Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., who would become her second husband. Pickford retired from the screen in 1933 but continued to produce. She died in 1979.

The height of the silent movie era (the 1910s-1920s) was a period of artistic innovation. Silent film stars had to use their faces to express every emotion — a skill that was lost on most actors when talkies replaced silent movies. Several silent stars including Wallace Beery, Shearer, Laurel and Hardy, Greta Garbo, and Janet Gaynor made a successful transition to talkies.

Élisabeth Thible flew above Lyon, France in 1784. Jeanne Labrosse became the first woman to parachute. Sophie Blanchard took her first balloon flight in 1804, and was made Napoleon's chief of air service in 1811. In 1903, Aida de Acosta, an American woman vacationing in Paris piloted airship, becoming the first known woman to pilot a motorized aircraft. Katharine Wright flew the Wright Model A. Emma Lilian Todd designed her own airplanes. Her first plane flew in 1910. Georgia "Tiny" Broadwick became the first woman to jump from an aircraft in 1913. Raymonde de Laroche, was the world's first licensed female pilot. Seven other French women followed her in 1901-1902. Blanche Scott claimed to be the first American woman to fly an airplane and established herself as a daredevil pilot. Bessica Raiche recognized as the first American woman to make a solo flight. Harriet Quimby became the USA's first licensed female pilot on August 1, 1911 and the first woman to cross the English Channel by airplane the following year. Lidia Zvereva, the first female Russian license performed her first aerobatic loop in 1914. In 1913, Lyubov Golanchikova signed a contract to become the first female test pilot to test "Farman-22" manufactured in Russia. In 1916, Zhang Xiahun (Chinese: 張俠魂) China's first female pilot crashed, becoming a national heroine when she survived. Katherine Stinson became the first woman air mail pilot, when the United States Postal Service. The following year, Ruth Law flew the first official U.S. air mail to the Philippines. In 1936, Hanna Reitsch of Germany became one of the first persons to fly a fully controllable helicopter and earned the first woman helicopter pilot's license. In 1937 Sabiha Gökçen of Turkey became the first trained woman combat pilot, participating in search operations and bombing flight. In 1943 Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) were flying new planes from factories to Army Air Force bases, worked as test pilots. In 1942 Soviet Union created an all-woman combat flight unit, the 588th Night-Bomber Air-Regiment or the Night Witches. They flew harassment and precision bombing missions and "dumped 23,000 tons of bombs on the German invaders". The Soviets also had the only women to be considered flying aces like Lydia Litvyak and Yekaterina Budanova.

By 1908 there were 10,000 permanent movie theaters in the U.S. alone. For the first thirty years, movies were silent, accompanied by live musicians, sound effects, and narration. Until World War I, movie screens were dominated by French and Italian studios. During Great War, the American movie industry center, "Hollywood," became the number one in the world. By the 1920s, the U.S. was producing an average of 800 feature films annually, or 82% of the global total. Hollywood's system and its publicity method, the glamourous star system provided models for all movie industries. Efficient production organization enabled mass movie production and technical sophistication but not artistic expression. In 1915, in France, a group of filmmakers began experimenting with optical and pictorial effects as well as rhythmic editing which became known as French Impressionist Cinema. In Germany, dark, hallucinatory German Expressionism put internal states of mind onscreen and influenced the emerging horror genre. The Soviet cinema was the most radically innovative. In Spain, Luis Buñuel embraced abstract surrealism and pure aestheticism. And, just like that, at about its peak time, the silent cinema era ended in 1926-1928.