Abandoned at birth in a trash can wrapped in newspaper, Judy Abbott (Mary Pickford) is placed into the John Grier Home, a joyless orphanage run like a prison camp, where punishment is a slap to the head and fingers placed on hot stoves.

Injecting some social commentary into his comic melodrama, director Marshall "Mickey" Neilan (who also appears in the drama) shows life's cruel circumstances by contrasting Judy's motherless plight with that of the spoiled, snobbish Angelina Wyckoff (Fay Lemport) whose mother is one of the members of the board of trustees which visits the orphanage every Wednesday.

Despite her grim lot, the resilient, loving Judy mothers the other lonely children, even caring for one sick baby who dies in her arms in one of the film's many heart-wrenching scenes. Through the kindness of one of the trustees, Mr. Smith, who wants to remain anonymous, Judy is given a scholarship to college where she thrives among the pampered daughters of the aristocracy who come to love Judy's charming spirit. The male sex is equally enticed by Judy, who manages to turn the heads of her roommate’s handsome, older uncle Jarvis Pendleton (Mahlon Hamilton) and the hopelessly smitten but immature Princeton boy Jimmy McBride (director Neilan). But the closer Judy gets to choosing a husband, the more anxious she becomes at revealing the shame of her foundling status.

Pickford shows a remarkable range in Daddy-Long-Legs (1919), opening the film as a believable 12-year-old (though the actress was 26 at the time) and finishing it as a successful adult novelist, who is just as believable. Pickford can also be credited with going a long way to making the film's extremes of comedy and pathos work. The bursts of comedy in the film are especially indebted to Pickford's often overlooked skills as a comedienne, such as the scene where she leads the other orphanage inmates on a hunger strike to protest their constant diet of prunes, and another scene where she and a younger boy become humorously, accidentally sloppy drunk on apple jack.

Pickford had just established herself as an independent producer after 5 1/2 years with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players, and made Daddy-Long-Legs her first project -- to be distributed by First National. Pickford helped write the script along with Agnes Christine Johnston from Jean Webster's 1912 coming-of-age children’s book. By some accounts, Pickford was also called upon to lend a hand in directing Daddy-Long-Legs when director Neilan was too soused to show up for work (his drinking problem was well known within the film business).

Judy's orphan is just one in a long line of Pickford heroines renowned for their spunky, perpetually chin-up optimism despite all odds. In fact, Pickford’s mother Charlotte purchased the rights for Daddy-Long-Legs at the same time she acquired story rights for another definitive tale of an orphan girl surrounded by vinegary adults, Eleanor H. Porter's best-selling 1912 novel, Pollyanna.

It is an irony of the willful but childlike, guileless personas that Pickford often played that the real Pickford was an impressively talented and shrewd businesswoman who took control of her career and profited hugely from her business acumen. Zukor once said of Pickford, "I am convinced Mary could have risen to the top in United States Steel if she had decided to be a Carnegie instead of a movie star."

And despite Zukor's predictions that Pickford would be financially humiliated by her first independent production, Daddy-Long-Legs was a huge hit, grossing $1.3 million and delighting critics. Photoplay enthused "Take your grandma, your girl, your four-year-old, your mother, your minister or your (late) bar-tender; it is an hour and a half of perfect enjoyment for all."

Director: Marshall Neilan
Producer: Mary Pickford
Screenplay: Agnes Johnson, from a book by Jean Webster
Cinematography: Charles Rosher
Cast: Mary Pickford (Judy Abbott), Milla Davenport (Miss Lippett), Percy Haswell (Miss Pritchard), Fay Lemport (Angelina Wyckoff), Mahlon Hamilton (Jarvis Pendleton), Lillian Langdon (Mrs. Pendleton), Betty Bouton (Julia Pendleton), Audrey Chapman (Sallie McBride).
BW-85m.

by Felicia Feaster