Mary Pickford
Later years and death

After retiring from the screen, Pickford became an alcoholic, as her father had been. Her mother Charlotte died of breast cancer in March 1928. Her siblings, Lottie and Jack, died of alcohol-related causes in 1936 and 1933. These deaths, her divorce from Fairbanks, and the end of silent films left Pickford deeply depressed. Her relationship with her adopted children, Roxanne and Ronald, was turbulent at best. Pickford withdrew and gradually became a recluse, remaining almost entirely at Pickfair and allowing visits only from Lillian Gish, her stepson Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and a few select others. In 1955, she published her memoirs, Sunshine and Shadows. She had previously published Why Not Try God in 1934, an essay on spirituality and personal growth, My Rendezvous with Life (1935), an essay on death and her belief in an afterlife and also a novel in 1935, The Demi-Widow.

In the mid-1960s, Pickford often received visitors only by telephone, speaking to them from her bedroom. Charles "Buddy" Rogers often gave guests tours of Pickfair, including views of a genuine western bar Pickford had bought for Douglas Fairbanks, and a portrait of Pickford in the drawing room. A print of this image now hangs in the Library of Congress. When Pickford received an Academy Honorary Award in 1976, the Academy sent a TV crew to her house to record her short statement of thanks—offering the public a very rare glimpse into Pickfair Manor. Charitable events continued to be held at Pickfair, including an annual Christmas party for blind war veterans, mostly from World War I.

Pickford believed that she had ceased to be a British subject when she married Fairbanks, an American citizen, in 1920, and thus presumably had not acquired Canadian citizenship when it was first created in 1947. However, Pickford held and traveled under British and later Canadian passports which she renewed regularly at the British and Canadian consulates in Los Angeles, and she did not take out papers for American citizenship. She also owned a house in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Towards the end of her life, Pickford made arrangements with the Canadian Department of Citizenship to officially acquire Canadian citizenship because she wished to "die as a Canadian". Canadian authorities were not sure that she had ever lost her Canadian citizenship, given her passport status, but her request was approved and she officially became a Canadian citizen.

On May 29, 1979, Pickford died at a Santa Monica, California, hospital of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage she had suffered the week before. She was interred in the Garden of Memory of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Glendale, California.
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