Mary Pickford, Hollywood's First Queen of The Screen (4-DVD)

I bought this box set because I was curious about "America's Sweetheart," and what made her so popular. This might not be the best collection of her films. One of them, Rebecca of Sunnybrook, (which is decent) I found on a list of her best work. But the others are a bit more obscure I believe. That said, one does get a glimpse into why Ms. Pickford was a great silent actress. She expresses emotion well and has a knack for the physical intelligence needed to make these kinds of films work.But, as for this release, the company who put this out has a lot of nerve putting a copyright warning at the beginning of the film when these films are obviously in public domain. And, as with lots of releases of public domain material, the picture quality ranges from poor to terrible. In fact, these are moments where one can tell that these DVDs are copied from video tape (probably VHS). Additionally, these are "DVD-R," or what some people call "DVD on Demand," meaning these are printed onto recordable DVDs which have a short shelf-life compared to standard pressed DVDs. Not being pressed DVDs, the price of these is a bit high.On top of the weak release quality, these films were already in bad shape to start with. Someone really needs to restore these old films. I know that takes a lot of money and effort, but it is much needed.But, I give this set 3 stars because it's good to have the opportunity to see these films even if in such poor quality. Now that I have bought them, I sort of wish I had checked YouTube first, as they might be available there (being public domain). But if not, these are worth watching, if for no other reason, to step back in time for a little while and see a snapshot of early film making.

The three DVDs in this set that play are marvelous, and I am a huge fan of Mary Pickford... However, one of the discs in this set (Heart O' The Hills) was defective and did NOT play. The DVD-R format used by these manufacturers is not very good and I've unfortunately received a handful of silent movies that never worked. Check the discs before you throw out the shipping label!

only three dvd's came with the package. It said it had four.