Original invitation from the Junior Auxiliary of the Jewish Home for the Aged for Miss Mary Pickford issued in 1939. This historic document has ornate print, has the original signature of Miss Mary Pickford and is over 74 years old.
Carmel Myers's personal life bore no resemblance to her screen persona, the wicked woman she portrayed in so many films. One publisher even refused her memoirs on the grounds that there had been no scandal in her life. In her autobiography Sunshine and Shadow, Mary Pickford relates a touching and illustrative encounter with Myers, whom she aptly describes as her "friend ... beautiful, talented, and of rare intelligence and character." Pickford made a thoughtless and intolerant remark about German Jews and their fate at Hitler's hands. Myers's calm retort was, "You must never forget that before we are Jewish or gentile, we are all human beings." Remorse for her insult motivated Mary Pickford's four decades of devotion to the Los Angeles Jewish Home for the Aged. The following is an article about Mary Pickford when she spoke at the first annual donor's luncheon of the Junior Auxiliary of the Jewish Home for the Aged (JHA) in Los Angeles. MARY PICKFORD: FROM A MOMENT OF INTOLERANCE TO A LIFETIME OF COMPASSION AUTHOR(S)Kramer, William M.; Stern, Norton B. PUB. DATE April 1981 SOURCE Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly;1981, Vol. 13 Issue 3, p274 The article focuses on an intolerant remark made by Jewish silent film actress Mary Pickford, in which she blamed wealthy Jews for the Nazi campaign against the Jews, on the grounds that they had bought up German properties at low prices after the First World War to exploit the depression in Germany. Such remark made her receptive to the invitation of Ida Mayer Cummings, a Jewish member of the film industry, to attend and to speak at the first annual donor's luncheon of the Junior Auxiliary of the Jewish Home for the Aged (JHA) in Los Angeles, California in 1939. She went to the luncheon and made it annual affair in her life. The expansion of the Boyle Heights facilities of the JHA was suggested by Pickford and was named Mary Pickford Building in 1948. History from Encyberpedia and OldCompany.com (old stock certificate research service)