Secrets

The last picture Mary Pickford acted in, a fairly nutty tale of pioneer homesteaders heading across America in covered wagons. Leslie Howard makes the most unlikely Westerner in movie history (but there must have been some wimps out West), and Pickford suffers all the privations of the journey and the Indian attacks just the way she always did - Victorian picture-book style. First time around, Little Mary wrote off $300,000 on the film in 1930. She started over in 1932, hiring sentimental story specialist Borzage (who had made the silent version with Norma Talmadge in 1924) to direct. It flopped, arguably because it didn't feel like a real Western. Today it's an engaging curiosity.