04/07/2025
I hope you had a wonderful and safe 4th of July. Going through some of our Mary Pickford files, is her speech she wrote for a dinner in her honor at the Mayflower Hotel on March 31, 1953. It had marked her 35th anniversary when she embarked on a cross-country campaign during World War I to promote the sale of Liberty Bonds. She was on a similar campaign at the time of this dinner. A speech that she gave 72 years ago, can be said the same today. Here are some excerpts from this long speech.
“…A good many kind people helped me along the way, but none of them has wings or a magic wand. There was a woman with magic powers in my life, but she carries a torch. There is a statue of her in New York harbor.”
“Coming from Canada, we were not, of course, fleeing from tyranny or oppression. All the Goddess of Liberty had to offer me was opportunity.”
“I can only do my best to repay part of my debt by working to preserve and strengthen this country as every good citizen should.”
“In this country, our success stories are different. For this is still a great land of opportunity, even if the worthy do not always succeed.”
“No Cinderella has yet been nominated for President, but there are a few positions of power to which American women cannot win their way. As for Aladdin, in this country he would not find an old magic lamp; he would invent a new kind of lamp as Edison did.
“We take our freedom and our opportunities for betterment so much for granted that most of us appreciate them only when we face threat of losing them. Some Americans haven’t yet faced up to the fact that we could lose our freedoms and material blessings, if not our lives, to a sinister force of godless men who envy us, and plot and wait for us to weaken. Freedom is not something we get free. It must be paid for.