Secrets on AllMovie

Silent screen legend Mary Pickford makes her final movie appearance in Secrets, adapted from the play by Rudolph Besier and Mary Edgerton. Edgerton plays a 19th century New England belle who accompanies her husband Leslie Howard to the wilds of California. Pickford's first baby is killed when her cabin is besieged by desperadoes. Howard's reaction to the tragedy is to play around with other women, but Pickford stands steadfastly by her husband for the next half-century. The film ends with an aged Pickford surrounded by her grown children in her luxurious mansion, prattling on about secret joys, secret sorrows, lovely secrets and dreadful secrets. Evidently this film was released in secret, for it failed at the box office and convinced Ms. Pickford (who produced the picture) that her starring days were over. Previously filmed as a Norma Talmadge starrer in 1924, Secrets seemed antiquated in the 1930s, but Mary Pickford's scenes with her dead baby proved that her great talent was undiminished.