skygiants

At least Channing Tatum is recognizably human in that scene and not A LITERAL DOG.

Unfortunately I haven't seen enough Mary Pickford or Lilian Gish films to comment, but it seems to me that Lilian Gish is a different type of silent film heroine anyway. Mary Pickford, like Nell Shipman and Helen, is often a plucky girl, but Gish tends to be a tragic heroine who dies, so I wouldn't expect her animal companions to function the same way if she has them. And of course, if she does have bird companions, that's a different aesthetic already than Shipman & Helen's dogs and horses and various other mammals.

Oh no, i'd forgotten the part where she sold her film to the lowball production company that folded, probably because it was so painful. SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR. And it's just crushing how that one little mistake basically doomed her for life: she never really got a second chance. (Yes, there was that one regional movie in the 40s that has now been lost, but that was just a blip, it didn't kickstart a second career.)