Of this film, screenwriter Frances Marion said, "We proceeded with the dull routine of making a picture we both thought nauseating . . . I hated writing it, Mary [Mary Pickford] hated playing it."
This picture, which was Pickford's first production for United Artists Corp., was highly praised by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and by clergymen for its positive, wholesome message. One of the highlights of the elaborate promotional tour for this "glad" picture was a special screening in Hartford, CT attended by a thousand children and six crippled dogs.
The story spoofs an advertisement well known at the time for Pears Soap that showed black children being scrubbed white, resulting in Caucasian bodies beneath black heads. Pollyanna's Glad Game apparently does not extend to being glad about the skin God gave you, and she tries to bleach an African-American boy, upsetting his mother who seemed tired of then decades-old ad, and goes off to get a switch to smack Pollyanna, who runs and hides in a haystack.
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