Songfacts®:

• Mary Pickford was a Canadian movie star in the silent film era. This song is a tribute to the stars of this era, who in 1919 formed the independent film company United Artists. Katie Melua told the Daily Mail November 16, 2007: "I like the similarity between United Artists and my record label. Working with a small company we have stood up to the big guys, proving that an artist on an independent label can be successful around the world."
• This was written by Melua's mentor and collaborator Mike Batt, who also wrote her hit single "Nine Million Bicycles." In his native Britain, Batt is best known as the man behind the 8 hit singles recorded by The Wombles in the mid 1970s.
• Katie Melua elaborated to I Like Music how this song came to be written: "That song got written because there was a small piece of paper in a calendar that Mike had that said Mary Pickford used to eat roses because she thought that would help her remain beautiful and youthful and that inspired him and he went and did some research on her and discovered that, Mary, along with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists and, it was inspiring for him, because that idea of artists forming their own company and taking things into their own hands is something he's done; being an artist, forming a record company and signing me. So it was pretty close to our own story."