I don't feel qualified to comment much on that--obviously there's something going on but I don't know exactly what or what the legal complexities were--but while I don't think they all were there seem to have been a few around 16 or so, and several of them were just barely legal or out of their teens.
I'm guessing that it probably is a factor, whether it influenced how he worked or how society did, but it's one of those things I think is difficult to pin down. Surely, however, repeated failed marriages with much younger women hint at something. The film tries to posit that it has something to do with his losing a girl he was seeing at a more appropriate age, Humbert Humbert style, which I'm sure was an armchair analysis by someone but might just be an excuse to soften for film his attraction to teenage girls. I haven't read anything yet, incidentally, that hints at pedophilia, but rather ephebophilia. Which maybe wasn't perceived as quite as icky as we do today. And I think it's still true that in some countries/states, the age at which a person can marry can actually be lower than the age at which they're considered an adult. But I really don't know.
As to the whole Mary Pickford jailbait bit, I seriously believe they threw that in for irony. Pickford made her entire career on playing prepubescent girls on screen.
Oh, I didn't miss that and I'm absolutely sure it was. My point, though is that regardless of the societal/legal allowances or changes, there does seem to be a pattern. Even if he was difficult to live with, it probably means something that he continually sought out very young women. Not something pathological, perhaps, but like any other preference I think you can ask what it signifies in their psychology. (Whether you can answer that is another question.)
I had that thought, too, about wanting/needing someone more impressionable. And it is indeed interesting that Pickford kept playing those roles as long as she could. I wish I could tease out all the cultural signifiers and mores and better understand the whole thing!
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Oh, I didn't miss that and I'm absolutely sure it was. My point, though is that regardless of the societal/legal allowances or changes, there does seem to be a pattern. Even if he was difficult to live with, it probably means something that he continually sought out very young women. Not something pathological, perhaps, but like any other preference I think you can ask what it signifies in their psychology. (Whether you can answer that is another question.)
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