Legend of the Silver Screen: Douglas Fairbanks

Douglas Fairbanks is not a name that most people today will recognize. Neither the original, nor Doug Fairbanks Jr., who followed in his father's footsteps into the movie industry as both an actor and producer. But he is easily one of the most important and most influential movie stars of all time. He was a founding member of United Artists in 1919, and the following year effectively introduced a whole new genre of movie to the audiences of America: The swashbuckling action/adventure movie, with the magnificent The Mark of Zorro. Yeah, I'm on a theme right now. Bear with me.

Fairbanks started out as a comedic actor, but that field was full of extraordinary talents such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Still, Fairbanks, who debuted on screen in 1915, had an athletic prowess that made him stand out among his peers. He specialized in romantic comedies, rather than the highbrow slapstick (now there's a contradiction in terms) of Chaplin and Keaton. He met Mary Pickford, then the most popular actress on the planet, in 1917, and their long-standing affair (both were married to other people) was something of an open secret in the Hollywood scene. They eventually divorced their partners and married each other, and were considered Hollywood royalty among fans of the silver screen all over the world. In 1919, Pickford, Fairbanks, Chaplin, and director D.W. Griffith formed their own production studio, United Artists, in defiance of the studios that were monopolizing distribution and exhibitors across the nation.

By 1920, Fairbanks was one of the most popular actors in the world, and had starred in 29 pictures, most of them of a comic nature. But then he read Johnston McCulley's The Curse of Capistrano, and immediately knew he had to make that story into a movie. And so he did, with the aforementioned Mark of Zorro movie. It was such a big hit that Fairbanks immediately went to work on other adventure-costume movies such as The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Baghdad (1924), The Black Pirate (1926 and the first color swashbuckling movie), The Gaucho (1927), and The Iron Mask (1929). These were all silent movies; Fairbanks didn't do as well with audiences when talkies came along, and his health was declining at the same time; his athleticism wasn't what it used to be. By 1934, he was retired from movies altogether, and passed away in 1939 at the age of 56.

Fairbanks' legacy is monumental. He was the first president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the guys who hand out the Oscars), the first (along with Pickford) to put hand and footprints into the wet cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the first to receive a posthumous Honorary Oscar in 1939. And of course, he was the blueprint for stars like Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power, who would both reprise roles made famous by Fairbanks (Robin Hood and Zorro, respectively).

So, when you watch an action movie, especially one with acrobatics and swordplay, take a moment to remember the man who started it all just over a century ago. And maybe check out his body of work; most of it is in the public domain now, even in the United States. All the movies I listed above are in that category, so you can see them for free online.