Douglas Fairbanks : Hollywood Royalty

In the title role as The Thief of Bagdad, 1924

The name Douglas Fairbanks doesn't resonate the way it use to. Of the three big Hollywood stars, indeed, mega-stars from the 1920's, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin are reasonably secured in the pantheon. Chaplin was awarded two Oscars in his lifetime, both honorary. Pickford, won a competitive Oscar for 1929's Coquette and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy in 1976. Fairbanks, one of the original founders of the Academy, was never rewarded with the little golden guy. Chaplin's Little Tramp is known as the comic pantomime without peer, while Little Mary's legacy has been recognized by modern day critics and film historians as the first female movie star as mogul. Yet Fairbanks has somehow, however gently, been pushed aside. These three were so powerful and popular that in 1919, along with director D.W.Griffith, they formed the studio United Artists. Each had their own backlot and soundstages and would, at the beginning, personally supervise, write and/or direct each production that bore the United Artists' logo. Fairbanks' own His Majesty, the American was UA's inaugural release in 1919.Wags at the time suggested the inmates had taken hold of the asylum. So much was riding on the film's success and Fairbanks did not disappoint : His Majesty, the American was a solid box office winner, helping kick-start the fledgling company.

 Fairbanks supervised every aspect of his productions. Here he is on set of The Black Pirate, 1926

Fairbanks, born May 23, 1883, was christened the first "King" of Hollywood, years before the crown was passed on to Clark Gable. He had a storybook romance and marriage to "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford, was the idol of boys and young men everywhere as the universal symbol of athleticism, exuberance and enthusiasm. The 1920's were his golden years, when Fairbanks, just 37 in 1920, began a series of swashbucklers and adventure yarns upon which his legend rests. Fairbanks had been in the "flickers" since 1915 and had made over 30 films when he decided to film The Mark of Zorro in 1920, with himself as Don Diego Vega aka Zorro. Released in December, Mark of Zorro was a huge hit wherever it played, changed the course of his career, and Fairbanks the action star was off and running.{Subsequent Zorro remakes were made with Tyrone Power in 1940 and Frank Langella in 1974}. In the following years, Fairbanks would embark on a series of ambitious action, adventure and fantasy films. These productions set the gold standard for swashbuckling, with romantic derring-do on a grand and lavish scale : The Three Musketeers {1921, with Doug as D'Artagnan}; Robin Hood {1922} with massive sets, the biggest yet built for a Hollywood movie; The Thief Of Bagdad {1924} a real boy's Arabian Nights fantasy, and to this day probably his best known work. 1925 brought a sequel {yes, they made them back then, too} playing the title role as Don Q, Son of Zorro. The Black Pirate, an early technicolor spectacular from 1926, has what may be Fairbanks' greatest stunt by taking his knife and plunging it into the sail of a ship and sliding down to the deck, while taking over the vessel. The YouTube clip below, was the only one I could successfully access. Unfortunately, it's in B & W, not the original color. The stunt comes in at about the 2:10 mark.

  1927 brought The Gaucho, a darker, more somber Fairbanks film in which he plays, you guessed it, The Gaucho, who according to IMDB, is a "charismatic leader of a band of outlaws, who save an Argentine town from an evil and sadistic General". This is one of my favorite Fairbanks films, though much different in tone from his other classics, with it's sexually charged tango scene with the lusty Lupe Velez in her first starring role and Doug's Gaucho, which has an ambivalent quality that's quite unlike his previous heroes. Fairbanks, chain-smoking his way through the part, had never allowed this steamy quality of his personality to surface; in fact, his Gaucho is practically image-shattering. In addition, the film has a somewhat schizo quality, {possibly due to Fairbanks', whose astrological sign is Gemini, split within his own nature}, with it's very reverent tone, such as when the Gaucho sees a vision of the Virgin Mary, {tellingly played by none other than wife Pickford}, and has a religious conversion. Because of this mixed bag of themes and persona's, many critics rank it lower in the Fairbanks canon of classics, yet these are the very qualities I find fascinating.

Dancing the seductive tango with Lupe Velez in The Gaucho, 1927.

 Premiering on November 7, 1927 at Grauman's Chinese theater in Hollywood {which Doug and Mary had put their hand and footprints in the previous April}, The Gaucho was a bit of an anachronism by the time of it's release, in that, just a month before, Warner Brothers had unleashed The Jazz Singer on an unsuspecting world and turned the movies on it's head with the innovation of synchronized sound. Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford and others suddenly found their persona and entire careers in jeopardy. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Fairbanks had spent years on the Broadway stage {as did Pickford} before he went into films in 1915, so speaking on film wasn't much of an issue or concern to him. Consequently Fairbanks did not fear sound pictures, but he did dread the change it brought to the silver screen and the influence it brought to making of the kind of films he loved to create. With sound, the motion picture camera went into a stagnant phase that would last a good 2 to 3 years. Suddenly movies stopped moving and the actors all stood around reciting dialog to each other. Today a lot of ignorant folk hate silent films because the films are just that, silent. That's ironic, because the silent film by 1926/27 had reached the pinnacle of artistry and sophistication with movies like 1925's Ben-Hur and King Vidor's WWI epic The Big Parade and his 1928 production of everyday life with The Crowd; Von Stroheim's 1925 exercise in decadence, The Merry Widow;  Chaplin's The Gold Rush;  John Ford's The Iron Horse; F.W. Murnau's picturesque Sunrise, and many more, show how far the art of film had come since D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Without a doubt, by 1927 the silent film had become a universal art form of the highest order. If one wants to see the truly worst period for Hollywood films, view the early talkies made from 1928 to 1930. Most are awful. There are exceptions, of course : Lubitsch's The Love Parade, Josef Von Sternberg's The Blue Angel and Morocco; Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front and a handful more, but most are deadly affairs. Fairbanks anticipated this change in cinema and also, with sound, there would have to be a shift to more realistic stories and plots. As Doug said to his art director Laurence Irving in 1928, while touring a new soundstage at the UA studio for his next production The Iron Mask, " the romance of motion picture making ends here."   

The Iron Mask, as D'Artagnan,  20 years after The Three Musketeers.

 The Iron Mask, from 1929, picks up 20 years after The Three Musketeers. D'Artagnan and his fellow cohorts are older, but no less committed to their King. The film, like the previous The Gaucho, was different from Fairbanks' earlier efforts. First off, Doug would be playing a character for whom age is an issue, much as it was becoming for him in real life. Fairbanks realized he could not go on playing the light, bouncy, exuberant and youthful go-getter he had played since in began making pictures. The change is evident in the film as Fairbanks is no longer front and center. Though obviously the star, The Iron Mask, more than other Fairbanks films, is a more ensemble piece with a slower pace than most of Doug's other work. And the film has a distinction that sets it apart; at film's end, D'Artagnan dies. A somber ending for a Fairbanks film is unheard of, but Doug was crafting a farewell film to the genre he had created almost single-handedly. The Iron Mask, which has two talking sequences, is a loving and moving tribute to that genre and one of my favorite Fairbanks extravaganzas.

D'Artagnan with Athos, Porthos and Aramis. All for one and one for all, one more time. The Iron Mask, 1929

February 1929 brought the premiere of The Iron Mask to glowing reviews and stellar box office, though because of it's high budget of $1 million dollars the film is often cast aside as a failure. In view of Fairbanks' classic 20's sagas, The Iron Mask usually, and unfairly, comes up on the short end. 1929 also brought Doug and Mary together professionally for the first time {if one discounts her Gaucho cameo} for an all-talking version of William Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew. Since their marriage in 1920, the public had been clamoring for the world's most famous couple to unite on celluloid. The original  Brangelina or LizandDick of their generation, Doug and Mary helped give Hollywood a much needed boost of respectability when the town and the film industry really needed it as it was on the verge of self-destruction due to several scandals that brought every moral organization in the country out to denounce Hollywood as a modern Gomorrah. A dinner's invitation to Pickfair, their regal home in Beverly Hills, was tantamount to a Royal Command Performance and an offer one couldn't refuse. But by 1929, when Taming Of The Shrew a co-produced, co-financed and co-starring vehicle, was being lensed, the Fairbanks/Pickford alliance was starting to fray and burst at the seems. By most accounts, the filming of Shrew was fraught with difficulties mostly from Fairbanks' behavior, not only towards Mary, but also toward the director Sam Taylor. According to Jeffrey Vance's book Douglas Fairbanks, the swashbuckler was  "moody, willful and defiant", that "sound film turned his natural exuberance into petulance." For Doug, for whom creating pictures was everything, this behavior was entirely out of character. Assistant director H. Bruce "Lucky" Humberstone recalled relations between Doug and Mary as frosty at best. About the only time they spoke to each other on set was when Fairbanks would criticise or question Mary's judgement. Mary Pickford, in her autobiography, states that "I saw a completely new Douglas, a Douglas who no longer cared apparently about me or my feelings". At times Fairbanks would show up on set late, unprepared, not knowing his lines and having them written on chalkboards, out of camera range. Of course the strange thing is that by all reviews, contemporary and otherwise, Fairbanks' Petruchio walks off with the the film, while Mary's Kate appears rather shrill and weak of voice in comparison. The film opened at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City on November 29, 1929 {just one month after Black Tuesday which signified the stock market crash of 1929 therefore ushering in the Great Depression} to tepid reviews and a lackluster box office. For Fairbanks the Depression of 1929 also had him questioning his philosophy of "pluck, luck and hard work", which would lead to one's success.

Doug as Petruchio, stealing the show from wife Mary, in the infamous 1929 version of Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew.

    

By 1930 with his marriage in trouble and his career at a low point Fairbanks, always restless, was encountering a midlife crisis and began to travel as a means of staying active and avoiding his strained relationship with Mary. In fact, he was running away from himself and his problems. As far back as 1925 Mary sensed a "restlessness and nervous impatience...nothing satisfied him." He continued to make movies and he still took an active interest in United Artists, but overall Fairbanks was a vagabond, wandering from port to port, country to country. There would be a few more movies: Reaching for the Moon in 1930, Mr. Robinson Crusoe from 1932 and his last film, Private Lives of Don Juan in 1934. After that, silence. Fairbanks did make great strides in his relationship with his son, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Theirs had always been an uneasy alliance. Senior always had to appear youthful and exuberance personified. Junior was always a reminder that Senior wasn't getting any younger and that he had failed his first wife by running away from marriage #1 when it was in crisis. Yet in the final 10 years of his life Fairbanks, Senior and Junior, came to a kind of understanding, one that they could both accept. Doug Junior would go on to have a nice career in movies, even emulating his father in such films as Sinbad, the Sailor {1947}; Prisoner of Zenda {1937}; The Corsican Brothers {1941} and probably his best remembered movie, Gunga Din {1939}. A respectable career, not quite as spectacular as Senior's, but not bad on it's own terms.

A rare night on the town with son, Doug, Jr.

  So far as marriage to Pickford was concerned, it was essentially over. Mary's drinking and her affair with Charles "Buddy" Rogers, was more than Fairbanks could or would tolerate. Mary filed for divorce in December 1933 and earlier that year Doug turned 50, a dangerous age for any man. About this time Doug told his son that he had "done everything twice, was bored with life and prepared to die". If he had to go, he wanted to go quickly and not linger. While in England to film The Private Life of Don Juan, his final film, Fairbanks met and was smitten with Lady Sylvia Ashley. Sylvia's husband Lord Ashley, filed for divorce, naming Fairbanks as corespondent. Pickford could tolerate Doug's infidelities if kept private, but this public acknowledgement was more than she could bear. On January 10, 1936 their divorce was final, with Mary assuming all control of Pickfair where she would reside for the rest of her days. Later that year Sylvia Ashley became the third Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks. What went wrong in the marriage between Doug and Mary is anyone's guess. Mine would be Doug's mid-life crisis, Mary's alcoholism and the downturn of both careers, due to talkies. Fairbanks, a life long teetotaler, hated to witness Pickford's condition when under the influence. Fairbanks' mid-life issues are inextricably linked to his career problems now that he had reached  his late 40's and couldn't do all the athletic feats he was famous for. Fairbanks, a man in constant motion, was facing his own mortality. As for The Private Lives of Don Juan, it received a cool reception from critics and moviegoers alike. It was to be the last film Doug would make. As he told director Raoul Walsh, "There's nothing as humiliating as being a has been". Time was running out. By the late 30's Fairbanks, only in his mid-fifties, nonetheless felt as if he were an old man. Depression, always close at hand, began to consume him. The years of nicotine addiction was catching up with him and he was weary of traveling so much. However his new bride was a social animal with many friends in Europe, so Doug and Sylvia trotted round the Continent in search of the next party. September 1939 put an end to such frivolous behavior with the outbreak of WWII. Finally, the Fairbanks' were forced to settle down and decided to set up residence at 705 Ocean Front Boulevard {now the Pacific Coast Highway}. Back on the west coast of California, Fairbanks toyed with the idea of producing vehicles for his son. The Adventures of Marco Polo was one such project, but Fairbanks, bored by the project, sold it to UA's newest partner Samuel Goldwyn who made it in 1938 with Gary Cooper. Another film in development was called The Californian, but it failed to get beyond the initial planning phase.

A still from his last starring role. The Private Life of Don Juan, 1934.

  Early in December 1939 Doug suffered a mild heart attack. The doctors expected a full recovery with complete bed rest for six months, but the years of tobacco and Doug's constant restlessness had left his lungs shot and his spirit weary. Upon hearing the doctors prognosis, according to his son, he had lost the will to live. Fairbanks suffered a massive heart attack on December 12, 1939 and died, aged 56. Only ten years previous he had been on top of the world, the greatest swashbuckler the movies had ever seen. I believe Fairbanks died of a broken heart. He still loved Mary, despite them both being married to others and one of his last words were about her, that, plus the loss of his metier of making movies, killed him. He had achieved so much in such a short time; actor, producer, mogul, millionaire, idol to millions of boys, not to mention father, husband and friend, that I don't think he absorbed it, took it all in, in it's proper perspective and failed to appreciated it. Certainly, it was a sad end to one of the most exorbitant careers in the history of Hollywood.   

Doug and Mary. Love never dies. My favorite picture of the two of them.

 

References:
                  Wikipedia
                   Douglas Fairbanks by Jeffrey Vance
                   Mary Pickford, America's Sweetheart by Scott Eyeman
                   The films of Douglas Fairbanks