We were already big fans of Douglas Fairbanks’ fantastic silent The Thief of Bagdad; this double-bill disc gives us excellent encodings of the producer-star’s Robin Hood and The Black Pirate, supremely entertaining adventures that conjure up everything a Big Night at the Movies can be. Douglas Fairbanks is at his best; it’s impossible not to love the guy. The presentations are given full orchestral soundtracks in stereo, plus excellent commentary from the late great Rudy Behlmer. This may be the BEST way to break newbies into the crazy world of Silent Hollywood.

Douglas Fairbanks Double Feature
Robin Hood and The Black Pirate
Blu-ray
Cohen Film Collection
1922 & 1926 / 1:33 Silent Aperature / 133 + 95 min. / Street Date July 25, 2023 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95
Produced and starring: Douglas Fairbanks
Directed by Allan Dwan, Albert Parker

Forget Marvel, DC, Star Wars and other pretenders. Errol Flynn earned his place in swashbuckling heavent, but after taking in this Douglas Fairbanks Double Feature you may want to recalibrate your idea of proportional spectacle, one era to another. In the 1920s the tirelessly motivated star Douglas Fairbanks made a handful of action epics that still boggle the mind. Forget the baloney dished out in Babylon. This screen legend was dedicated to top quality cinema storytelling.

The most dazzling Silent Movie surprise of our UCLA school years was a screening of Fairbanks’ incredible The Thief of Bagdad. It has some of the most grandiose sets of anything ever made in Hollywood, so amazing that they earned the new credit of ‘Production Designer’ for their creator, William Cameron Menzies. We’re told that the backlot contstructions for Fairbanks’ Robin Hood were actually a little larger. The colossal walls and towers were erected right in the middle of Hollywood, on the lot we knew as The Goldwyn Studios, where Walter Mirisch and Billy Wilder would later have their offices.

Forget your memories of poky, flickery silent films loaded with boring inter-titles. These pictures can hold their own with anything modern. Discovering Douglas Fairbanks is something special as well. He’s an incredibly good-looking guy with a winning smile that says ‘Hollywood’ but also sincere good-heartedness. He wasn’t tall but the camera enhanced his athletically-perfect proportions. Every gentlemanly action star to follow performed in his shadow . . . even though he died in 1939.

Robin Hood
1922 / B&W / 133 min.
Starring: Douglas Fairbanks, Wallace Beery, Enid Bennett, Sam De Grasse, Paul Dickey, William Lowery, Roy Coulson, Billie Bennett, Willard Louis, Alan Hale, Bud Geary, Lloyd Talman, Ann Doran, Robert Florey.
Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
Art Directors: Wilfred Buckland, Edward M. Langley, Irvin J. Martin
Assistant Art Directors: Anton Grot, William Cameron Menzies
Costume Design: Mitchell Leisen
Film Editor: William Nolan
Special Effects: Howard Lydecker Sr.
Original Music: Victor Schertzinger
Written by Kenneth Davenport, Allan Dwan, Edward Knoblock, Lotta Woods story by Douglas Fairbanks
Produced by Douglas Fairbanks
Directed by Allan Dwan

By 1920 Douglas Fairbanks was a leading Hollywood filmmaker, one of the founders of United Artists. He made dozens of pictures big and small but even his epics — the biggest shows being produced anywhere — are no longer well known. After his big production of The Three Musketeers, he was in such good good financial shape that a lavish retelling of Robin Hood was possible. The 1922 film was the equivalent of a Road Show production — the print on view even has an intermission card quoting a ‘Six Minute’ break. It was given one of the first gala premieres at Sid Grauman’s new Egyptian Theater. Fairbanks was at the center of the myth and magic of Hollywood, wit its glamorous personalities and extravagant storytelling.

Robin Hood is of course a familiar screen hero. Most of us consider the 1938 Keighley-Curtiz The Adventures of Robin Hood to be the definitive version, as well as the most perfect swashbuckling show to date. Warner Bros.’ writers distilled and refined the story, but Fairbanks’s epic is no less entertaining. It offers just as much action excitement and emotional heart-tugs.

Before he takes on the subversive identity of Robin Hood, this version’s hero is known as ‘The Earl of Huntingdon.’ Maid Marian is ‘Lady Marian Fitzwalter.’ Most everyone else stays the same. Amazingly, Robin’s squire Little John is played by the same actor in both pictures, Alan Hale Sr..

The Earl of Huntingdon (Fairbanks) is introduced as a jousting tournament winner, against the dastardly Sir Guy of Gisbourne (Paul Dickey), the lackey of the disloyal Prince John (Sam De Grasse). Good King Richard the Lionhearted (Wallace Beery, three years before his Professor Challenger in The Lost World) has to force the shy Earl to find a girlfriend to woo. The Earl jumps in the moat to avoid the ladies, but then falls in love with Lady Marian (Enid Bennett) after protecting her from Prince John’s unwanted advances.

As soon as Richard and Huntingdon leave for the Crusades Prince John abuses his authority. He and the Sheriff of Nottingham (William Lowery) squeeze the populace for taxes and enforce cruel punishments for minor offenses. Maid Marion objects and is declared a traitor; she survives by faking suicide and hiding out in a nunnery. Little John carries word to Huntingdon, who is still encamped in France. The Earl asks King Richard for permission to return to England, but doesn’t say why: the Crusade must Go On. After more treachery from Sir Guy and save-the-day actions by Little John, Huntingdon hides out in Sherwood forest, rallying opposition to Prince John the Usurper with the new identity Robin Hood.

We’re almost an hour into the ’22 Robin Hood before events begin to mirror the Errol Flynn version, and even then they differ. King Richard isn’t held for hostage overseas — was that plot complication lifted from Sir Walter Scott’s book of Ivanhoe (in which the character of Locksley appears as well)?  This telling adds more melodramatic reverses. Two main characters are for a time presumed dead, leading to stirring surprise reunions.

The backbone of the show is of course Fairbanks’s athletic stuntwork. Leaping here and there, he uses clever tricks to defeat swordfighting foes and effect spectacular escapes. The most quoted escape sees him sliding down a drapery that must be three stories in height. The later Warners version puts more stress on Robin’s archery skills, a smart move that made Errol Flynn an instant legend. I was only five when I learned about the ‘he split the arrow in half’ story, years before I saw the movie itself.

Fairbanks and his lovely, poised star Enid Bennett generate plenty of old-fashioned romantic chemistry, with shy flirting and demonstrations of gallantry and pure-heartedness. It really works, especially when we know their models must have come from the stage — movie conventions are being created as we watch.

Casual viewers will be blown away by the scale of the sets. The castle interiors and exteriors were constructed as high as 90 feet, a scale often doubled by elegant matte paintings. It’s not just two or three castle views, either. Fairbanks’ designers overbuilt, allowing the filmmakers to invent and improvise during filming.

The Black Pirate
1926 / Color / 95 min.
Starring: Douglas Fairbanks, Billie Dove, Donald Crisp, Sam De Grasse, Anders Randolph
Cinematography: Henry Sharp (+ Roy Musgrave, Ray Rennahan)
Production Designer: Carl Oscar Borg
Set design, sculptures: Charles Gemora
Film Editor: William Nolan
Original Music: Mortimer Wilson
Story by ‘Elton Thomas’ (Douglas Fairbanks) adapted by Jack Cunningham
Produced by Douglas Fairbanks
Directed by Albert Parker

Fairbanks’ 1924 The Thief of Bagdad extends his moviemaking into the realm of glorious fantasy effects. The movies were so young that the star found unbroken genre ground wherever he turned. It’s abundantly clear that Fairbanks was after timeless entertainments, without much emphasis on economizing short cuts. He skipped over the literary classics for his 1926 The Black Pirate, opting to invent a story that would distill the savage appeal of the genre. He also took on the even bigger challenge of filming in the still-shaky format of 2-strip Technicolor. Sunny days could supply the amount of light needed for the format, but interior scenes and special effects work required a lot of extra effort. Again, Fairbanks was a True Believer in the religion called ‘The Movies’ — neither stardom nor riches were enough.

Fairbanks was already in his early forties but his on-screen vitality is undiminished. His designers and assistants invent good gags to help with some of the more outlandish stunts, like sliding down a ship’s sail, cutting it with a sword as he goes. A scene in which an entire squadron of warriors swim underwater to attack a ship, is accomplished ‘dry for wet’ on a sound stage. The show built four wooden ships, from 100 to 212 feet in length. Although filmed partly at sea off of Catalina Island — with the full-sized ships and extra-large Lydecker miniatures — most of the show was shot on Fairbanks’s own movie lot. An entire beach was recreated for a “Yo Ho Ho”- type buried treasure scene.

Douglas Fairbanks was heavily involved in his scripts. The story is tailored to generate the Spirit of pirate adventure, with a sense of danger and mayhem established in the first scene. Ruthless pirates loot a ship, tie up its crew and then blow the whole thing to bits with black powder, killing everyone. But the detail we remember is the pirate Captain (Anders Randolf) noticing a prisoner swallowing a ring. The Captain gives an instruction to an underling, who returns a few seconds later with the ring, wiping off his bloody knife. Fun pirate tales can’t be beat for casual sadism.

Escaping the carnage is the handsome Michel (Douglas Fairbanks). His father doesn’t make it, and he swears vengeance on the pirates responsible. His opportunity isn’t delayed, for the Captain comes to the same atoll to stash a secret treasure — and kill the men who bury it for him. Michel knows what he must do to stay alive: he tells the pirates that he wants to join, and bluffs the Captain into a fight to the death. He wins the admiration of the pirate crew, but the top Pirate Lieutenant (Sam de Grasse) bides his time for the right moment to turn on him. Michel instead proves his mettle by taking an entire merchant ship single-handed, by trickery and cunning. The crew proclaim him their leader.

Now known as The Black Pirate, Michel is of course doing all this just to survive long enough to turn the tables on the pirates and their devious Lieutenant. Rather than blow up the merchant ship, he sends back a ransom message, for the ship as well as the captive Princess Isobel (Billie Dove). As the Lieutenant has already ‘won’ Isobel in a Pirate’s wager, Michel’s kidnapping scheme will spare her from a Fate Worse Than Death . . . at least for a little while.

Only by great daring does the ersatz Black Pirate save the day. In the meantime we’re treated to excellent battles on the deck, credible threats to the gorgeous Isobel, and even a scene where Michel is forced to walk the plank. One very creative shot — often excerpted by Kevin Brownlow — shows our smiling Black Pirate lifted like a human elevator car from the hold by his men, handed off until he reaches the top deck.

A standout in the cast is none other than Donald Crisp, playing a good-spirited pirate called McTavish. He’s there to slip the Black Pirate a needed knife once and awhile, and to assure Isobel that despite appearances, EGBOK on the high seas.

Errol Flynn’s revisit of this genre produced some terrific classics, and his Dr. Peter Blood and Geoffrey Thorpe don’t have to stand in Fairbanks’ shadow. But Fairbanks again creates the escapist-mode template for jaunty, positive pirate heroism. Our Black Pirate is of course a fantastic fellow who prevails in the darkest situations, pulling off impossible physical feats and laughing at the absurdity of it all. It’s marvelously uplifting, and entirely different from modern notions of screen heroism. Robin Hood may have more of a classic feel but The Black Pirate is just as much fun.

We often mention Topeka’s Kansas Silent Film Festival. The AFI reports that this restored The Black Pirate first screened there in 1999.

The Cohen Film Collection’s Blu-ray of Douglas Fairbanks Double Feature plays extremely well in Blu-ray. Robin Hood is a 4K scan of a B&W fine-grain, and Pirate is said to be an HD scan from a 35mm color negative.

Both look very good. The 2-strip colors on Pirate won’t jump out at the viewer, but they do have a distinctive look. They match the excellent transfer seen on Kino’s 2010 stand-alone Blu-ray. That Kino disc had a second encoding of Pirate not seen here, a ‘part-talkie’ revision.

Both features carry stereophonic soundtracks. For Robin Hood, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra plays a score compiled from ‘historic photoplay music’ by Rodney Sauer. The shorter Pirate is accompanied by Robert Israel conducting the movie’s original score composed by Mortimer Wilson.

Also carried over from the earlier Pirate release are excellent voice tracks by the much-missed critic and historian Rudy Behlmer. He covers the career and exploits of Douglas Fairbanks, the film’s production and a big chunk of the history of Technicolor. Some color systems caused so much eyestrain that the public was at first resistant to the 2-strip process. Behlmer interviewed people like cameraman Ray Rennahan, and offers good anecdotes related to Fairbanks and the filming. We learn that when director Robert Parrish was a Hollywood latch-key kid, he’d sneak over to the Pickford-Fairbanks studio to peek through holes in the fence, to see what was filming.

Behlmer also offers narration for a couple of reels’ worth of Pirate outtakes, complete with camera slates. It took a while to become accustomed to Behlmer’s calm and thoughtful speaking voice; we highly recommend his commentaries. A good list is presently on his Wikipedia page.

Say what you will about the sometimes piratical film hijinks of collector-entrepreneur Raymond Rohauer, his hoarding of classic silent film likely saved many a picture, by at least storing them properly, and safeguarding them from others with less respect for the form. After Rohauer died, we’re told that his vaults formed the basis for the Douris Collection. The films are now held by Charles H. Cohen, who has been slowly releasing sensational disc restorations of classics:  like Intolerance and Fairbanks’ fantasy masterpiece The Thief of Bagdad.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Douglas Fairbanks Double Feature
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements (all for The Black Pirate):
Audio Commentary by Rudy Behlmer
18 minutes of outtakes with commentary by Rudy Behlmer
29 minutes of additional silent outtakes.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: October 11, 2023
(7008doug)

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