The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks by Tracey Goessel (review)

Tracey Goessel has written a richly detailed and eminently readable biography of the most popular male star in silent film. In restoring Douglas Fairbanks (1883–1939) to his proper place in the silver screen firmament, she has also cast her own light on that seminal era before movies began to talk.

Fairbanks was born in Denver, Colorado. In later years he insistently depicted his family background as entirely respectable, maintaining silence about the several previous marriages of his mother and father. His father was Jewish, another fact about which the son kept mum. The acting bug bit him early and, while a teenager, he joined Frederick Warde’s troupe and toured the country for a couple of years. Fairbanks’s Broadway debut occurred in 1901, and he continued to appear on the legitimate stage (and sometimes in vaudeville) for more than the next decade, mostly in less than distinguished fare. Captivated by D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation in 1915, he started appearing in films that same year. In transitioning to the movies, he brought with him his boundless energy, remarkable athleticism, and million-megawatt smile. His screen personality also had a sense of humor and even self-mockery. Success came quickly, so it was natural that the U.S. government should recruit him to raise money for the Red Cross and sell Liberty Bonds during the First World War. In 1920, Fairbanks began making big-budget swashbucklers, and the ensuing years saw the release of the films for which he is best known, including The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), and The Thief of Bagdad (1924). These were event pictures, exhibited on a roadshow basis, and acclaimed by both critics and audiences. Each movie had to top the one before it. By the end of the decade, however, the public’s taste for these films, and for Fairbanks in particular, seemed to wane. His last movies—now featuring sound—represented a return to the more modest scale of his early ones, but, for the most part, they flopped at the box office.

No biography of Fairbanks would be complete without considering Mary Pickford, the love of his life and a film star fully his equal in fame and determination. Goessel gives their relationship its due. “Doug and Mary” were the couple of the 1920s, mobbed by adoring fans all over the world. Their seeming inseparability was reflected in the name of their estate, Pickfair, an invitation to which was as much sought after as an official visit to the White House. Unfortunately, the fairy tale did not last. Seven years of marital bliss were followed by seven more of growing mutual suspicion, leading to their divorce in 1936. Fairbanks wed one more time; his third wife, the English-born Sylvia Ashley, comes off here as something of a gold-digger. His last years were devoid of both personal happiness and professional accomplishment.

Goessel’s portrayal of her subject is balanced. Fairbanks insisted on performing almost all of his own stunts, which he also choreographed, but he sought to challenge himself as an actor, too. He experimented with new film technologies, such as sound and two-strip Technicolor. With Pickford, Griffith, and best friend Charlie Chaplin, he founded United Artists, which granted greater creative control to film artists by serving as the distribution arm for their production companies. He took an active stand against censorship—which, at the time, was exercised mostly on a regional basis—and its threat to the development of cinema. He also helped establish the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927 and supported the creation of the first academic film curriculum at the University of Southern California. Most of his colleagues found Fairbanks a pleasure to work and play with, but the author also explores his less appealing side; for example, his extreme jealousy, his social climbing, and his indifference toward parenting (although...