StarD_Bean_1910s_final

by Ellen Dawson

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  confidence alone—it would be more accurate to say that barriers between milieux mean nothing to him. Anyone who has seen a Fairbanks film knows that fences are for leaping over; he vaults social barriers with equal grace.

  Fairbanks represents a boyish fantasy of mastery, which no other star of his day put over with as much pluck and skill. All these qualities—youthfulness, athleticism, optimism, and a democratic instinct—were in place by the time Fairbanks left the stage in 1915. Despite Alistair Cooke’s claim that Fairbanks’s “theatrical record had very little to do with his startling Hollywood fame and with the creation of the screen character ‘Doug’” (13), the opposite is true. Limiting an assessment of his persona to his film work disrespects the ten years or more he spent crafting and developing this marketable “personality” on stage. This is not to say that his persona did not adjust to motion pictures. On the contrary, his extraordinary success is due as much to his ability to modulate his stage persona to the new medium as to his likeability. Unlike many of his Broadway colleagues who were not able to navigate the transition, and true to his persona, Fairbanks was as comfortable on a Hollywood backlot as on a New York stage.

  ✩★

  ✩★

  ✩★

  ✩★

  ✩ Broadway

  Fairbanks came to the stage at a fairly young age. He grew up in Denver, Colorado, where his father apparently enjoyed reading Shakespeare to his children and Douglas, in turn, enjoyed reciting soliloquies in school as another way—besides acrobatics and practical jokes—to be the center of attention (the best-researched account of Fairbanks’s early life is Vance). While he was in high school, Douglas also attended drama school in Denver, so when he was expelled from high school for a prank shortly before his sixteenth birthday, he felt he was not without options. Soon thereafter, he met Frederick Warde, a prominent British actor-manager, who was in Denver for a week-long engagement. Impressed by the boy’s personality and determination, and with the mother’s blessing, Warde hired Fairbanks for his traveling company. Fairbanks made his stage debut in 1900 in Richmond, Virginia, but stayed with the company only briefly, since he was apparently not a very good actor. Even so, Fairbanks moved to New York with his mother and made his Broadway debut in February 1902 with a small part in Her Lord and Master (Vance 12–16).

  Not yet nineteen years old when he got his Broadway start, Fairbanks naturally attracted juvenile roles. But this was not the only reason that critics emphasized his youthfulness in their reviews. They consistently mentioned his appealing, lighthearted personality. By 1906, critics were

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  already noting a pattern as he played “his now familiar, breezy, attractive youth” ( New York Times, 5 December 1906, 11). Audiences and critics loved this combination of youth, energy, and enthusiasm: “His genial boyishness and merry suggestion of irresponsible impudence are quite irresistible,”

  wrote one critic ( Boston Daily Globe, 21 September 1910, 9). Early in his career, “boyishness” became a trope to describe Fairbanks, and when he was in his late twenties, “the casual observer might mistake him for thirty.

  That is, while he is silent. Everyone looks older when his features are in repose. But when the Fairbanks smile is turned on full power—the sudden, illuminating, sincere smile, which makes friends and keeps them—and the black eyes sparkle with Fairbanks fun and enjoyment of living, the Fairbanks arms fling about in their vigorous fashion, the most casual might suppose him twenty-two. Youth is a dynamic state” ( Theatre Magazine, November 1911, 178). This description contains many of the themes common to his publicity during his Broadway days, which would carry over to his film career: the focus on youthfulness, optimism, enthusiasm, athleticism, sincerity—all signaled by his high-wattage smile.

  Fairbanks began to attract critical notice in 1905, with his role as Ben-nie the bellhop in the short-lived but acclaimed A Case of Frenzied Finance; critics said he played his part with “animation, glibness and assurance”

  ( Theatre Magazine, May 1905, 110). More parts followed, and in December 1906 he was cast in the political melodrama The Man of the Hour, which was a big hit. During this play’s run, Fairbanks courted and married (in July 1907) Anna Beth Sully, daughter of “Cotton King” Daniel J. Sully. With Sully he had his only child, Douglas Jr. (born 1909). His first starring role was in All for a Girl in the fall of 1908, after which he co-starred in another huge hit, The Gentleman from Mississippi. This ran for a couple of years, until he snagged the starring role in The Cub in 1910. He toured and played in revivals for the next two years until he starred in a string of successes: Hawthorne of the U.S.A. (1912), The New Henrietta (1913), He Comes Up Smiling (1914), and The Show Shop (1915). By the time he left for film, he was considered one of the top light-comedy actors of the stage, having worked in theater continuously from 1902 to 1915.

  Fairbanks’s “boyishness” also referred to his acrobatics, which were on display even in the theater. His manager and producer, William Brady, recalled a rehearsal of The Cub, during which Fairbanks elected to jump and climb up a two-level set rather than run up the stairs—a decision that

  “made a tremendous hit with the audience” (Vance 19). Publicity pieces at the time also emphasize his athleticism: “He can box, row, swim and ride, all in championship form” ( Boston Daily Globe, 2 March 1908, 12). Or gossip

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  columns might tell stories about his over-enthusiastic participation in a fight scene ( Los Angeles Times, 29 August 1912, 3:4). Fairbanks was indeed portrayed as a “big” personality whose energy spilled off the stage into a thrilled and grateful audience.

  But throughout this period, the publicity, reviews, and interviews all insist that there is something more to Fairbanks than boyish athleticism. Yes, he can box, row, swim, and ride, but wait, he can also cook, and “his cook-ing has been elevated to the dignity of a fine art. If Mr. Fairbanks ever desires to abandon histrionic endeavors he can always play a successful engagement as a French chef” ( Boston Daily Globe, 2 March 1908, 12). Similarly, he often tells the story of taking time off from the stage to work in Wall Street, whether as a clerk or another minor position (see Theatre Magazine, November 1911, 178, or Boston Daily Globe, 9 April 1913, 17). The number of times this story surfaces in interviews speaks to its importance in establishing his ability to straddle boundaries between apparently opposing worlds. He is not just an actor but a businessman, not just an athlete but a chef.2

  Despite this duality, Fairbanks plays his roles, as critics often noted,

  “without artifice” ( Theatre Magazine, November 1908, 288). Fairbanks’s democratic instinct, his ability to move easily between worlds, is often framed in terms of his “sincerity,” as in this publicity piece: “There is nothing ‘stagey,’

  nothing artificial or affected about this young American player. . . . He is not addicted to mannerisms, he does not cultivate any eccentricities, nor get rid of his talent to make room for his temperament. He is just a sincere, natural, good-naturedly frank, young man with gracious manners and an air of being always at ease in any situation” ( Theatre Magazine, April 1913, 116). “Sincerity,” then, is the glue that binds actor and character into a seamless unit and allows Fairbanks to move freely between opposing worlds without the penalty of affectation. Moreover, to be “at ease in any situation” requires an honesty and democratic sensibility that, in Fairbanks’s case, is tagged early on as uniquely American. Indeed, during this period commentators start to connect his optimism, honesty, and youthful demeanor to an American outlook, as in this early review: “Mr. Fairbanks, the star of the occasion, symbolizes the very best type of clean-limbed, well-bred American young man, wholesome, self-reliant, and ingratiating” ( New York Times, 25 August 1911, 7).

  Nowhere is this connection between Fairbanks and Americanism more explicit than in the reviews and publicity for Hawtho
rne of the U.S.A. This play, which anticipates His Majesty the American (1919), his first film for United Artists, tells the story of a young American tourist who stumbles into the aristocratic plots of a decaying Balkan monarchy and “by the introduction of American methods and money, effects the rehabilitation and

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  “Doug” leaps over all obstacles with equal ease. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  development of a decadent nation” ( Washington Post, 20 October 1912, MS2). Broadway audiences reacted positively to this idea of rehabilitating decadence through “American” methods. The New York Times declared,

  “And in it Douglas Fairbanks, that young man with a smile that invites confidence and muscles that enforce it, finds himself perfectly suited as the conquering young man from America” (7 November 1912, 13), while Theatre Magazine exclaimed, “The star is Douglas Fairbanks, and he enacts the

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  title role with rollicking good nature, dramatic fire, and true American hur-rah!” (December 1912, 164). With Hawthorne, a familiar pattern emerges: Fairbanks represents the best America has to offer, or, more precisely, he represents how America wants to represent itself.

  Already by 1912 Fairbanks had spent ten years on Broadway and, with the help of a press agent, was becoming quite adept at garnering and directing his publicity. He solidified his persona as a youthful, athletic, light-comedy actor whose optimistic and unaffected personality uniquely represented American sensibilities. He was doing quite well with this approach. So when Harry Aitken, the founder of Triangle Films, approached Fairbanks in 1915 with an offer of $2,000 a week to star in films, Fairbanks was initially hesitant. It was, after all, the movies, which were not a thrilling prospect at the time for an established stage actor. But $100,000 a year can buy a measure of legitimacy, and motion pictures presented new possibilities; they represented “wide open spaces,” economically, socially, and aesthetically. And Fairbanks was prepared: he had a press agent, a marketable persona, and years of experience managing that persona in the public eye.

  Now it was just a matter of adapting his “personality” to film.

  ✩★

  ✩★

  ✩★

  ✩★

  ✩ Triangle and Artcraft

  Fairbanks was not the only stage star to sign with Triangle Film Corp. in 1915, nor was his high salary exceptional. Harry Aitken, flush with Wall Street cash for his new company, wooed as many as sixty stage actors, including Billie Burke, Frank Keenan, H. B. Warner, comic opera star DeWolf Hopper, and the British Shakespearean Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree.

  Aitken spent flamboyantly in order to attract a more genteel crowd to his films. The high salaries offered to stage actors were part of a strategy—which included bringing directors D. W. Griffith, Thomas Ince, and Mack Sennett together under one corporation; securing top theaters exclusively for Triangle films; and charging higher admission prices—to make films “for the masses with an appeal to the classes.” This project failed miserably. By mid-1917, Triangle’s books were hemorrhaging red ink, Griffith and the others had fled, and most of the theatrical imports found themselves back on Broadway (King; Slide). Of all of Triangle’s stage stars, Fairbanks made the most significant impact on the movie-going public. With his emphasis on youth, action, and movement, his stage persona was certainly more screen-ready than that of, say, Beerbohm-Tree. But Fairbanks was also willing to adjust his stage style to the screen. Rob King argues persuasively that part of the problem with Aitken’s stage-stars experiment lay in “the difficulties

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  Triangle’s producers encountered in harmonizing the performances of the stage stars with existing filmmaking practice” (12). For example, to accommodate hyperbolic, mannered, theatrical acting styles, Triangle directors found themselves relying on static long takes and sluggish editing, which were a disappointment to movie audiences already accustomed to the more up-tempo styles of Ince and Griffith.

  Fairbanks, on the other hand, demonstrated a savvy cinematographic presence as early as his first feature, The Lamb (1915). Here he plays Gerald the Lamb, an eastern mama’s boy with a crush on a well-bred young lady.

  During an outing to the beach, his party comes across a drowning woman and, in a moment of weakness and indecisiveness, Gerald is shown up by his rival—a tough, “cactus-fed” westerner—who saves the woman and wins Gerald’s beloved. Determined to win her back, Gerald starts a physical training regimen and then follows her and his rival to Arizona, where he is comically out of place and subject to predators of all sorts. But Gerald’s good nature disguises an inner grit that comes in handy when he and his young lady are captured by renegade natives; Gerald wreaks havoc on the enemy camp, rescuing and winning her back. The climatic scenes feature Fairbanksian acrobatics and a last-minute, Griffithian cavalry rescue, complete with parallel editing. Just as impressive, however, is his nuanced performance for the camera. The film includes a number of medium shots and Fairbanks knows what to do with them: his unassuming, slightly unsteady characterization of Gerald recalls Charlie Chaplin’s similar gestures as the Little Tramp. For someone new to film, Fairbanks was a quick study. Critics appreciated his talents as well: “A new star has appeared in the motion-picture constellation, a comedian who wins through interesting personality and delightful characterization. . . . He holds the eye so strongly, and without apparent effort, that he is the whole play from beginning to end” ( Moving Picture World, 9 October 1915, 233). Fairbanks was not a great actor, by any means, but unlike some of his Broadway colleagues, his acting style perfectly suited motion pictures, both in its attentiveness to small gestures for the camera and in its rousing displays of athleticism. With its up-to-date filmmaking techniques and its thrills, The Lamb was a hit that set the stylistic pattern for later Fairbanks films.

  The Lamb established another pattern as well. Five of his Triangle films were set in the West or had significant western themes. These included The Lamb, Double Trouble, The Good Bad Man, The Half-Breed, and Manhattan Madness (all 1916). (From summer 1915 to December 1916, Fairbanks made twelve features and one short for Triangle, a pace that even Moving Picture World thought was record-breaking [22 April 1916, 624].) Two of these, The

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  Good Bad Man and The Half-Breed, are straight-up westerns, the first a tale of cowboy vengeance and the second a sensitive drama of racial hatred, with Fairbanks playing a mixed-blood Indian outcast. There is a distinct tendency toward duality in Fairbanks’s films, characters, and persona. If The Good Bad Man is about cowboys, The Half-Breed is about Indians (and The Half-Breed, of course, makes duality an explicit theme). This penchant for dual personalities is especially pronounced in The Lamb, Double Trouble, and Manhattan Madness.

  In The Lamb, as we have seen, Fairbanks’s character is quite meek until he finds his spine out west, as if drawing gumption from the land itself. In Double Trouble, Fairbanks plays an eastern fop who, after a blow to the head, becomes an outspoken, rowdy mayoral candidate for a western boomtown.

  In Manhattan Madness, the duality is expressed in more subtle ways: Fairbanks plays Steve O’Dare, a former New Yorker who returns from Wyoming to sell horses, only to be bored by the big city. His friends oblige by concocting a thrill-packed mystery. O’Dare has two worlds: he is equally comfortable in the exclusive clubs of Manhattan and on the range in the West, but he clearly prefers the latter. This duality extended even to Fairbanks’s production schedule; he traveled back and forth between Hollywood and New York, eventually making nine films in California and four in New York. Perhaps because of this bi-coastal schedule, a number of his films draw a sharp distinction between East and West (Tibbetts and Welsh).

  But this distinction was also a shrewd publicity move. Like his hero, Theodore Roosevelt, who transformed his public image from a “Jane-Dandy”

  Ne
w York assemblyman to a manly “Rough Rider” by going west, Fairbanks also sought to realign his persona by emphasizing his investment in the region. If we believe his publicity, his move to California was not just a business trip, but also a journey of rejuvenation, an educational rite of passage that amounted to his personal “Grand Tour” of the West. Taking his cues from Roosevelt, Frederic Remington, and Owen Wister, Fairbanks painted his move to Hollywood as a story of masculinity reborn (White, Eastern Establishment; Studlar, This Mad Masquerade). Fairbanks achieved this revitalized masculinity primarily by renouncing his Broadway career—as if his success in film depended on it. With the righteousness of a new convert, he proselytized for the Cowboy Way, which was presented as synonymous with Hollywood. “Fairbanks really is the Fairbanks of Manhattan Madness,” reported the Los Angeles Times, “that is, he prefers a wild horseback trip through the mountains of Wyoming to a wild night on New York’s Broadway” (8 October 1916, 3: 20). The New York Times agreed that his move to cinema meant more elbow room: “The movies were made for the great outdoors; so was Mr.

  Fairbanks. The four walls of a studio cramp the cinematograph; the four