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by Ellen Dawson

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  walls of a theatre cut into Mr. Fairbanks’s activities” (10 October 1915, 100).

  And so, given the insistent contrast between theater/the East/indoors and film/the West/outdoors, Fairbanks made his choice: “Asked as to the possibility of his return to the stage, both hands go up. ‘I’ve ducked the stage forever,’ he replies emphatically. ‘And I’m goin’ to have a ranch’ ” ( Moving Picture World, 24 June 1916, 2213), just as Roosevelt’s purchase of a spread in South Dakota changed his image forever.

  This “strenuous life” of the cinema plunged Fairbanks into “one joyous round of assault and battery from beginning to end” (George Creel, “A

  ‘Close-Up’ of Douglas Fairbanks,” Everybody’s Magazine, December 1916, 733). Hardly a feature story on Fairbanks forgoes mention of his manly participation in onscreen brawls: “We had some professional ‘pugs’ in the making of that picture,” he says. “I told the boys in the beginning it was going to be real fighting, nothing easy about it at all. Nor was there. I got a bit gouged up myself.” But if this meant that he had to give up his “soft” life as a Broadway actor, so be it: “No more for me the old days in New York—get up late in the morning, a stroll around to the Lambs, a ride in the park, a nap in the afternoon, then the theater and supper afterward. Now I am called at 5 o’clock, see the doctor and get bandaged up; then out on location. If by luck we escape the doctor and ambulance it is dinner between 5

  and 6 and then to bed” ( Moving Picture World, 24 June 1916, 2213). The Fairbanks publicity portrays moviemaking as a rough-and-tumble occupation akin to cow-punching or log-bucking. Even when not on set, he revels in what he considers the biggest benefit of working in film: the great outdoors. One article tells a story of Fairbanks on location in the woods of northern California for The Half-Breed. “He was never seen around the camp except when actually needed by the camera man. Upon his return from these absences, it was noticed that his hands were usually bleeding, and his clothing stained and torn. ‘What in the name of mischief have you been doing now?’ the director demanded on a day when Fairbanks’s wardrobe was almost a total loss. ‘ Trappin’,’’ chirped the star.” And what was he “trappin’ ”?

  “Bobcats,” of course (“A ‘Close-Up’ of Douglas Fairbanks,” 735).

  Not all his films for Triangle were westerns, but the stories about his enthusiasm for the danger and hardship of the West perform important work for Hollywood and for his persona. First, they paint a picture of filmmaking as real, manly work at a time when the industry was especially sensitive to charges of decadence and excess (in this respect, the publicity about Fairbanks is not entirely unique). Second, they deflect the characterization of acting as soft and self-indulgent to Broadway and the East. Third, they make sure that Fairbanks is on the correct side of this equation. But

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  Fairbanks and Hollywood walked a fine line here. On one hand, the discourse on actors at this time worked hard to differentiate film acting from stage acting by emphasizing “work” and “manliness.” On the other hand, this discourse also played up the fantasy of “regular fellows” earning millions, owning mansions, and living the high life just for “being themselves.”

  So the alliance with the values of the West is never complete; there is always some part of the ideology that craves the wealth and stature associated with the East. Much of the time Roosevelt spent on the “ranch” was actually spent living in New York; likewise, the split in Fairbanks’s films and persona is not merely convenient or deceptive, but structural, a part of the fantasy itself. Fairbanks works this split explicitly into his filmmaking practice and his characters. And, like Roosevelt, he allegorically balances or syn-thesizes the “manliness” of the West and the “civilization” of the East (see Bederman; Studlar, This Mad Masquerade).

  Indeed, if we look closely, the features of Fairbanks’s stage persona are not eradicated, only adjusted. If he was always known for his athleticism, then his move to Hollywood only shifted the terms of that motif from polo and rowing to fistfights and rodeos. Athleticism was still a key element of his star persona, only now it was directed toward more “manly” (that is, filmic) pursuits. Similarly, the emphasis on honesty and sincerity in his Broadway persona finds a new angle in film: realism and authenticity. One article elegantly articulates his new athleticism and authenticity: “The slapstick comedian knows how to ‘break’ a fall and to continue nimbly about his business, but not so with Douglas. He falls hard; he lands squarely; he gives and takes a left swing that rattles the molars like dice” ( Motion Picture Classic, July 1916, 18). He falls hard and he lands squarely—the connection between physical action, filmic realism, and Fairbanks’s personal honesty could not be more explicit, nor the repudiation of Broadway: “In nine cases out of ten, the ‘legitimate’ star, going over into pictures, evades and avoids the ‘rough stuff.’” But not Fairbanks, who is “one of the few movie heroes who have never had a ‘double’ ” (“A ‘Close-Up’ of Douglas Fairbanks,”

  733). Not having a stunt double apparently means submitting oneself to the

  “true” demands of the camera. The camera’s gaze is a test of authenticity and stout character, as Harry Aitken explains: “In the speaking drama, make-up and footlights change and hide, but not the least flicker of expression is lost in the picture. It’s a test of realness, and it takes a real man or a real woman to stand it.” Of course, this configuration of filmic realism, personal integrity, masculinity, and personality also neatly explains away Fairbanks’s limited emotional range and acting skills; he just plays himself.

  But in the end, his authentic “personality” is precisely the source of his

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  appeal. Everybody loves “Doug” as just a “regular guy,” not as an “actor.”

  For example, Fairbanks recruits for his films “riders and ropers and cowboys of the old school. ‘He men’—every one of them, and for a time they looked with dislike and suspicion upon the ‘star,’ but when they saw that Fairbanks did not ask for any ‘double,’ and took the hardest tumble with a grin, they received him into their fellowship with a heartfelt yell” (“A ‘Close-Up’

  of Douglas Fairbanks,” 735). Even the toughest among us cannot resist his down-to-earth optimism and honesty.

  This portrayal of Fairbanks as a man’s man definitely fits into larger cultural trends expressing the anxieties of white, middle-class males at the turn of the century, as Studlar argues (see also Lears). But for Fairbanks there was a personal stake in this portrayal as well. At a moment when Triangle was trying unsuccessfully to sell stage stars to the masses, Fairbanks differentiated himself from his theatrical colleagues by adjusting and emphasizing certain aspects of his established persona in order to appeal to movie-going audiences. Even though he returned often to New York, he made it clear through his movies and press that he preferred California. He forsakes the soft life of the stage for the hard, strenuous life of film. He turns his considerable athletic talents toward exuberant and authentic fight scenes for the benefit of a thrill-seeking audience. He makes sure that this audience sees and knows exactly who he is—a straight shooter who would never lie or use a “double.” This adjustment was wildly successful. In fact, at the end of an interview one journalist laments, “I could not help but wish, after spending an hour and a half with Mr. Fairbanks, that there were more real red-blooded actors like him on the screen and less dolled-up beauties with neatly pressed suits and a ‘How charmed’ expression” ( Motion Picture Magazine, December 1916, 68). And as George Creel would conclude, “Let no one quarrel with this popularity. It is a good sign, a healthful sign, a token that the blood of America still runs warm and red, and that chalk has not yet softened our bones” (“A ‘Close-Up’ of Douglas Fairbanks,” 738). In the Artcraft era, from 1917 through 1918, which coincided with U.S. involvement in World War I, Fairbanks would indeed become the s
ymbol of “red-blooded” Americanism. During this period, other aspects of his persona also became prominent. Although he still alternated his western-themed films with modern comedies, the discourse around Fairbanks emphasized roles other than rowdy cowboy: businessman, author, popular philosopher, patriot. Youthfulness and optimism were emphasized more in the feature stories and films than his western-edged manliness. This western masculinity did not disappear, but the investment in it was not quite so insistent or obviously compensatory. Youthfulness and optimism, of course, were impor-

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  Fairbanks was the foundation of the alliance between “The Big Three”: Mary Pickford, Fairbanks, and Charles Chaplin on location during the filming of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917). Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  tant facets of his persona since his Broadway days, but those characteristics took on a special resonance as Fairbanks’s health, success, and sunny determination were mobilized in service of wartime “preparedness.”

  By the end of 1916, the writing was on the wall at Triangle. Aitken’s enthusiastic spending was catching up to him and the receipts from his

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  company’s films, even including the Fairbanks features, were not nearly enough to soak up all the red ink. Fairbanks left for New York in mid-December 1916 and it was fairly clear that he was not coming back to Triangle. The publication that month of two high-profile feature stories on him now looks less than coincidental—he was probably promoting himself in preparation for free agency, even though he was making $10,000 a week with Triangle. Sure enough, in early January he sent out press releases indicating he was dissatisfied with his Triangle contract and was opening the bidding for his services, aiming for a phenomenal $15,000 weekly salary ( Variety, 12 January 1917, 1; Moving Picture World, 27 January 1917, 537).

  His existing contract posed less of a problem than one might expect, since the agreement stipulated that D. W. Griffith would “supervise” all the Fairbanks films and it was easily proved that Griffith had nothing to do with them. Assured that he was on safe ground legally, he was ready to strike out on his own, advised by the savvy Mary Pickford. They had met in New York in 1915 and now Fairbanks followed her business model exactly: he set up his own production company and negotiated a distribution deal with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players–Lasky under the Artcraft label, which had been established in July 1916 to distribute Pickford’s films ( New York Times, 7 February 1917, 11; Variety, 9 February 1917, 18). After a final brief legal back-and-forth with Triangle, Fairbanks was making his first film for Artcraft by the beginning of March.

  At Artcraft, Fairbanks continued to enjoy a bi-coastal lifestyle that allowed him to make most of his films in Hollywood while returning to New York occasionally to make one or two. In fact, even though the West played an important role in shaping his film persona, most of his features were modern urban comedies. In these, Fairbanks plays two types of characters.

  In films such as The Habit of Happiness, Reggie Mixes In, The Matrimaniac, The Americano (all Triangle, 1916), or Down to Earth and A Modern Musketeer (both Artcraft, 1917), Fairbanks plays a “regular fellow”: a capable, exuberant young man who is presented with a problem and sets about solving it with pluck and resolve (see Thompson, “Fairbanks”). Unlike many of his western-themed films, in which the contrast between East and West is written into the character’s eventual transformation, there is very little duality in “Sunny Wiggins” of Habit or “Ned Thacker” of Musketeer. Instead we have, in such cases as Sunny and Ned, a character whose main traits are optimism, youthful athleticism, determination, and an ability to move freely among vastly different social milieux. Sunny Wiggins, for example, comes from a wealthy family but rejects the exclusivity of the upper class—the film opens with him sharing his bedroom with a dozen or so homeless men he ran into the night

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  before. Sunny is something of a professional optimist who believes that anyone’s life can be improved by the power of laughter. He tests his theory successfully at a flophouse, and is eventually engaged to cheer up a morose industrialist. Meanwhile, he uses his good humor to quell a potential riot in a company town. Sunny’s success among the different classes rests with his disarming smile: it is his main tool in attaining his goals and deflecting class hostility. Habit’s Sunny thus sets a pattern for many of Fairbanks’s later goal-oriented protagonists.

  In films such as His Picture in the Papers, Flirting with Fate, American Aristocracy (all Triangle, 1916), or Reaching for the Moon (Artcraft, 1917), Fairbanks plays another kind of character, one who possesses many of the same traits discussed above, but with a subtle duality similar but not identical to that found in Gerald of The Lamb. Here the character starts off not weak or foppish, as Gerald is, but instead distracted or directionless. Sometimes the character is obsessed with something, such as self-help books or his possible royal lineage in Reaching. At other times, as in Picture, he is just bored, especially with corporate culture (Osterman). In Picture, Fairbanks plays Pete, the son of Proteus Prindle, a publicity-friendly health-food mogul and producer of “Prindle’s 27 Vegetarian Varieties,” such as “Prindle’s Macerated Morsels,” “Prindle’s Perforated Peas,” or “Prindle’s Dessicated Dumplings.”

  Pete has a job with the company, but he is unenthusiastic about selling the Prindle line or buying the Prindle philosophy. Instead, he enjoys sleeping until noon and taking a cocktail or steak on the side. If he wants the girl, however, her father demands that he have half-interest in the Prindle company; in order for him to get that company interest, Prindle the elder demands that young Pete stir up some good publicity. The rest of the film reveals Pete’s unsuccessful attempts to get “his picture in the papers.” There are plenty of occasions for the usual Fairbanks stunts, but ultimately he gets the girl and the attention he needs by winning a boxing match against

  “Battling Burke” and by overpowering a group of ruffians who have plotted against the girl’s father. In Picture, Reaching, and others, the Fairbanks character displays dissolution or distractedness that is transformed into focused and relentless determination, another common pattern in his films.

  In fact, Fairbanks’s films of the teens—whether western or eastern, Triangle, Artcraft, or early United Artists—mix and match different character traits and narrative trajectories established in his first films for Triangle, The Lamb, His Picture in the Papers, and The Habit of Happiness.

  We should also note Picture’s parody of publicity and the health-food craze, a gentle satire of modern fads that would continue with some of the Artcraft films, especially those written by Anita Loos and directed by John

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  Emerson. Emerson and Loos worked on Picture while they were employed at Triangle, and Fairbanks enjoyed collaborating with them. Loos wrote seven of Fairbanks’s thirteen Triangle films and Emerson co-wrote and directed three of those seven. In late 1916, after their work on his final Triangle feature, The Americano, Fairbanks announced that he would demand that Loos write the titles for all his films ( Moving Picture World, 2 December 1916, 1337). At that point, of course, he was almost done with Triangle, but he was able to keep his promise when he created his own production company. He signed Loos and Emerson immediately (although he had to buy out Emerson’s Triangle contract) and the three of them collaborated on four of his first five features for Artcraft. Loos was known for her witty titles and satirical stories, which sometimes even poked fun at the Fairbanks persona—Doug was never one to take himself too seriously. Emerson and Loos left the Fairbanks company in late 1917 ( Moving Picture World, 29 December 1917, 1948), but the collaboration produced some of Fairbanks’ most mem-orable early films.3 Perhaps the best example of a film that simultaneously promotes and parodies the Fairbanks persona is Wild and Woolly (1917).4

  Fairbanks plays Jeff Hillington, a ramb
unctious easterner with an enthusiasm for the Wild West. The son of a New York–based railroad tycoon, Jeff enjoys the trappings of upper-class life, but he wants none of the corporate culture that makes it possible. Instead, he likes camping with a teepee and saddle—in his bedroom. The residents of Bitter Creek, Arizona, are so eager to get a railroad spur through their town that they transform their modern village into a replica of the Old West just to please Jeff, who visits as the railroad’s emissary. Recalling Manhattan Madness, the townspeople give Jeff a hero’s role to play, a mystery to solve, and, thankfully, a gun loaded with blanks. When local villains cause the plan to go awry, Jeff is ready with western skills and a suitcase full of real bullets. Part of the film’s considerable charm comes from the pleasing echo between Jeff’s role in the town’s plot and Fairbanks’s movie stunts: both Jeff and the stunts have been set up to succeed, but still require real talent to pull off in the end.

  Similarly, in Reaching for the Moon Fairbanks plays a sincere young man inspired by self-help books and taken with his quasi-aristocratic heritage (his mother was a member of the banished court of fictional Vulgaria). Fairbanks was intrigued by royalty and this is the first film of many to flirt with the idea of Doug-as-monarch. In Reaching, royal genealogy turns out to be a dream, but the fantasy will recur in later films and publicity in the 1920s.

  The earnestness with which Doug’s character takes advice from self-help books is especially fun, particularly since early in his Artcraft era Fairbanks developed another dimension of his persona: author and popular philoso-

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  pher of precisely these kinds of motivational volumes. Probably again inspired by Roosevelt, who was a prolific author, Fairbanks published two titles in quick succession: Laugh and Live in April 1917 and Making Life Worthwhile in 1918.5 These books outline, in Fairbanks’s voice, his recipe for success and his personal philosophy of life. Laugh and Live was particularly popular, reportedly selling 400,000 copies in a year ( Moving Picture World, 2