The First King of Hollywood

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The First King of Hollywood Page 34

by Tracey Goessel


  There is little likelihood that, having seen the sets, Fairbanks contemplated shelving the project. For one thing, over $248,000 had been spent on materials, labor, and architects. Furthermore, the industry recession was, if anything, worse. No bank would fund a film project, not even from the estimable Fairbanks. It was his own money in those plaster walls. He knew there was no going back and did not need a playground slide to convince him. From that date until shooting began, Fairbanks devoted himself to practicing his stunts and sword fights, doing screen tests with actors, and making costume tests.

  He was careful, however, not to announce that the project was the tale of Robin Hood. The story would be too easy for a competing studio to produce cheaply, stealing his thunder. Photos and press releases went out showing Doug practicing on his bow and arrow, announcing that the next Fairbanks release would be a film entitled The Spirit of Chivalry. Mindful of the troubles they’d had with the alternative version of The Three Musketeers, Cap O’Brien suggested that the film, upon release, be titled Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood.*11

  The casting of Little John perhaps revealed a small chink in our hero’s armor. Assistant director Richard Rosson hoped to have Maurice Bennett “Lefty” Flynn—a friend and Yale athlete—cast in the part. He gave Flynn explicit instructions: “If he is going through his daily workout and invites you to join him, play along but don’t do your best. Always let Doug win. Show him that you are a good athlete but not too good.”

  Flynn was nervous at meeting the great Fairbanks and required a few shots of bootleg gin to steady his nerves. He forgot his instructions and hit a tremendous home run during a pickup game of softball. Adolphe Menjou recounted:

  Doug slapped him on the back and told him he was great. So Lefty decided that Rosson had been completely wrong.

  Then they started high jumping. Doug jumped 5 feet 6 inches, but Lefty cleared 5 feet 7 inches. Doug grinned and slapped him on the back. Lefty thought he was making a big hit. When they tried broad-jumping, Lefty beat Doug by 2 feet. He beat him at pole-vaulting, at shot-putting, at everything, and Doug kept giving him his famous grin and telling him what a wonderful athlete he was. But next day Doug cast Alan Hale in the part of Little John.

  The story, of course, may be oversimplified. Hale may have been a better actor. But Menjou’s commentary remains: “Doug was always a little jealous of his own special accomplishments.”*12

  Then there was the matter of Doug’s wig. Florey reports that Fairbanks tried twenty or more before finding one that worked. An initial glance at the unstructured mop of hair would suggest the opposite, but our eyes have been trained—fooled, rather—by years of foppish helmet-haired pageboys that subsequent movie swashbucklers have worn. Fairbanks, for both The Three Musketeers and Robin Hood, wanted hair authentic to the period, hair that was blunt cut with the edge of a knife, not styled by scissors, curling iron, and spray. Yet it could not look like a wig; it had to move as real hair would. Apparently dissatisfied with the wig he had worn in The Three Musketeers, he assigned costumer Mitchell Leisen to solve the problem. Leisen recalled, “One of the tough things was to get Douglas’ wig, the long hair, to fall naturally. It was always so stiff; no matter what you did with your head, the hair stayed there.” The solution finally came from the patriarch of the famous Westmore family, who crafted a wig of the finest toupee hair. “Real hair,” Leisen said. “And he worked and worked and worked with it, but the result was: if Doug shook his head, the hair just flew all over the place.”†*13

  Leisen was also in charge of the costumes, which numbered in the thousands. Chain mail armor was too heavy for modern Californians, so he devised a method of knitting hemp, ironing it flat, and adding silver leaf.*14

  The castle and other exteriors were not yet completed when filming began on the morning of April 3, 1922. The first scenes were shot in the tent of Richard the Lion-Hearted. Musicians played mood music as Doug, playing the Earl of Huntington (later Robin Hood), asked his king to permit him to leave the Crusades and return to England. Six takes and Dwan was satisfied.

  Filming went very smoothly. “The war made Robin Hood easy,” said Dwan. “There wasn’t a single man on the lot either in the capacity of an extra or on the technical staff, who had not had military training. They knew the importance of obedience. They knew how to take orders and, in turn, how to give orders; every mother’s son of them.” Those portions of the rushes—when the slate board is being held up to the camera, or the actors are resuming their positions—show a happy and laughing crew. “Doug would hold up the work at any time, at heaven only knows what expense per minute, to do some absurd or ridiculous thing if it promised a laugh,” Frank Case recalled. “Often there was a method in it, for if the actors were tired and . . . things not going well, Doug would suddenly be missing and as suddenly reappear in a costume that had nothing to do with the picture or the period, accompanied by some strange derelict he had picked up at the gate, or by a live bear on a chain, or a monkey. Then all work would cease for half an hour or so.” The bear (a tame animal, reportedly) featured in a practical joke Fairbanks pulled on one particularly high-strung staffer.†*15A friendly arm-over-the-shoulder gesture from Doug provided the requisite honey on the jumpy gentleman’s posterior, and the bear soon followed, hoisted through the window of his office. The ensuing chase was good fun for all—except the unfortunate victim. And even he “took it in good part,” according to Case. “He knew that life on that lot was give and take. If you could put one over on Douglas, that was fine, too. If you could.”

  Mitchell Leisen concurred. “He played all the time,” he said. “When some athlete came by, he would stop everything and race or play tennis.” He invented his own racquet game—a more athletic version of badminton—that he named “Doug.”

  He opened the studio to the public on June 11, as a fundraiser for an entity identified only as the Assistance League. He enjoyed this so much that soon visitors weren’t restricted to charity events. They were so common that signs were placed about the complex (WELCOME/FOLLOW ROBIN HOOD’S ARROW →) to guide them to the back lot. There Fairbanks had bleachers built so they could watch the filming without being underfoot.*16

  This is not to say that things were simple; Doug simply made them look easy. Outtakes are revealing. In one series of shots, Fairbanks loops his bow around a hapless Charlie Stevens, lifts him up bodily, and in one swift, graceful move, hangs him on a protruding rod over a doorway. In the completed film, it occurs in a merry blink of an eye. The rushes, however, show him lifting Stevens, shot after shot, high above his head, and hanging him on that rod. He had no trouble hitting his mark for most takes. (Getting the bow over the rod with Steven’s dead weight at the bottom could have been no easy task in itself.) The challenge was to do it in a manner both quick and fluid. There could be no hesitation, no jockeying to get the top of the bow threaded over the rod. He tries repeatedly, but it is never just right. One is exhausted just watching him.†*17So too with outtakes of Fairbanks fighting Prince John’s men in the castle. Here he was not fencing but hacking with a broadsword, again and again, take after take. Knitted hemp or no, he must have broken quite a sweat.

  He and the rest of the crew also broke a sweat two weeks into the production, when fire—that ever-present threat in a studio filled with flammable materials—broke out in the costume department. Doug headed an impromptu bucket brigade, and the blaze was extinguished with only slight damage to the over $82,000 worth of costumes.

  Another challenge related to a scene where Prince John’s falcon kills a carrier pigeon. A trained falcon was purchased for $250 and imported from England. It arrived with a list of instructions: keep it in the dark, feed it only raw meat, and (“especially important”) bathe the bird twice a week. It is unknown who inherited these tasks, but the falcon performed beautifully. It was the pigeons that wouldn’t cooperate with cameraman Arthur Edeson. It took a hundred takes to keep both pigeon and predator in the frame as the falcon took down its prey. It is u
ndocumented how many pigeons gave their lives in the service of art.

  Animals (or, rather, one very little animal) forced a reshoot of another sequence. In one scene, Wallace Beery, playing Richard the Lion-Hearted, was eating meat and throwing the bones to his dogs. Prominent among them was a little Airedale that Doug had given to Mary the year before. Originally named War Bond, the pooch—a rare breed at the time and purchased for $4,000—was rechristened Zorro. He became part and parcel of the little family, coming along on European trips and even being featured on the couple’s custom bookplates. But one place he didn’t belong was on the Robin Hood set. Airedales, it seemed, had not existed as a breed in the twelfth century. When this was pointed out during the screening of daily rushes, Fairbanks, dreading anachronisms, ordered the scene be reshot.

  Another scene that was shot multiple times was a sequence in which Fairbanks climbed the chain of the castle’s drawbridge. Brother Robert, per his daughter, “had neither interest nor ability in athletics himself, [thus] he worried constantly over the risks Douglas took.” Because of the sizable investment in the film, he convinced a reluctant Fairbanks to yield and permit a stuntman to perform the scene. “When the scene was rehearsed and the double climbed the chain, the expression on Doug’s face was not pleasant,” Letitia Fairbanks recalled. “Obviously the double was lacking in the usual Fairbanks grace so the scene was called for the day and Robert was instructed to find another double.”

  Later that afternoon, Chuck Lewis and Kenneth Davenport held their breath and watched Fairbanks climb up and down the chain. “After that he felt better,” Letitia recalled, “for he had always maintained he would never ask anyone to perform a stunt that he couldn’t or wouldn’t do himself.” The following morning when the scene was to be filmed with a new stuntman, Doug refused to watch. He would be working out new routines in his private gym, he said sourly, and disappeared. The new double did a few trial runs and was judged to be satisfactory. While the camera setups were arranged, the man returned to makeup for touch-ups. Letitia wrote, “Robert thought the double was excellent when he dashed back on the set. Moreover, he thought he even looked like Doug as he quickly climbed up the chain while the cameras turned. And when the double reached the top and flung out one hand in a characteristic gesture accompanied by a broad grin, Robert dropped limply to the nearest chair. He knew then that Douglas had put one over on him and doubled for the double.”*18

  Principal filming was completed in early August, and a rough cut screened for cast and crew on the tenth. The newly completed studio projection room was silent throughout. At the end, “a veritable tempest of applause broke out,” wrote Florey, “and they raised three cheers in honor of Douglas.” Everyone gathered to shake his hand, but Fairbanks was modest. “He replied to his collaborators that he deserved no more than they.”

  In late September, he and Mary began a cross-country trek to premiere the film. They went by way of Vancouver and the Canadian Pacific Railway, stopping at Lake Louise in Alberta and in Banff, Winnipeg, and Montreal.

  The Chicago premiere was on October 22. The publicity campaign was representative of how the film was promoted in road shows across the nation. Placards were posted along highways two weeks before the film’s arrival, announcing, ROBIN HOOD IS COMING! LOOK OUT FOR HIS ARROW! Following this, thousands of paper arrows fluttered from every doorknob, car, and available window in Chicago’s downtown, announcing the theater and the date; 150 billboards (twenty-four sheets), 250 eight-sheets, 200 three-sheets, and 200 trolley car cards alerted the public to the upcoming film. In case they had failed to take note, one hundred more billboards were added the day the film opened at Cohan’s Grand Opera House.

  Tie-ins were made with various businesses. One-sheets were provided to all the Columbia Phonograph stores, along with stickers pitching not only the movie but also the various Robin Hood–related records for sale. A photograph of Doug, jauntily perched on a tractor and brandishing a lance, was given to each Ford dealership in the region. Special match holders advertising the film were provided to all the local automobile clubs and affixed by suction cup to every Ford sold during the film’s run. Twenty thousand blotters touting Robin Hood were distributed to every office building, hotel room, and government agency the week before the premiere. Department stores were lent costumes from the film to create window displays. Best of all, perhaps, was a hat-related promotion. The Wormser Hat stores placed cards in their windows: WEAR THE MARK OF CHIVALRY! THE ROBIN HOOD FEATHER. ONE WITH EVERY WORMSER HAT. The trend caught on, and soon other stores were selling their versions of the Robin Hood hat, eventually leading to an entire generation of baby boomers wondering why their grandfathers wore little pheasant feathers in their fedoras.

  The visit to New York City for the premiere at the Lyric Theatre was eventful. Fairbanks and Pickford were staying at the Ritz. A Christian Science Monitor reporter described the scene: “The telephone in his suite rings constantly, and his secretary patiently answers requests for everything from a signed photograph of either star to requests for ‘a chance to act in the movies.’ The suite itself gives away the personality of its occupant, and reflects something of his volatile and numerous interests. In one corner are stacked high several long bows used in Robin Hood; arrows tipped with feathers lie carelessly on the dressing table, a sword just brought from England by Edward Knoblock, the playwright, for use in Monsieur Beaucaire, Mr. Fairbanks’ next picture, occupys [sic] an otherwise comfortable armchair. A model of an airplane flippantly tops an open wardrobe trunk.”

  It was on the roof of the hotel that Doug posed with a bow and arrow for photographers. There, to quote Dwan, “some deviltry within him made him let go of the arrow and away it flew.” The story, from here, diverges. Certainly, there is no disagreement that the steel-tipped arrow soared a respectable course over the Manhattan skyline, from Fifty-Ninth Street all the way to Forty-Sixth and Fifth. And all agree that it flew through an open window, striking an unsuspecting furrier by the name of Abraham Seligman. Most accounts from this point put their faith in the family’s version of events. Like the “Doug got himself expelled by putting green bows on the hallway statues on Saint Patrick’s Day” story, it makes its protagonist seem to be one who causes mischief, not true harm. The story goes like this: The arrow hit Seligman straight in the bottom. The poor immigrant, convinced that Indians had launched an attack on Manhattan, ran yelping about the worktables and onto the street, where he was finally taken to Bellevue and the arrow extracted. It was a mystery! Who was firing arrows in the air? Two and two were put together; Fairbanks manfully confessed and paid the dazzled and (now evidently lucky) man a handsome $5,000.

  A gentle and comic little tale, for tale it was. True, the arrow did travel that prodigious distance, and it did hit Mr. Seligman. Unfortunately, it hit him in the chest. Frank Case was present when Fairbanks learned the awful news from reporters:

  Conversation and laughter ceased suddenly. We were all terribly distressed, especially Douglas, who paced the room in torment. Meanwhile the press, still waiting, had to be seen and no newspaper man, even with the best heart and intentions, could be asked to smother, or even tone down, a story of Robin Hood shooting a furrier with a longbow half a block from Fifth Avenue. That couldn’t be expected. . . .

  It was three in the morning before Cap [O’Brien] managed to get the furrier or one of his family on the telephone and arrange a meeting for the next day. Happily it turned out that the man was not seriously hurt physically, so satisfactory arrangements were made to soothe his outraged feelings, and quite properly outraged it seemed to me—for you can’t expect a man to be pleased at having an arrow stuck in his ribs while he is sewing up a mink.

  As a matter of history, later on when the man learned who it was that had pinked him, and when he had lunch with Douglas and two choice seats for the opening, he seemed quite pleased about the whole thing.

  Well, everybody was much relieved when Cap signaled all clear the following afternoon. But
the hours between midnight and the receipt of Cap’s message (we stayed up all night) were hours of distress filled with misery.

  Fairbanks was lucky—and a beneficiary of the laws of physics. The distance the arrow traveled ensured that it struck its victim with little force. Still, it was a careless act; he had well earned his long night’s agony. He could have killed the man. Apart from the moral burden this would impose for the rest of his life, it would likely have led to a manslaughter charge, and no amount of smiles, charms, or stunts would have helped him escape that brush with the constabulary.

  The industry was still staggering under the weight of recent scandals. True, Roscoe Arbuckle had finally been acquitted on his third trial in March of that year. But Will Hays banned him from America’s screens nonetheless. And weeks before the acquittal, Paramount director William Desmond Taylor was murdered in a case that was to destroy the careers of comedienne Mabel Normand and Paramount’s Mary Miles Minter. The vilification of “movie people” that this engendered was significant. “It isn’t safe to admit that you know anyone in Hollywood except Jackie Coogan,” Fairbanks quipped. When he and Mary were questioned on the Taylor murder, he was quick to distance them from the misdeeds in town: “We don’t know anything a-tall about this affair,” he said. “You see, we live in Beverly Hills, and that’s seven miles from Hollywood.”

  They both positioned themselves as representatives of the better-behaved class of filmdom worker. “The whole motion picture industry should not be condemned because a few persons do not conduct themselves as they should,” tsk-tsked Mary, as her husband added, “Real motion picture stars know no more of dope rings and drug parties than they do of the eight-hour law, and unless the public sticks to facts rather than fancies, there soon will be no motion picture industry in this country.”

 

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