“It was not uncommon to find”: David Mayer, personal correspondence with author.
“first instance of record where two ‘names’”: Variety, February 19, 1912.
“a young lawyer, with nothing but debts”: Ibid., February 24, 1912.
“He’s the greatest kid in the world”: Ibid.
the inaugural show for George M. Cohan’s Grand Opera House: New York Times, March 4, 1912.
“who finds his money a nuisance”: Chicago Daily Tribune, March 4, 1912.
“I was about three then”: Fairbanks Jr., Salad Days, 20.
he assumed the part—second billed: New York Times, August 13, 1912.
only until his next play, Hawthorne of the U.S.A., was ready: Washington Post, August 11, 1912.
“I made my first appearance by vaulting a wall”: Douglas Fairbanks, “Let Me Say This for the Films,” Ladies’ Home Journal, September 1922.
“It went all right, but an actor can’t put up”: Fairbanks, “Combining Play with Work.”
Out-of-town tryouts began in late September: Washington Post, September 22, 1912.
Preview audiences were not up to expectations: Variety, September 27, 1912.
the show was pulled for revisions: Ibid., October 11, 1912.
“most-ill-advisedly written in American slang”: Washington Post, October 13, 1912.
buoyant, breezy, daring, agile: Ibid., October 22, 1912; Variety, November 8, 1912.
“one of the most skittenish and happy of our younger stars”: Chicago Daily Tribune, November 7, 1912.
“a tumultuous greeting was accorded”: Anaconda Standard, November 12, 1912.
“No matter who condemns the piece”: Variety, November 8, 1912.
“to date the young star has been badly wounded”: Ibid., January 10, 1913.
the house was still top-heavy: Ibid., February 21, 1913.
Fairbanks reportedly started making bets with the house manager: Ibid., February 7, 1913.
due to a quarrel with the star: Ibid., February 28, 1913.
“There is said to be a straining of the entente cordiale”: Ibid., March 7, 1913.
a tale of a “popular chap”: Ibid., May 12, 1913.
he was to enter rehearsals for Cooper Hoyt, Inc.: Ibid., July 18, 1913.
was now to be in a piece titled Something for Nothing: Ibid., August 1, 1913.
“unalterably opposed” to any of their stars: Ibid., November 15, 1912.
started the weary rounds of the New England variety circuit: Ibid., October 10 and 17 and November 14, 1913; Portsmouth Herald, October 15, 1938.
“jumping back and forth” to make his vaudeville appearances: Variety, November 14, 1913.
“his own very virile, positive personality”: New York Times, December 23, 1913.
It “seemed almost a sacrilege”: Washington Post, December 28, 1913.
He “surprised even his most intimate friends”: New York Clipper, January 3, 1914.
“the best role the popular young actor has created”: Washington Post, December 28, 1913.
The partnership, he declared, would run for at least five years: Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1913.
Mr. Fairbanks would return to vaudeville: Chicago Tribune, March 24, 1914.
He would premiere He Comes Up Smiling: Washington Post, May 13, 1914.
Fairbanks’s “peppery maneuvers”: Variety, May 22, 1914.
such towns as Atlantic City and Brighton Beach: Ibid., June 19 and August 21, 1914.
Rehearsals for He Comes up Smiling started in late June: Washington Post, June 14, 1914.
premiered on September 16 at Broadway’s Liberty Theatre: New York Times, September 17, 1914.
the “whole-souled sunniness of a manner”: Ibid.
“not true to the blithe spirit of the people”: New York Times, September 20, 1914.
“with no end of money in his pocket”: Ibid., September 17, 1914.
It did better than most new plays on Broadway: Variety, November 7, 1914.
Woods decided that the play did not have the legs: Chicago Daily Tribune, November 15, 1914.
The tour took him from Maryland to Pennsylvania to New York: Variety, November 21 and 28, 1914.
he “can easily go over the same route a second time”: Ibid., December 4, 1914.
“Those Moe Levy tickets”: Ibid., February 5, 1915.
“We are doing that awful thing”: Fairbanks correspondence, author’s collection.
the greater part of the floor seats could also be offered at the full fare: Variety, March 12, 1915.
“I guess I’ll tackle the ten cent movies”: James Forbes, The Show Shop: A Farcical Satire in Four Acts (New York: Samuel French, 1919), 129.
4. Triangle (as in Company)
“A short time later Fairbanks told me”: Frank Case, Tales of a Wayward Inn (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1938), 82.
“The night that I saw The Birth of a Nation”: Douglas Fairbanks, “Let Me Say This for the Films,” Ladies’ Home Journal, September 1922.
“It has grown to a fad almost”: Variety, December 20, 1912.
“I went along [directing] as usual”: Partial manuscript of autobiography, p. 4, Brenon Collection, box 3: correspondence 1951–55, Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library, Los Angeles, CA.
By the fall of 1913, he had progressed: Grace Dawley, “J Searle Dawley, Director” (unpublished manuscript), pp. 78–79, private collection of Kevin Brownlow.
“I know nothing about business”: Ibid.
“My many questions must have bored everyone”: Douglas Fairbanks, “How I Got In” (unsourced article), Douglas Fairbanks Papers, scrapbook 5, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA.
His first public film appearance was in early November 1913: Variety, November 7, 1913.
“He agreed to come with Essanay”: Photoplay, June 1924.
Jesse Lasky and Sam Goldwyn, of Famous Players, contemplated: Robert S. Birchard, Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 36.
Fairbanks “in his racing runabout”: Naugatuck Daily News, January 11, 1915.
Stars from “the legitimate” were being signed: “Charge of Movie Brigade Lands Score of Legits as Film Stars,” Variety, April 23, 1915.
“a quick mind and a ready tongue”: Richard Schickel, D. W. Griffith: An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 201.
Of note is the fact that D. W. Griffith: Ibid., 206.
“[His] financial affairs were sufficiently complicated”: Kalton C. Lahue, Dreams for Sale: The Rise and Fall of the Triangle Film Corporation (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1971), 29.
Fairbanks’s “talents and professional standing”: Contract between Douglas Fairbanks and the Mutual Film Corporation, July 1915, author’s collection.
“I don’t want my reputation spoiled”: Kevin Brownlow, notes on interview with Gilbert Seldes, n.d., private collection of Kevin Brownlow.
“We picked Douglas Fairbanks as a likely film star”: Alistair Cooke, Douglas Fairbanks: The Making of a Screen Character, Museum of Modern Art Film Library Series 2 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1940), 13.
D. W. Griffith was not there to meet him: Variety, July 23, 1915.
“They call it the juvenile jump”: Edna Ferber, Roast Beef, Medium: The Business Adventure of Emma McChesney, serialized in Correctionville News, December 24, 1914.
“It is an interesting question”: Variety, September 24, 1915.
a two-story California-Japanese bungalow: Ibid., August 6, 1915.
A new open-air stage: Moving Picture World, September 11, 1915.
under his supervision: “The Meaning of ‘Griffith-Supervised,’” Motography, January 15, 1916.
“Hollywood is a world being made”: Repository (Canton, OH), April 26, 1924.
“I swear that during my first week here”: Film Players Herald, February 1916.
photographs of Fairbanks: Moving Picture World, Sep
tember 25, 1915.
He famously claimed, for example: Paolo Cherchi Usai, ed., The Griffith Project, vol. 6 (London: British Film Institute, 2002), 164.
Kevin Brownlow explains: Kevin Brownlow, personal correspondence with author.
“he rode and shot with the best of them”: Triangle press sheet, September 1915, Margaret Herrick Library.
“brown as an Indian, lively as a grasshopper”: Ibid.
“Probably there never will again be such a bunch”: Ibid.
“No event of the season has been so fraught with interest”: Motion Picture News, September 25, 1915.
“a good fast director”: Joseph Henabery, interview with David Shepard, January 12, 1970, Directors Guild of America, Los Angeles, CA.
“a rollicking, typically American melodrama”: Photoplay, December 1915.
“The Lamb . . . is by far the high spot”: Motion Picture News, September 25, 1915.
“The Lamb was his first picture”: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., interview with Kevin Brownlow, 1975, recorded for Hollywood (documentary TV series), 1980, private collection of Kevin Brownlow.
“One incident which is ‘sure fire’”: Motion Picture News, September 25, 1915.
No less an authority than Russell Merritt: Paolo Cherchi Usai, ed., The Griffith Project, vol. 8 (London: British Film Institute, 2004), 126.
“Columns of praise would not do justice to The Lamb”: Variety, October 1, 1915.
his recently deceased friend Elmer Booth: Moving Picture World, July 3, 1915.
took over the small town of Santa Ana: Twin Falls Times, September 28, 1915.
cast and crew arrived at Triangle’s studios: Motography, October 16, 1915.
A boxing match was filmed: Ibid., December 11, 1915.
“His personality is so all-pervading”: Moving Picture World, February 12, 1916.
studio in Fort Lee and another facility: Richard Koszarski, Fort Lee: The Film Town (1904–2004) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 164.
Critics at the Knickerbocker premiere noted: Motion Picture News, February 12, 1916.
The script has such unsavory references: Private collection of Kevin Brownlow.
“He had a varied assortment of friends”: Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2012), 199.
“low-slung foreign car with a half top”: Mary Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 116.
“Miss Pickford thinks Mr. Fairbanks will do wonderful things”: Elsie Janis, So Far, So Good! (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1932), 167.
“Women are just about as companionable”: Mary Pickford, Daily Talks (syndicated column), July 23, 1916.
5. Mary and Charlie
“the focal point of an entire industry”: Edward Wagenknecht, The Movies in the Age of Innocence (New York: Ballantine Books, 1962), 121.
Mary, “whose face seemed to move”: Eileen Whitfield, Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997), 75.
“Now there’s a young fellow”: Mary Pickford, Daily Talks (syndicated column), July 16, 1916.
“and I’m quite certain Douglas didn’t either”: Mary Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 118.
“He was just about the best morale booster”: Margery Wilson, Douglas Fairbanks, Thumb Prints of the Famous (Los Angeles: Chimes Press, 1928), Douglas Fairbanks Papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA.
“People of attainment fascinated him”: Pickford, Sunshine and Shadow, 119.
“He told me to observe cultured people”: Bessie Love, From Hollywood with Love (London: Elm Tree Books, 1977), 58.
“I found him disarmingly honest”: Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography (Brooklyn: Melville House, 2012), 199.
reportedly he showed up the next morning: Letitia Fairbanks and Ralph Hancock, Doug Fairbanks: The Fourth Musketeer (New York: Henry Holt, 1953), 126–128.
“He didn’t smoke or drink much”: Gary Carey, Doug & Mary: A Biography of Douglas Fairbanks & Mary Pickford (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977), 38.
the numbers of his “extracurricular fancies”: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., The Salad Days (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 24.
He next invited Mary to the Netherland Hotel to “meet the family”: Ibid., 35.
“Mary had made another conquest”: Ibid.
“a man with a strong dramatic sense”: Kevin Brownlow, The Parade’s Gone By (New York: Knopf, 1968), 96.
“I was a little bit like that myself”: Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It (New York: Knopf, 1997), 75.
Dwan (he himself claims) and Fairbanks are sitting on the Triangle lot: Ibid., 72.
“We had to call the picture back”: Ibid., 75.
“My criticism is leveled”: Photoplay, June 1916.
“Douglas Fairbanks, Senior employed a number of directors”: Kevin Brownlow, transcript of recorded interview with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., May 31, 1962, private collection of Kevin Brownlow.
“My father had great respect”: Ibid.
“When Doug did any of his stunts”: Allan Dwan, interview with Kevin Brownlow, slate 319, take 1, recorded for Hollywood (documentary TV series), 1980, private collection of Kevin Brownlow.
Fairbanks’s screen character was such a close fusion: Alistair Cooke, Douglas Fairbanks: The Making of a Screen Character, Museum of Modern Art Film Library Series 2 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1940), 20.
“He was once in a Chicago hotel”: Wilson, Douglas Fairbanks.
a “breezy American mining engineer”: Three-sheet poster for the film, 1916, private collection.
“riding a mountain trail”: Sinclair Lewis, Dodsworth (New York: P. F. Collier, 1929), 5.
“I’m going to have a bungolaoh [sic]”: Leslie-Judge Company, Film Flashes (New York: Leslie-Judge Company, 1916), 102.
“What the actor didn’t know”: Moving Picture World, February 12, 1916.
Buried deep in the ledgers: US Majestic Motion Picture Co. ledger, January 1915–June 1917, reel 8, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Madison, WI.
“In his writing for the screen”: New York Times, April 22, 1916.
“The Good Bad Man might have been designed”: Ibid.
“a motion picture house, pure and simple”: Ibid.
“persistent phone calls and telegrams”: Fairbanks and Hancock, Doug Fairbanks, 140.
“she should learn that panting in a close-up”: New York Times, May 29, 1916.
“So next to me Mr. Fairbanks looked six foot tall”: Love, From Hollywood with Love, 58.
“a trip to Balboa, during which the ever-agile Doug”: Alma Rubens, Alma Rubens, Silent Snowbird, ed. Gary Don Rhodes and Alexander Webb (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), 76.
“who but Mr. Fairbanks could mix in”: New York Times, May 29, 1916.
“It is quite probable that if there were many more”: Ibid.
Released on the same bill as Reggie: Triangle Magazine 2, no. 11 (July 1, 1916).
“Patrons complained of undiluted Keystone shorts”: Russell Merritt, “The Griffith Third: D. W. Griffith at Triangle,” in Sulla via di Hollywood, 1911–1920, ed. Paolo Cherchi Usai and Lorenzo Codelli (Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 1988), 264.
“Mr. Fairbanks was a perfectionist”: Love, From Hollywood with Love, 58.
Fairbanks appealed up to the Supreme Court of New York: Fairbanks v. Winik, 206 App. Div. 449 (N.Y. App. Div. 1923); Fairbanks v. Winik, 198 N.Y.S. 299 (Sup. Ct. 1922).
“refreshing nonsense, farcical to the last degree”: Motion Picture News, July 15, 1916.
“John Emerson staged the travesty”: Variety, May 26, 1916.
the film “didn’t quite come off”: Love, From Hollywood with Love, 58.
“to see Doug at bay and fighting”: Richard Schickel, His Picture in the Papers: A Speculation on Celebrity in America Based on the Life of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (New York: Charterhouse, 1974), 47.
“melodramas decorate
d by acrobatics”: Cooke, Douglas Fairbanks, 16.
“pictorially ravishing”: Michael Sragow, Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (New York: Pantheon Books, 2008), 47.
“We, who had a hand in its making”: Photoplay, March 1918.
“There is also less than the usual”: Motion Picture News 14, no. 3: 452.
“Douglas Fairbanks in a heavy dramatic role!”: Photoplay, February 1918.
Doug “apparently had liked me”: Rubens, Alma Rubens, 76.
“Up, above the ordinary level”: Photoplay, October 1916.
“looks rather more like Peter Pan”: New York Times, July 10, 1916.
“It didn’t look good at all”: Photoplay, March 1918.
Originally Fairbanks was slated to play Octavius: Ibid., April 1916.
he appeared in the smaller role of young Cato: Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1916.
ARRIVE AT 9:40A.M.: Triangle Magazine 2, no. 9 (June 17, 1916).
“A pleasant surprise took us quite off our feet”: Mary Pickford, Daily Talks, Duluth News Tribune, July 23, 1916.
“Let’s hope the mermaids enjoy it”: Mary Pickford, Daily Talks, Anaconda Standard, September 22, 1916.
“with a twinkle in his eyes”: Ibid.
“The man of him has never lost sight”: Mary Pickford, Daily Talks, Flint Daily Journal, October 11, 1916.
“It is a good sign, a healthful sign”: Everybody’s Magazine, 1916, 729–738.
“that as an all-around athlete”: Motion Picture News 14, no 13: 2058.
“The set was ready”: Ben Carré, unpublished memoirs, 196, private collection of Kevin Brownlow.
“if Mr. Fairbanks had not swung quickly”: Mary Pickford, Daily Talks, Flint Daily Journal, July 30, 1916.
“with hands in trouser pockets”: New York Times, September 11, 1916.
“rather fancied the dashing look”: Fairbanks Jr., Salad Days, 22.
“no real newsboy ever looked”: Ibid., 43–44.
“Dad was absent so often”: Ibid., 30–31.
“Senior was perfectly tender”: Schickel, His Picture in the Papers, 58.
“Fairbanks and his lasso”: Leslie-Judge Company, Film Flashes, 55.
“loved Eunice, then only six”: Douglas Fairbanks Papers, scrapbook 1: condolence letters, Margaret Herrick Library.
“jolly and vigorous but infrequent”: Fairbanks Jr., Salad Days, 30.
The First King of Hollywood Page 59
