Douglas Fairbanks: How Hollywood’s First Swashbuckling Superstar Changed Action Movies

From the earliest days of silent cinema, swashbuckling films borrowed inspiration from the enduring period and costume adventures written by the likes of Alexandre Dumas and Rafael Sabatini. They were catnip to an audience that thrilled at audacious displays of derring-do, catapulting the athletic and charismatic Douglas Fairbanks Sr. into immortality as one of Hollywood’s first big-screen superstars, who proudly claimed to have performed many of his own stunts.

Douglas Fairbanks was the first to slash the infamous “Z” in The Mark of Zorro (1920), adopting a foppish facade to cloak his heroic exploits (a signature trick of The Scarlet Pimpernel as well), leaving the scar of a “Z” as his calling card, but no “zzzz’s” of boredom in the movie house…