Douglas Fairbanks

Douglas Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman in Denver, Colorado, to Ella Adelaide (nee Marsh) and Hezekiah Charles Ullman, an attorney and native of Pennsylvania, who was a captain for the Union forces during the Civil War. Fairbanks' paternal grandparents were German Jewish immigrants, while his mother, a Southerner with roots in Louisiana and Georgia, was of British Isles descent. From the age of five he was raised by his mother due to her husband's abandonment. She changed her sons' surnames to Fairbanks (her former husband's surname) and covered up their paternal Jewish ancestry. He began amateur theater at age 12 and continued while attending the Colorado School of Mines. In 1900 they moved to New York. He attended Harvard, traveled to Europe, worked on a cattle freighter, in a hardware store and as a clerk on Wall Street.

He made his Broadway debut in 1902 and five years later left theater to marry an industrialist's daughter. He returned when his father-in-law went broke the next year.

In 1908 on holiday he hiked across Cuba and made a walking tour of Yucatan.

Although he had met Mary Pickford and her husband Owen Moore at Elsie Janis' Tarrytown (NY) home in 1914, the actress considered him brash. However, it was at a dinner dance at New York's Algonquin Hotel the following year that they danced and fell in love. It was not until 1920 that Pickford divorced Moore and married the swashbuckling star.

In 1915, he went to Hollywood and worked under a reluctant D. W. Griffith. The following year he formed his own production company.

He has appeared in six films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Intolerance (1916), The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), The Black Pirate (1926) and Show People (1928).

President of Douglas Fairbanks Pictures Corp., formed in 1918.

During a Liberty Bond tour with Charles Chaplin he fell in love with Mary Pickford with whom he, Chaplin and Griffith had formed United Artists in 1919. He made very successful early social comedies, then highly popular swashbucklers during the 'twenties.

After receiving bad French press for his role in the American version of The Three Musketeers (1921), he vowed "never to put a foot in France again" (July 1st 1921).

He had two roles in common with Errol Flynn: (1) Fairbanks played Robin Hood in Robin Hood (1922) while Flynn played him in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and (2) Fairbanks played Don Juan de Maraña in The Private Life of Don Juan (1934) while Flynn played him in Adventures of Don Juan (1948).

Performed most of the stunts in his films himself. He was an excellent athlete and used his physical abilities to his best advantage. However, there were instances when a stuntman was used (as proved by outtakes from The Gaucho (1927)), as these types of stunts were deemed too risky for the star.

Hosted the very first Academy Awards in 1929 alongside William C. de Mille

The owners of Hollywood's Pickfair Mansion separated in 1933 and divorced in 1936.

In 1938 he formed a new company, Fairbanks-International, and announced his first production, "The Californian" would star his son, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.. The film was never made.

Among those in attendance at his funeral in 1939 were Viola Dana, Antonio Moreno, Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman, May McAvoy, and his son Douglas Fairbanks Jr...

Pictured on a 20¢ US commemorative postage stamp in the Performing Arts USA series, issued 23 May 1984.