THE KING OF HOLLYWOOD

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Some silent stars, like Buster Keaton, swam outside the Hollywood mainstream. Fairbanks, though, was Hollywood--in his itch for control (he produced his films and wrote most of them), in his loving to be loved, in his taste for pricey grandeur. He ordered the biggest sets (Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood), the highest budgets (The Thief of Bagdad), the first epic film shot wholly in Technicolor (The Black Pirate). At times this largeness slowed the films' pace; you wait an hour for the stunts and the fun to kick in.

By the end of the '20s, talkies had taken over; Fairbanks sounded flutey and looked older in them. In 1933 he and Pickford separated. The swashbuckler was 50; another Roosevelt with a big smile was giving America a Fairbanksian jolt of optimism, and Doug was disconsolate. He told his son Douglas Jr. (by then a film star himself), "I've done everything--twice." Not just two Zorro movies and two D'Artagnans, but two careers, two marriages, too much work and play. He said he wanted to die quickly.

Fairbanks died early, at 56, but he had already written his obituary on film. At the end of the 1929 The Iron Mask, when D'Artagnan is killed, his spirit rises and he marches in heaven with the other Musketeers, their burly bonhomie still alive. And Doug is in the middle--smiling as if he'd just won the race, the fight and the girl.