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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1920
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20mask
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1920s) The Iron Mask
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1920s Highlights
Cinema
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
The Iron Mask
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(MARCH 4, 1929)
</p>
<p> The Iron Mask. The voice, like all filmed voices, creaks a
little, but the spirit which the poetry fails to achieve is
incorporated in the superb acrobatics of the only living actor
who is also a great athlete. He has his best role again--D'Artagnan. Cardinal Richelieu, crafty, red-robed, plots
endlessly to separate the four swashbucklers who at night sleep
side by side in one wide bed and finally die side by side in one
battle. Under the window ledge a saddle waits; one leap, and
rescue drums toward the girl (Marguerite de la Motte) who,
drooping like a flower, dies in his arms. First swordsman of
France, D'Artagnan snatches from the dark tower by the river the
betrayed king with his sad, muzzled face. Best shot: the four
singing swashbucklers returning from the inn.
</p>
<p> Photographer Henry Sharp, Director Allan (Robin Hood) Dwan
and Costume Designer Maurice Leloir, who has illustrated the
best printed edition of Dumas, supply that scrupulous historical
detail which has always made Fairbanks pictures an improvement,
for U.S. audiences, on the work of romantic authors. Better also
than Dumas, rhythm and comedy are by Fairbanks. He has fought
victoriously with life some inner battle which for most people
ends in defeat. Middle age has failed to slow up his body. He
enables audiences of all ages to study what it is that makes
boys the real superiors of grown-ups.
</p>
<p> Douglas Elton Fairbanks was fired from a Denver office where
he filled inkwells because in odd moments he broke furniture,
stood on his head. In a stock company and later as a juvenile
on Broadway he found that public disorder could be profitable.
In 1907 he married one Anna Beth Sully, daughter and heir of a
soapmaker who stipulated that Fairbanks must superintend his
boiling grease-vats. Six months later Fairbanks returned to the
stage, was divorced in 1918, married Mary Pickford in 1920.
Once, locked out of his room in the Plaza Hotel, Manhattan, he
climbed up the face of the building. In Hollywood he is called
"Doug," his wife Miss Pickford. Social leaders, they dance only
with each other. She looks after the family accounts. After
making his first picture, The Lamb, for the old Triangle company
for $2,000 a week, he developed a type of film peculiar to
himself, spent $700,000 on The Three Musketeers, almost as much
on Robin Hood. Other famous ones: The Nut, The Thief of Baghdad,
Don Q, The Black Pirate, The Gaucho.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>