Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood

Robin Hood
Directed by	Allan Dwan
Written by	Douglas Fairbanks
Produced by	Douglas Fairbanks
Starring	Douglas Fairbanks Wallace Beery Sam De Grasse Enid Bennett Alan Hale
Cinematography	Arthur Edeson & Charles Richardson
Edited by	William Nolan
Music by	Victor Schertzinger
Production company	Douglas Fairbanks Pictures
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	October 18, 1922 (1922-10-18)
Running time	127 minutes 11 reels (10,680 feet (3,260 m))
Country	United States
Languages	Silent film English intertitles
Budget	$930,000[1]
Box office	$2,500,000 (US/Canada)[2]

Robin Hood is a 1922 silent adventure film starring Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery. It was the first motion picture ever to have a Hollywood premiere, held at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on October 18, 1922. The movie's full title, under which it was copyrighted, is Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood. It was one of the most expensive films of the 1920s, with a budget estimated at about one million dollars.^[3] The film was a smash hit and generally received favorable reviews.

Plot

The opening has the dashing

• Douglas Fairbanks as Earl of Huntingdon/Robin Hood (Fairbanks's custom was to place his name last.)
• Wallace Beery as King Richard the Lion-Hearted
• Prince John
• Enid Bennett as Lady Marian Fitzwalter
• Paul Dickey as Sir Guy of Gisbourne
• William Lowery as The High Sheriff of Nottingham
• Willard Louis as Friar Tuck
• Alan Hale as The Squire/Little John
• Bud Geary as Will Scarlet
• Lloyd Talman as
  Allan-a-Dale
• Billie Bennett as Servant to Lady Marian

Wallace Beery played King Richard the Lion-Hearted again the following year in a sequel called Richard the Lion-Hearted.

A huge castle set and an entire 12th-century village of Nottingham were constructed at the Pickford-Fairbanks Studio in Hollywood. Some sets were designed by architect Lloyd Wright. Director Allan Dwan later recalled that Fairbanks was so overwhelmed by the scale of the sets that he considered cancelling production at one point. The castle was largely built of wood, wire, and plaster.^[4] The exceptions were the concrete floor and the (wood-covered) steel drawbridge.^[4]

The story was adapted for the screen by Fairbanks (as "Elton Thomas"), Kenneth Davenport, Edward Knoblock, Allan Dwan, and Lotta Woods, and was produced by Fairbanks for his own production company, Douglas Fairbanks Pictures Corporation, and distributed by United Artists, a company owned by Fairbanks, his wife Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith. This swashbuckling adventure was based on the legendary tale of the medieval hero, Robin Hood, and was the first production to present many of the elements of the legend that became familiar to movie audiences in later versions, although an earlier treatment had been filmed a decade before in the woods around Fort Lee, New Jersey, featuring even more flamboyant costumes than the Fairbanks version.

Score

At its premiere, Robin Hood was accompanied by an orchestral score especially commissioned by Fairbanks and composed by Victor Schertzinger. That score has also been adapted and conducted live by U.S. composer Gillian Anderson. Though the film has received many live and recorded scores since its first release, perhaps the two most significant are further orchestral scores written in 2007 by American composer and conductor John Scott, and in 2016 by eminent British silent film musician Neil Brand.

Reception

Robin Hood generally received favorable reviews. It received an aggregate score of 100% and an average rating of 8.4/10 from Rotten Tomatoes based on 10 reviews.^[5] Combustible Celluloid's Jeffrey M. Anderson rated the movie 4 stars out of 4, concluding "Director Allan Dwan had worked with Fairbanks on several two-reelers, and would go on to direct his last silent film, The Iron Mask (1929). Dwan would continue working, making "B" pictures up until the 1960s, and finishing up with something like 500 films on his resume before he died. But Robin Hood is his masterpiece.".^[6]

Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance evaluated the film in 2008 as follows: "Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood is the most important legacy of the rich life and career of Douglas Fairbanks. The towering sets are long gone, and the characters have been reimagined and reinterpreted, but the foundation the film was built upon—and the culture it created—exists to this day....The creation of Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood consumed nearly a year of his life, and the experience established the matrix for all of his subsequent silent film productions. Indeed, it was the first of his productions to be fully realized in every respect."^[7]

See also

• List of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a film review aggregator website

References