The Mark of Zorro Starring Douglas Fairbanks

Swashbuckling Adventure Movie from the Silent Era

Oct 8, 2009

Douglas Fairbanks stars as Zorro in this classic from 1920. Fred Nibla directs The Mark of Zorro, the first movie to feature the masked hero.

Zorro began as a character in an All-Star Weekly magazine serial called ‘The Curse of Capistrano.’ Already the most bankable star in Hollywood, Fairbanks had the clout to produce anything he liked and thought Zorro would suit him perfectly. Fairbanks was worried audiences would struggle to accept him in a role that was so different to anything he had done before, so he filmed a comedy called The Nut (Theodore Reed 1921) just in case The Mark of Zorro bombed.

The term swashbuckler existed before Fairbanks and the movies. It was initially used to describe swordsmen, but eventually became associated with fictional stories of chivalry such as Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers.. Fairbanks brought this spirit of adventure to the movies and despite being in his late thirties when he filmed The Mark of Zorro moved with remarkable agility and grace turning himself into the silver screen’s first action hero.

The action begins in a tavern where a man explains to those present how he came to have the letter Z carved into the side of his face. The bullying Sergeant Gonzales picks on one of the smaller men working in the bar and then boasts about how he would deal with Zorro if he ever faced him. Don Diego Vega (Douglas Fairbanks) enters the bar and Gonzales continues his boasting in the hope of impressing this foppish aristocrat. Diego compliments him and then leaves.

The Governor wants Zorro too and places a reward of 10,000 pesos on his head. Zorro turns up at the tavern and persuades all the patrons to jump behind the bar, which they do, piling on top of each other, which is funny. Especially for Zorro, who starts laughing like a lunatic, before challenging Gonzales to a sword fight.

Zorro is of course the seemingly effete Don Diego in disguise, allowing Fairbanks to retain some of the comic persona the audience would have been familiar with from his earlier movies. There is a certain amount of mischief in his courtship of Lolita (Marguerite De La Motte). She wants him to be more like the brave and fearless Zorro, while he delights in being a fop and trying to impress her with magic tricks with handkerchiefs.

As Zorro tries to rally the Californians against the Spanish aristocracy Lolita and her father find themselves in danger. The Governor becomes more brutal, raising taxes and ordering Franciscan Monks to be publicly flogged. It all ends in a rousing showdown emphasising Fairbanks acrobatic physicality.

The success of The Mark of Zorro brought about the era of the swashbuckler. For the rest of the 1920’s Fairbanks starred in lavish period adventure movies, including a turn as the legendary outlaw in Robin Hood (Allan Dwan 1922). A sequel to Zorro appeared in 1925 with Fairbanks playing father and son in Don Q: Son of Zorro (Donald Crisp). The Mark of Zorro was remade in Technicolor in 1940, with Tyrone Power in the leading role.

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