Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was an American film actor, producer and military man.
Background
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was born on 9 December 1909 in New York, New York, United States. The son of Doug senior and Rhode Island heiress Anna Beth Sully. The parents separated when Doug was nine and lie lived with his mother until, at age fourteen.
Career
He was coaxed into movies by Jesse Lasky. Lasky only wanted the pull of the great man’s name, and Doug Sr. was, not surprisingly, hostile to his son’s career for many years. The irony is that Jr. tried all the harder to swashbuclde honorablv whereas the screen evidence suggests that he might have been more telling as a gigolo, weakling, or black sheep of the family.
His career dragged on until he and Britain took to each other during the war. By 1951, he retired as an actor, went into production, and became a prominent figure in London society. (He was a figure in the great Duchess of Argyll scandal of 1963.) Most of his films are easily forgotten, but here are some that have lasted better or that had some local significance in his overshadowed career: Stephen Steps Out (23, Joseph Henabery); Wild Horse Mesa (25, George B. Seitz); Stella Dallas (25, Henry King); Padlocked (26, Allan Dwan); Man Bait (27, Donald Crisp); Women Love Diamonds (27, Edmund Goulding); The Power of the Press (28, Frank Capra); The Barker (28, George Fitzmaurice); A Woman of Affairs (29, Clarence Brown); Our Modern Maidens (29, Jack Crawford), with |oan Crawford, his wife at that time; Loose Ankles (29, Ted Wilde); The Dawn Patrol (30, Howard Hawks); The Way of All Men (30, Frank Lloyd); Little Caesar (30, Mervyn Le Roy); Chances (31, Dwan); Union Depot (32, Alfred E. Green); Love Is a Racket (32, William Wellman); Scarlet Dawn (32, William Dieterle); Morning Glortj (33, Lowell Sherman); The Life of Jimmy Dolan (33, Archie Mayo); and Captured! (33, Roy del Ruth).
He went to Britain to play the tsar opposite Elizabeth Bergner’s Catherine the Great (34, Paul Czinner) and stayed for Mimi (35, Paul L. Stein);
Man of the Moment (35, Monty Banks); The Amateur Gentleman (36, Thornton Freeland); Accused (36, Freeland); and When Thief Meets Thief (37, Raoul Walsh). He went back to America to be a very merry black-satin Rupert of Hentzau in The Prisoner of Zenda (37, John Cromwell); Joy of Living (38, Tay Garnett); The Rage of Paris (38, Henry Koster); Young in Heaii (38, Richard Wallace); Gunga Din (39, George Stevens); Rulers of the Sea (39, Lloyd); Green Hell (40, James Whale); and Angels Over Broadway (41, Ben Hecht and Lee Cannes). Then, having played twins in The Corsican Brothers (41, Gregory Ratoff), he went into the U.S. navy and was in Britain for much of the war. lie had one last Hing in the peace as Sinhad the Sailor (47, Richard Wallace); as the escapee Charles II in The Exile (48, Max Ophuls); That Lady in Ermine (48, Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitsch); then to Britain for State Secret (50, Sidney Gilliat) and Mr Drake’s Duck (51, Val Guest).
He did a little producing thereafter—Another Man’s Poison (52, Irving Rapper), a Bette Davis film, unavailable for many years later on, and Chase a Crooked Shadow (58, Michael Anderson). He acted only rarely: The Crooked Hearts (72, Jay Sandrich), with Rosalind Russell; The Hostage Tower (80, Claudio Guzman); Ghost Stony (81. John Irvin); and Strong Medicine (86, Guy Green).
Personality
Doug junior was more voguishly handsome than his father. Doug Sr. always had rather narrow eves, a hooked nose, and a tendency to double chins. The son was, and remains, the epitome of glossy charm, even if nothing he has done has ever suggested a man aspiring beyond the attempt to live up to his father.