Trivia: American actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr., instilled with a love of dramatics by his Shakespearean-scholar father, was never fully satisfied with theatrical work. A born athlete and extrovert, Fairbanks felt the borders of the stage were much too confining, even when his theatrical work allowed him to tour the world. The wide-open spaces of the motion picture industry were more his style, and in 1915 Fairbanks jumped at the chance to act in the film version of the old stage perennial The Lamb. Fairbanks became the top moneymaker for the Triangle Film Company, starring in an average of 10 pictures a year for a weekly salary of $2000. He specialized in comedies--not the slapstick variety, but free-wheeling farces in which he usually played a wealthy young man thirsting for adventure. Fairbanks was a savvy businessman, and in 1919 he reasoned that he could have more control--and a larger slice of the profits -- if he produced as well as starred in his pictures. Working in concert with his actress-wife Mary Pickford (a star in her own right, billed as "America's Sweetheart"), his best friend Charlie Chaplin, and pioneer director D. W. Griffith, Fairbanks formed a new film company, United Artists. The notion of actors making their own movies led one film executive to wail, "The lunatics have taken over the asylum!", but Fairbanks' studio was a sound investment, and soon other actors were dabbling in the production end of the business. Still most successful in contemporary comedies in 1920, Fairbanks decided to try a momentary change of pace, starring in the swashbuckling The Mark of Zorro (1920). The public was enthralled, and for the balance of his silent career Fairbanks specialized in lavish costume epics with plenty of fast-moving stunt work and derring-do. While several of these films still hold their fascination today, notably The Thief of Baghdad (1924) and The Black Pirate (1926), some historians argue that Fairbanks' formerly breezy approach to moviemaking became ponderous, weighed down in too much spectacle for the Fairbanks personality to fully shine. When talkies came, Fairbanks wasn't intimidated, since he was stage-trained and had a robust speaking voice; unfortunately, his first talking picture, 1929's Taming of the Shrew (in which he co-starred with Mary Pickford), was an expensive failure. Fairbanks' talking pictures failed to click at the box office; even the best of them, such as Mr. Robinson Crusoe (1932), seemed outdated rehashes of his earlier silent successes. Fairbanks' last film, the British-made Private Life of Don Juan (1934), unflatteringly revealed his advanced years and his flagging energy. Marital difficulties, unwise investments and health problems curtailed his previously flamboyant lifestyle considerably, though he managed to stave off several takeover bids for United Artists and retained the respect of his contemporaries. Fairbanks died in his sleep, not long after he'd announced plans to come out of retirement. He was survived by his actor son Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who'd inherited much of his dad's professional panache and who after his father's death began a successful career in film swashbucklers on his own.

Trivia: It's a source of amazement to those filmgoers born after 1915 -- which is to say, most of us in the early 21st century -- that rotund, frog-voiced, barrel-shaped Eugene Pallette started out in movies as a rough-and-tumble stuntman and graduated to romantic leading man, all in his first five years in pictures. Indeed, Pallette led enough differing career phases and pursued enough activities outside of performing to have made himself a good subject for an adventure story or a screen bio, à la Diamond Jim Brady, except that nobody would have believed it. He was born into an acting family in Winfield, KS, in the summer of 1889; his parents were performing together in a stage production of East Lynne when he came into the world. He grew up on the road, moving from town to town and never really putting down roots until he entered a military academy to complete high school -- which he apparently never quite managed to do. By his teens, Pallette, who was slender and athletic, was working as a jockey and had a winning record, too. Before long, he was part of a stage act involving riding, in a three-horse routine that proved extremely popular. He began acting on the stage as well, and was scraping out a living in the Midwest and West Coast, hoping to make it to New York. At one point, he was allowing a company manager in whose troupe he was working to pocket a major part of his earnings in anticipation of using the sum to finance a trip to New York, only to see the man abscond with the cash and leave him stranded. Pallette turned to movies when he arrived in Los Angeles looking for stage work and found that there was nothing for him. He headed to a nearby studio, where he was told they were looking for riders and took a job as a stuntman for $1.50 a day. He quickly realized that there was a need -- and much more money offered -- for leading men, and he was able to put himself forward in that role. In a matter of a few days, Pallette had managed to make the jump from bit player to lead, and by 1914, he was working opposite the likes of Dorothy Gish. Such was his range that he was just as capable of playing convincingly menacing villains as romantic leads and dashing heroes. He was in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation in a small role as a wounded soldier. That same year, he played starring roles in three movies by director Tod Browning -- The Spell of the Poppy, The Story of a Story, and The Highbinders -- as, respectively, a drug-addicted pianist, a writer struggling with his conscience, and an abusive Chinese husband of a white woman. In Griffith's Intolerance, he had a much bigger heroic part in that movie's French sequences, while in Going Straight, also made in 1916, he gave a memorable performance as a sadistic villain. Pallette's career was interrupted by the American entry into the First World War, for which he joined the flying corps and served stateside. When he returned to acting in 1919, he discovered that he had to restart his career virtually from square one -- a new generation of leading men had come along during his two years away. He'd also begun putting on weight while in uniform and, with his now bland-seeming features, found that only supporting parts were open to him -- and that's what he got, including an important role in Douglas Fairbanks' 1921 adaptation of The Three Musketeers. For a time, he even gave up acting, pulling his available funds together and heading to the oil fields of Texas, where he made what was then a substantial fortune -- 140,000 dollars in less than a year -- only to see it disappear in a single bad investment. Pallette spent an extended period in seclusion, hospitalized with what would now be diagnosed as severe depression, and then turned back to acting. He reestablished himself during the late silent era in character roles, built on his newly rotund physique and a persona that was just as good at being comical as menacing. Pallette signed with Hal Roach Studios in 1927, where work as a comedy foil was plentiful, and his notable two-reel appearances included the role of the insurance man in the Laurel and Hardy classic The Battle of the Century that same year. It was with the advent of the talkies, however, that he truly came into his own; his croaky but distinctive, frog-like voice -- acquired from time spent as a streetcar conductor calling off stops to his passengers -- completed a picture that made him one of the movies' most memorable, beloved, and highly paid character actors and even a character lead at times. Paramount kept Pallette especially busy, and among his more notable movies were The Virginian, playing "Honey" Wiggin, and The Canary Murder Case and The Greene Murder Case in the studio's Philo Vance series, in which he portrayed Det. Sgt. Heath. He became especially good at portraying excitable wealthy men and belligerent officials. Pallette was a veritable fixture in Hollywood for the next decade and a half, playing prominent roles in every kind of movie from sophisticated screwball comedies such as My Man Godfrey (1936) to the relatively low-brow (but equally funny) Abbott & Costello vehicle It Ain't Hay, with digressions into Preston Sturges' unique brand of comedy (The Lady Eve), fantasy (The Ghost Goes West), musicals (The Gang's All Here, in which he also got to sing as part of the finale), and swashbucklers (The Adventures of Robin Hood). The latter, in which he portrayed Friar Tuck to Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, is probably the movie for which he is best remembered. He was earning more than 2,500 dollars a week and indulged himself freely in his main offscreen hobby: gourmet cooking. He was unique among Hollywood's acting community for having free round-the-clock access to the kitchen of The Ambassador Hotel. Not surprisingly, Pallette's girth increased dramatically between the late '20s and the mid-'40s -- his weight rising to well over 300 pounds -- but it all meant more work and higher fees, right until the middle of the 1940s. He was diagnosed with what he referred to as a throat problem then, and gave up acting. By then, he had a ranch in Oregon where he and his wife lived. Pallette was also extremely pessimistic about the future of the human race, was on record as believing that some catastrophe would wipe us out, and reportedly had stockpiled food and water in a survivalist frame of mind. He died of throat cancer in the late summer of 1954, at age 65.

Trivia: According to his official studio bio, Boyd Irwin appeared for 17 years on stages in both his native England and Australia. He embarked on a screen career in the latter country in 1915, as a leading man with J.C. Williamson Prod., Southern Cross Feature Film Co., and Haymarket Pictures Corp. In America from 1919, Irwin was relegated to character roles, often villainous in nature, and can be seen as Rochefort in Douglas Fairbanks' The Three Musketeers (1921). He also played the Duc de Guise in Norma Talmadge's Ashes of Vengeance (1923) and Levasseur in Vitagraph's Captain Blood (1924) before returning to Australia. Irwin was back in Hollywood after the changeover to sound, however, lending his ramrod-straight presence to playing scores of military officers, noblemen, and even hotel clerks in films ranging from Madam Satan (1930) to Forever Amber (1947).

Trivia: A dignified stage actor from England who had appeared opposite the likes of Edward Terry, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, and Alla Nazimova, the tall, ramrod-straight Thomas Holding lent his not-inconsiderable presence to numerous American silent films between 1915 and his death in 1929. Starring opposite Pauline Frederick in his first film, the Italy-lensed The Eternal City (1915), Holding went on to become one of the era's great supporting actors and can be seen today as Buckingham in Douglas Fairbanks' lavish version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1920).

Trivia: Best remembered for playing Athos to Douglas Fairbanks' D'Artagnan in both The Three Musketeers (1921) and its long-awaited sequel The Iron Mask (1929), French-born Leon Bary anglicized his name to Leon Barry and appeared opposite Hoot Gibson in The Galloping Kid (1922) and Harry Carey in The Lightning Rider (1924). Bary returned to his native Paris at the advent of sound but continued to appear in films until at least 1952.

Trivia: Brunette silent film leading lady Marguerite De La Motte was trained as a ballet dancer (early publicity reports claim that she was instructed by Anna Pavlova). In films from 1918, Marguerite climbed to fame as the protégé of star Douglas Fairbanks Sr. She was the heroine in such Fairbanks costumers as The Mark of Zorro (1920) and The Three Musketeers (1921), and co-starred in Doug's last "contemporary" comedy of the 1920s, The Nut (1921). After making her last appearance with Fairbanks in 1929's The Iron Mask, Marguerite had trouble adjusting to talkies, and was out of pictures by 1934, save for a brief comeback in the 1942 PRC film Reg'lar Fellers. Marguerite De La Motte was once married to movie leading man John Bowers, whose 1936 suicide-by-drowning has led many historians to believe that the stormy Bowers/De La Motte marriage was the inspiration for the classic "inside Hollywood" film A Star is Born (1937).

Trivia: A grandson of the legendary Apache chief Geronimo, Charles Stevens (often billed as Charles "Injun" Stevens because of his ethnic background) made his film bow as an extra in The Birth of a Nation (1915). The close friend and "mascot" of cinema idol Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Stevens appeared in all but one of Fairbanks' starring films, beginning with 1915's The Lamb. He was often seen in multiple roles, never more obviously than in Fairbanks' The Black Pirate (1926). His largest role during his Fairbanks years was Planchet in The Three Musketeers (1921) and its sequel The Iron Mask (1929). In talkies, Stevens was generally cast as a villain, usually an Indian, Mexican, or Arab. Outside of major roles in early sound efforts like The Big Trail and Tom Sawyer (both 1930), he could be found playing menacing tribal chiefs and bandits in serials and B-pictures, and seedy, drunken "redskin" stereotypes (invariably named Injun Joe or Injun Charlie or some such) in big-budget films like John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946). He was also much in demand as a technical adviser on Native American lore and customs. Charles Stevens remained active until 1956, 17 years after the death of his pal and mentor Doug Fairbanks.

Trivia: Cadaverous British actor Nigel De Brulier is most closely associated with classical roles. His first film (after decades of stage work) was a 1915 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts; six years later he was in another Ibsen adaptation, A Doll's House. In Douglas Fairbanks' 1921 version of The Three Musketeers De Brulier played the cunning Cardinal Richelieu, a role he repeated briefly in the 1929 sequel The Iron Mask. He was also prominently featured in the Lon Chaney Hunchback of Notre Dame as Dom Claude, the head priest. Possessed of a rich theatrical voice, Nigel de Brulier made the transition to sound with ease, but most of his '30s roles were mere character bits; an exception was the 1935 Three Musketeers, in which he played Richelieu again. Towards the end of his career, and without complaint or regret, the venerable actor accepted one-day parts in "B" pictures, short subjects, westerns and serials. The best of Nigel De Brulier's latter-day assignments was as the robed, white-bearded Shazam, the ancient mystic who gives young Billy Batson (Frank Coghlan Jr.) superhuman powers in the Republic serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941).

Trivia: The sister of silent screen star Katherine MacDonald and a former photographer's model, blonde Mary MacLaren had danced in the Broadway revue The Passing Show of 1914 before making her screen debut in 1916. A favorite of pioneering woman director Lois Weber, MacLaren starred as the poor working girl in Shoes (1916) and was Marie Walcamp's maid in the anti-abortion drama Where Are My Children (1916). For another early woman director, Ida May Park, MacLaren played an actress betrayed by a Broadway wolf and reduced to living in squalor in the evocative Bread (1918) and she was a regal Anne of Austria in Fairbanks' The Three Musketeers (1921). Like most of her contemporaries, MacLaren's career waned in the 1920s and she was reduced to minor roles after the changeover to sound. After playing scores of maids, nurses and dowagers, MacLaren left films around 1948 to travel with her husband, a British military officer. Sadly, when she resurfaced in the 1970s, a newspaper reporter discovered her living in abject poverty in her once palatial Hollywood home. MacLaren's tragic story was widely reported and in her final years she became a popular guest at various silent screen revivals.

Trivia: One of the most legendary -- if least revived -- of silent screen stars, Barbara La Marr is remembered with a certain amount of romantic hindsight as the "Girl Too Beautiful." Today, however, her much-vaunted, but far too fleshy appeal is hard to accept and her lasting imprint is that of a tragic, over-exposed figure; the kind of silent star who, had she lived, would most likely have turned into another Norma Desmond. Born Reatha Watson, she had earned the "too beautiful" tag at the age of 14 when, as a young runaway, she became the ward of the Los Angeles court system. She escaped by marrying the first of five husbands, a young bounder who basically did his unhappy bride a favor by quickly dying of pneumonia. The too-beautiful widow hightailed it back to Los Angeles and married into the Converse shoe dynasty but, like a character in a vamp melodrama, her second husband also died prematurely, and a third, musician Phil Ainsworth, was sent to San Quentin on a fraud conviction. Changing her name to Barbara La Marr, she took her fourth husband, actor/dancer Ben Deeley, and began writing screenplays. She was, of course, far "too beautiful" to stay behind the cameras for long and Louis B. Mayer cast her as the "other woman" opposite Anita Stewart in Harriet and the Piper(1920). La Marr's breakthrough came when Douglas Fairbanks cast her as the evil Milady in The Three Musketeers (1920). She stole the film from leading lady, Marguerite de la Motte, and a pattern was set. Becoming Metro's most notorious femme fatale, LaMarr was the 1920s answer to the previous decade's Theda Bara, but unlike Bara, La Marr seemingly lived the part offscreen as well. Film executive Paul Bern was rumored to have attempted suicide when she took her fifth husband, male ingenue Jack Dougherty, but remained a trusted friend who reportedly begged the real-life vamp to slow down her hectic pace, both on and off the screen. The La Marr/Dougherty union was fraught with booze and drugs, and produced a child that was adopted by screen actress ZaSu Pitts and her husband Tom Gallery. The girl "too beautiful" finally succumbed to a combination of hard living and tuberculosis, collapsing on the set of The Girl From Montmartre (1926). She died a couple of months later, as one smitten writer put it, "from simply too much beauty."

Trivia: No relation to the American poet (1819-1892), white-haired character actor Walt Whitman entered films with the Triangle company in the mid-1910s after decades in various touring and stock companies. Today, Whitman is best-remembered for playing Fra Felipe in The Mark of Zorro (1920) and D'Artagnan's father in The Three Musketeers (1921). He retired in 1924.

Trivia: Popular with both Mary Pickford and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, tall, dark-haired stage actor Charles Belcher appeared in numerous legendary silent films, including Ben-Hur (1925), in which he plays Balthazar. A graduate of San Francisco's Lincoln Grammar School, Belcher had come to films in 1919 after 12 years on the stage.