Robin Hood

Watching Robin Hood today, I realized that I had seen it in the only venue for it to be shown, on the big screen with organ accompaniment. A film like Robin Hood loses so much on the small tube.

It was one of the most expensive films ever done during the silent era, the castle set for King Richard the Lion Hearted must have been cost a mint or two. But given the popularity of Douglas Fairbanks, probably at the height of his career, the producer knew they'd get their money back and then some. The producer being Fairbanks himself had infinite faith in his prowess at the box office.

Alan Hale made the first of three appearances as Little John in various Robin Hood films. He was also Little John with Errol Flynn in the Adventures of Robin Hood and with John Derek in Rogue of Sherwood Forest. Little John here has a very extensive and different part, Hale is first seen as Fairbanks's squire before circumstances force Doug into outlawry.

Fairbanks is the Earl of Huntingdon, favored knight of Richard the Lion Hearted. But the usual Robin Hood villains Sir Guy of Gisborne and Prince John are doing their worst. John as played by Sam DeGrasse covets his brother's throne and Gisborne played by Paul Dickey has designs on Lady Marian Fitzwalter (Enid Bennett) beloved of Fairbanks.

Fairbanks and Dickey go along on the Crusade with DeGrasse left to mind the store and steal the kingdom. Fairbanks gets word about the stuff John's pulling from Lady Marian and tries to leave. King Richard imprisons him for desertion. Of course Fairbanks escapes and the real meat of the film begins.

All the sidebar stories about the various characters among the Merry Men join Robin are not included in this film. Fairbanks and Hale escape and go back to England where he becomes the legendary Robin Hood.

Wallace Beery is a most unusual Richard. He's quite the merrymaking king indeed. Of course the closest Richard has been played in real life is by Anthony Hopkins in The Lion in Winter.

Millions throughout the world fell under the sway of Doug's charm and athleticism. This Fairbanks film as did the others he made had a great message about right coming out on top, good triumphing over evil and good embodied in the clean living physical specimen of Douglas Fairbanks.

It's hard to imagine, but in the silent screen era as in no other, movie stars were placed on a pedestal as they aren't now. Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were the closest thing to royalty we had in America. Tom Cruise&Katie Holmes, Brad Pitt&Angelina Jolie, don't rate anything close to those two. They even lived in a magic castle known the world over as Pickfair. Mary lived in it in fact until she died in 1979 after the fairy tale marriage fell apart in the more sobering decade of the Thirties.

I could not have had the experience of Robin Hood that I did had I not seen the film at a special screening in Shea's Theater in my city of Buffalo. The musical score as played by a live orchestra in some places or even the single organist as the audience heard in this case. Andrew Wos, who is president of the Buffalo Chapter of the American Theater Organ Society played his own score in accompaniment to the film. I asked him afterward whether he was playing the original score from Robin Hood and he said it was his own composition. If it wasn't the original score, it should have been. He told me that it was easier for him to do his own score than learn something else.

Hopefully this score will accompany even a television viewing of Robin Hood to heighten your experience. And you will get some idea in watching Robin Hood as to why Douglas Fairbanks was the ideal man of his times.

The Douglas Fairbanks version of "Robin Hood" is still good entertainment despite showing its age at times. The role gives Fairbanks a perfect chance to display his energy and charisma, and he is helped by lavish sets and scenery that recreate the world of medieval England. Wallace Beery as King Richard also is a nice complement to Fairbanks. Later versions, such as the Errol Flynn version which is still the best of all the Robin Hood movies, had many resources available to them that this one didn't, but this older version works well and is more enjoyable than most of the more recent movies based on the legend.

The story and characters are familiar from many other books and movies. But it includes some interesting scenes that cover or add parts of the legend that are not in a lot of other versions - for example, about the first half of this movie takes place before any of the events in the Flynn movie. It makes it interesting to watch even if you've already seen plenty of other "Robin Hoods", and amongst other things it gives Beery as Richard a lot more screen time. It is acted in the somewhat exaggerated style of many of the silent melodramas of the era, but in this case that tone, while perhaps providing an occasional unintentional chuckle, fits rather well with the subject matter. It's also worth paying attention to the grand sets that were constructed for the film. They were apparently rather renowned in their day, and they still do a good job of evoking the right background. Overall, it was a very good film for its time and one worth watching today.

...and may never want to see it again.

My biggest problem with the movie was the strange pace. In the beginning, before the Earl of Huntingdon becomes Robin Hood, things move as slowly as a snail. The movie is just over two hours long and could have been much shorter. For example, it opens with a long jousting tournament that could have been completely removed. But after Huntingdon goes AWOL on King Richard's Crusades (which are disturbingly glorified in this movie) to protect England from the tyranny of evil Prince John and adopts the alias Robin Hood, things suddenly start moving at break-neck speed.

Douglas Fairbanks shines in this film, creating a Robin Hood with surprising heart and humanity for a silent movie. But in a movie that was a big-budget blockbuster for the 1920s, Fairbanks's star is often eclipsed by needless pageantry, as well as by his own less-talented co-stars, particularly Wallace Beery as King Richard, the so-called "lion hearted" king who spends most of the movie laughing. He laughs when he sees that Earl of Huntingdon (Robin Hood) is scared of women, he laughs when he defeats the Muslims in the Crusades, he laughs when he discovers that Robin Hood is Huntingdon is disguise, and he laughs as he tries to barge in on Robin and Marian's wedding night in the final scene. Before long, you'll be wondering why the heck everyone in Nottingham reveres this guy, or you'll be asking the question I heard someone sitting near me in the theater whisper: "What is so funny, anyway?" Enid Bennett, playing Lady Marian, seems like a good actress, but it is hard to tell, as she's given little more to do than faint whenever a fight starts and wake up once the action's over. Her romance with Robin Hood, however, is definitely worth watching. My favorite scene in the whole movie was their first kiss: When Robin leans in toward her, she modestly turns away, and he settles with kissing the hem of her sleeve instead.

This early silent epic was actually the sixth version of the classic English fable to reach the screen, and it remains, even today, by far the biggest. Every shot is framed to highlight the extraordinary production design, which included a full-scale medieval castle built just off Santa Monica Blvd in Los Angeles, reportedly the largest set ever constructed for a motion picture. The film draws heavily on the romantic heritage of chivalry, and favors the origins of the character over his legendary exploits, following the Earl of Huntingdon (not Locksley, as in later films) into the Crusades, where he and King Richard are marked for death by the treacherous Sir Guy of Gisbourne. It isn't until the fourth (or fifth) reel that Douglas Fairbanks (in one of his definitive roles) finally exchanges his suit of armor for Robin's trademark feathered cap, and goes (literally) skipping through Sherwood Forest. Viewers more accustomed to the Errol Flynn archetype may find it an odd interpretation of the role, depicting Robin Hood as a girl-shy, over-age adolescent, liberated when he turns outlaw. And Fairbanks, always more acrobat than actor, all but dances through the part.

This is probably the most complete of the cinematic tales of this hero of 13th Century English folklore. Douglas Fairbanks assumes the role of the fabled Earl of Huntingdon before King Richard (Wallace Beery) heads off on the Third Crusade. It is only whilst on that holy mission that he discovers the brutality being carried out at home by the King's errant brother Prince John (the superbly ferret-like Sam de Grasse). He feigns an excuse to the King to return home without explaining why, but falls foul of one of John's spies and is left, injured and betrayed, to rot in a foreign tower. Luckily, "Little John" (Alan Hale) is also left and soon they are free, home and rallying the people against their would-be-usurper and his fiendishly horrid sidekicks "Guy of Gisbourne" (Paul Dickey) and the High Sheriff (William Lowery). The former of these two glorified hoodlums takes a shine to the "Lady Marion" (Enid Bennett) but can Huntingdon - now adopting the moniker "Robin Hood" save her from his evil machinations, and thwart the power hungry ambitions of Prince John in time? The biggest budget of the time ($1.5m) went into this and it is easy to see how - the sets, especially around Nottingham castle, are superb; the cast plentiful and the end to end action scenes really are a joy to watch. Fairbanks thinks nothing of scaling an hundred foot wall or fighting off dozens of the Prince's (admittedly pretty hopeless) soldiers as he determines to free his land from oppression and return it to true government. Bennett is beautiful as "Marion"; she has a feistiness that you don't always see in the frequently soporific heroines of the 1920s where the eyes were the prize. The star is at the top of his swashbuckling game, indulged totally by Allan Dwan and Arthur Edeson's grand scale - sometimes intimate - but certainly rousing photography. Fabulous entertainment, this....