![]() ![]() Photograph: Bettmann/Corbisįor example, Goessel shows that Fairbanks demonstrated markedly progressive attitudes to race. Discarding Fairbanks’s own merry tales, Goessel straightens out the facts about his education and early career, details the injuries caused by his daredevil stuntwork and, with reference to the blizzard of messages sent between husband and wife, gives an intimate and moving account of his marriage to Pickford.ĭouglas Fairbanks presents Janet Gaynor with an Oscar for best actress at the first Academy Awards in 1929. A new biography, doggedly researched and sharply written by Tracey Goessel, The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks gives us a chance to consider the star in a new light, not least because it persistently interrogates much of his own myth-making. That’s a shame, because the man and his photoplays were anything but ordinary. Today, film studies courses are unlikely to linger on Fairbanks’s work: it’s considered generic Hollywood product, with little more to it than dazzles the eye. ![]() In 1929, he was involved in the establishment of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California – one of the first film studies faculties – and gave its opening lecture, on “photoplay appreciation”. As the host of its first prizegiving ceremony in 1929, he handed out 14 awards to his peers, though he was never to receive an Oscar in his lifetime. In 1927, Fairbanks was a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. ![]()
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