Encyclopedia > Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

  Article Content

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (May 23, 1883 - December 12, 1939) was an American actor and film producer.

Fairbanks became noted for his swashbuckling roles in such films as The Black Pirate, The Mark of Zorro[?], Arizona[?] and The Three Musketeers[?].

Born Douglas Elton Thomas Ulman in Denver, Colorado, he was raised by his mother after his parents divorced. He attended Colorado School of Mines[?] and Harvard University, and worked in a hardware store and as a clerk in a Wall Street office before appearing on Broadway in 1902.

In 1915 he moved to Hollywood. While traveling with Charlie Chaplin in a War Bonds[?] drive, he met and fell in love with Mary Pickford, whom he married in 1920 and divorced in 1936. He, Pickford, Chaplin and D. W. Griffith formed United Artists studios in 1919. He was a founder of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences[?] and produced its first awards program.

He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7020 Hollywood Blvd. His handprints and Pickford's were the first to be saved in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theater[?].

He was the father of actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Douglas Fairbanks died in 1939 and was interred in the Hollywood Forever Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood, California.



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Dennis Gabor

... Gabor - Wikipedia <<Up     Contents Dennis Gabor Dennis Gabor (Gábor Dénes) (1900-1979) was a Hungarian physicist. He invented holography ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 40.4 ms