Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman
Born: 23 May 1883, Denver CO.
Died: 12 December 1939.
Buried: Hollywood, CA

Biography.

Douglas Fairbanks came from a dysfunctional family: his father, a drunk with the last name Ulman, abandoned his family when Douglas was aged 5, and he was raised by his mother, who changed his last name to Fairbanks – the name of her own ex-husband!

By his late teens, Douglas was an in-demand actor on the Denver stage, and in 1900 the family moved to New York, where Douglas began to appear in small roles on Broadway.

Douglas’ career took many years to take off, but he was finally offered a $104,000 contract by the Triangle Film Corporation in 1914. In preparation for this new direction, Douglas and his family moved to Hollywood in 1915.

Initially mentored by D.W. Griffith (who had his own production company, the Fine Arts Film Company, under the Triangle umbrella), Douglas quickly found success as a very athletic comedic actor, churning out 28 films from 1915-1919. It was in this latter year that Douglas, together with his mistress Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Griffith, formed United Artists. The first film produced by the new company was Fairbanks’ own His Majesty, the American.

The next year, 1920, Fairbanks divorced his wife of 22 years (he had married Anna Beth Sully in 1907), and married Mary Pickford. It was also in this year that Fairbanks’ career took a hard turn, when he made The Mark of Zorro, and from this point forward, Fairbanks was an action and adventure hero, rather than a comedian. It was over the remainder of the silent era that Fairbanks made his most famous movies, including Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), and The Black Pirate (1926).

The aging Douglas Fairbanks retired from movies in 1933, divorced Mary the same year, and died in 1939 of a heart attack.

(Information in this post was adapted primarily from article by Tammy Stone, Douglas Fairbanks Sr.)

Silent Filmography of Douglas Fairbanks

Key to Studio names:

Fine Arts = the Fine Arts Film Company. This was D.W. Griffith’s own production studio, which made films under the Triangle Film Corporation banner. The Triangle logo appears at the beginning of most of Fairbanks’ films which were produced and released in 1915-1916.
DF Pictures = Douglas Fairbanks Pictures. Fairbanks formed this production company in 1917.
Elton = Elton Corporation.