Talk of the Town Ronald Colman, Virginia Bruce, Allyn Joslyn Guest Wife Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray, Dick Foran The Firebrand Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Virginia Field, Frank Morgan Douglas Elton Fairbanks, Jr. KBE DSC (December 9, 1909 -- May 7, 2000) was an American actor and a highly decorated naval officer of World War II. Fairbanks' father was one of cinema's first icons, noted for such swashbuckling adventure films as The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood and The Thief of Bagdad. Largely on the basis of his father's name, Fairbanks, Jr. was given a contract with Paramount Pictures at age 14. After making some undistinguished films, he took to the stage, where he impressed his father, his stepmother Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin, who encouraged him to continue with acting. He began his career during the silent film era. He initially played mainly supporting roles in a range of films featuring many of the leading female players of the day: Belle Bennett in Stella Dallas (1925), Esther Ralston in An American Venus (1926) and Pauline Starke in Women Love Diamonds (1927). In the last years of the silent period, he was upped to star billing opposite Loretta Young in several pre-Code films and Joan Crawford in Our Modern Maidens (1929). He supported John Gilbert and Greta Garbo in Woman of Affairs (1929). Progressing to sound, he played opposite Katharine Hepburn in her Oscar-winning role in the film Morning Glory (1933). With Outward Bound (1930), The Dawn Patrol (1930), Little Caesar (1931), Prisoner of Zenda (1937), and Gunga Din (1939), his movies began to have more commercial success. Fairbanks returned to Hollywood at the conclusion of World War II, but as a confirmed Anglophile, he spent a considerable amount of his time in the United Kingdom, where he was well known in the highest social circles. In 1961, he was a guest at the wedding of Katharine Worsley with Prince Edward, Duke of Kent. [3] Between 1954 and 1956 he also made a number of half-hour programs at one of the smaller Elstree film studios as part of a syndicated anthology series for television called Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Presents.[4] In the middle 1950s, Fairbanks was a guest star on NBC's The Martha Raye Show. On February 7, 1957, he appeared on NBC's The Ford Show starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. On stage, Fairbanks toured in My Fair Lady in 1968, and in The Pleasure of His Company several times, including tours in the U.S. in 1970--72 and the 1977 Australian production with Stanley Holloway. The College of Arms in London granted Fairbanks a coat of arms symbolising the U.S. and Britain united across the blue Atlantic Ocean by a silken knot of friendship. In 1982, Fairbanks was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit for his contribution to the relief of the needy in occupied Germany. It has been claimed that Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was one of the naked men in the incriminating photos used as evidence in the divorce trial of Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll in 1963.[5] Fairbanks was a friend of Laurence Olivier and was among the contributors to a documentary by The South Bank Show called Laurence Olivier: A Life. He was also a close friend of Sir Rex Harrison and was a presenter at Harrison's New York City memorial service. He wrote his autobiography, The Salad Days, in 1988. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Fairbanks_Jr.

• published: 02 Dec 2012
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