This Is Your Life: Douglas Fairbanks Jr

Douglas FAIRBANKS Jr KBE, DSC (1909-2000)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Douglas Fairbanks Jr, actor, was surprised by Michael Aspel in the foyer of Thames Television's Teddington Studios, having been led to believe he was to be interviewed for television by film historian Kevin Brownlow.

As the son of one of cinema's first icons, it was almost inevitable that Douglas would become an actor. He was given a Hollywood contract with Paramount Pictures at the age of 14, but it was with Warner Brothers that he made his name, appearing in such films as The Prisoner of Zenda and Little Caesar.

During the Second World War, as a naval officer, he was involved in the invasions of Sicily, Italy and southern France, for which he received several military honours and an honorary knighthood. After the war he moved to England where he developed his own television series, Douglas Fairbanks Presents. He appeared in several stage productions during the 1960s and 70s and later became a successful businessman, producing films and developing property.

"Goodness gracious – all of it in here? Well how wonderful, I can't wait to open it and read it!"

programme details...

Edition No: 766
Subject No: 757
Broadcast date: Wed 20 Dec 1989
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Thu 7 Dec 1989
Venue: Teddington Studios
Series: 30
Edition: 9
Code name: Salad

on the guest list...

Lady Alexandra Metcalfe
Duke and Duchess of Wellington
Lady Tomkins
Leatrice Gilbert Fountain
Victoria - daughter
John Holzman - son-in-law
Eliza - granddaughter
Barry - grandson
Melissa - daughter
Joseph - grandson
Crystal - granddaughter
Daphne - daughter
Anthony - grandson
Nicholas - grandson
Dominick - grandson
Barbara Fairbanks Weston
Charles 'Buddy' Rogers
Cdr Jack Watson
Maureen O'Hara - via telephone
Greta Gynt
Muriel Pavlow
Margaretta Scott
Robert Beatty
Christopher Lee
Dinah Sheridan
Belinda Carroll
Michael Howarth
message from Ronald Reagan
message from Prince and Princess Michael of Kent
Guiseppe Buzzeti
Bob Hope
Brooke Shields
James Niven
Roddy McDowall
Lord Brabourne
Countess Mountbatten of Burma

production team...

Researcher: Sue Green
Writer: Roy Bottomley
Directors: Brian Klein, Paul Kirrage
Associate Producer: John Graham
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

The Glamorous Life

Hollywood in the spotlight

The Big Red Book

the programme's icon

BBC axes This Is Your Life

Press coverage of the BBC's announcement

This Is Your Life Set For TV Comeback

Press coverage of the programme's relaunch

Screenshots of Douglas Fairbanks Jr This Is Your Life

Scriptwriter Roy Bottomley recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, This Is Your Life: The Story of Television's Famous Big Red Book...

'There's a legendary name on this book,' Michael Aspel told the immaculately dressed, perfectly groomed man who walked through the front doors of Teddington Studios. 'Yours.'

Some of us had waited years for the moment when Douglas Fairbanks Junior – screen heart-throb, war hero and honorary knight – would see his name on the Big Red Book. We had planned to surprise him in New York and most recently in Hollywood, but keeping pace with the daily schedule of the eighty-year-old who looked sixty proved too much even for the Life team. No sooner had a venue been set up, than it was altered.

Until Thursday 7 December 1989. We knew that – other things being equal – he planned to be in London, his second home, for the occasion of his eightieth birthday. But how to pin him down for a Life?

The very name of Fairbanks is redolent of the whole story of the movies. Douglas Junior's mother, Ann Beth, was divorced from the world's most famous swashbuckling silent movie star, Douglas Fairbanks Senior, when their son was only nine. The sweetheart of the silents, Mary Pickford, became his stepmother.

And it was the silent movies that came to our rescue. We enlisted the aid of Thames Silents expert Kevin Brownlow, and booked him as the interviewer for a special 'look back' with Douglas.

Waiting to greet him for this 'extra' birthday party were many of his London friends, and from New York Leatrice Fountain, the daughter of another legend from silent days, John Gilbert.

Greeting him from Hollywood were a couple of great 'talkies' Bob Hope and Brooke Shields, and his family came in from New York, Miami and London, three daughters and eight grandchildren.

The love of his life, his wife Mary Lou, had sadly died. He had married her after divorcing Joan Crawford, whom he married when he was only nineteen. It lasted three years.

The photographs and film clips from the archive were a treasure-trove for any cinemagoer. We saw Douglas, aged six, with his father on the set of D W Griffith's classic Intolerance, and again in Half Breed.

But he had come up the hard way, starting as studio tea-boy, and making his first film, Stephen Steps Out, at just fourteen.

Then came the moment when Hollywood panicked; the invention of the 'talkies'. He made the transition, and his greatest competitor was the man known as 'America's Boyfriend', Charles 'Buddy' Rogers. Five years older than Douglas, he was to marry Mary Pickford after she and Douglas Senior divorced. We flew him in, an amazing eighty-five, to remind us, 'So, America's Boyfriend married the World's Sweetheart.'

The nostalgia-fest had only just begun as we proceeded to remind Douglas, and his many fans, of his hits of the Thirties: Little Caesar with Edward G Robinson, Catherine the Great with Joan Gardner, Moonlight is Silver with Gertrude Lawrence, and we showed the famous sword fight with Ronald Colman in The Prisoner of Zenda.

When his best pal David Niven (we heard from Niven's son, James) become among the very first of the Hollywood Brits to volunteer at the outbreak of war, Douglas Fairbanks Junior threw himself into the war effort in the USA. His support for Britain was unstinting, organising war relief funds and voluntary hospitals. In 1942 he shed the role of screen hero to take on the real-life role of a naval officer, seeing early action on minesweeping patrol in the North Atlantic.

Later, he was involved in the invasions of Sicily, Italy and southern France, which resulted in a Silver Star, to which the Legion d'Honneur, the Croix de Guerre with palm, and Britain's Distinguished Service Cross were later added.

And on 28 March 1949, the former silent movie star was made a Knight Commander of the British Empire 'for services to Anglo-American relations'.

After the war he went into television (he had already made more than seventy-five films) and some of his British stars joined our celebrations, including Greta Gynt, Muriel Pavlow, Margaretta Scott, Robert Beatty and Christopher Lee. And from Ronald Reagan and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent came special birthday greetings.

Dinah Sheridan, Belinda Carroll and Michael Howarth recalled their West End appearances with him. The play was The Pleasure of his Company and, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, very appropriate it was.

Producer Malcolm Morris recalls this edition of This Is Your Life in his book, This Is My Life...

The programme can be a terrible strain on those who have to keep the secret from their partner, because sometimes they are just not used to telling lies.

In 1973 we planned to feature Douglas Fairbanks Junior, so we contacted his sweet wife. She gave us her blessing to go ahead and we sent a researcher to Hollywood to work on the story.

Then a doctor rang me in my office. He told me that he was Mrs Fairbanks' doctor and that she was ill through the strain of keeping this secret from her husband. He gave me an ultimatum; either we told Douglas Fairbanks of our plans and did the programme, or we cancelled. He would not be responsible if Mrs Fairbanks had a breakdown because of me.

We cancelled immediately and it took another sixteen years before we succeeded in doing Douglas Fairbanks' Life.

Series 30 subjects