About The Mark of Zorro (1920)
The story behind the film
In 1919 the pulp writer Johnston McCulley introduced a new hero in a serial called The Curse of Capistrano: Zorro, a masked swordsman defending the poor of Spanish California against corrupt officials. By day he is Don Diego Vega, a languid, foppish young nobleman who yawns through conversations and prefers poetry to politics; by night he's a dashing outlaw who carves his "Z" into his enemies' belongings.
Douglas Fairbanks, until then known mostly for breezy modern comedies, saw the potential for something bigger. He produced The Mark of Zorro through his own company and co-wrote the adaptation under the pen name "Elton Thomas". It was the first film released through United Artists, the distribution company Fairbanks had founded in 1919 with Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith. Its success changed Fairbanks' career: for the rest of the 1920s he became the screen's great swashbuckler in films such as Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad and The Black Pirate.
Cast & crew
- Directed by Fred Niblo
- Douglas Fairbanks as Don Diego Vega / Señor Zorro
- Marguerite De La Motte as Lolita Pulido
- Noah Beery as Sergeant Pedro Gonzales
- Robert McKim as Captain Juan Ramon
- Charles Hill Mailes and Claire McDowell as Don Carlos and Doña Catalina Pulido
- George Periolat as Governor Alvarado
Why it's worth watching
Fairbanks is a joy. His double act — the wilting, handkerchief-waving Don Diego and the grinning, athletic Zorro who vaults over tables, swings from rafters and duels half a garrison at once — is the template for every secret-identity hero who followed. Watching him run up walls and leap onto horseback, you can see why audiences of the 1920s adored him.
The film is also very funny. Noah Beery's blustering Sergeant Gonzales, who keeps boasting about what he'll do to Zorro, is a great comic foil, and the chase across the town in the final act is pure fun.
Fun facts
- The idea of a rich, seemingly useless man who secretly fights crime in a mask is widely cited as an influence on Batman; in many versions of Batman's origin, young Bruce Wayne's family has just seen a Zorro film on the night his parents are killed.
- Noah Beery's son, Noah Beery Jr., made his screen debut as a small child in this film.
- The story was remade in 1940 with Tyrone Power and again for television in 1974 with Frank Langella.
- The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2015.
Public-domain status
The Mark of Zorro was published in 1920; its US copyright has long expired, and the original 1919 Zorro story is also in the public domain. The film is in the public domain in the United States. See "Rights & source" below for the copy and music we broadcast.