Douglas Fairbanks: In His Own Words by The Douglas Fairbanks Museum, Keri Leigh (Foreword by)

Douglas Fairbanks: In His Own Wordsby Anonymous

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March 03, 2007: I have loved reading biographys for as long as I can remember, they weremy first introduction to serious reading. I had heard of DouglasFairbans Sr. since my childhood days but all I really knew about him was that he was a famous actor who got his start in silent films. A very dear friend of mine got me interested in silent movies several years ago and had some of Doug's movies, most of them were silent movies but she also had some of his later sound movies. I wasn't real sure I would find ths book very interesting but I am happy to say I was sure wrong about that. I enjoyed it from the very first page to the last,it was never boring and I was sorry when I reached the last page, I wanted it go on and on. I was amazed at the versatility of the man,he was so much more than just a 'movie actor'. He loved writing as much as he did acting and started writing short stories while still in his teens. His love of writing continued right up until his death. and his stories were published in various popular magazines. He became a star on Broadway and from there went into movies,he preferred making movies to performing on the stage because you could do more and reach a much larger audience with movies. He wasn't satisfied in merely starring in movies, he had to learn everything about the making of them, and later wrote most of his own scripts and formed a movie studio in partnership with his wife Mary Pickford, his good friend Charlie Chaplain, and the legendery D.W. Griffith, they named the? studio United Artists. Doug loved to travel the world and whenever the wanderlust would hit him he would take a hiatus from movie making and set off for far away places.He was a great believer in physical fitness and wrote many articles on the subject for various publications. His atheletic prowess was unsurpassed by any other film actor, he could do things others would never even think of doing, he was truly a superb athelete. In spite of his healthy lifestyle Fairbanks had one bad habit that probably contributed?to his early death from a heart attack. This was back in the days before the dangers of cigarette smoking was known by the general public, and Doug was a very heavy smoker, on the average of two to three packs a day. I could go on and on about the man and about this book.it's that good. The credit for putting this excellent book together goes to the curator of the Douglas Fairbanks Museum in Austin, Texas, Keri Leigh. She and the museum staff obviously put many long hours into finding, selecting and compiling the very best of Fairbanks' written works, and I recommend it very highly to anyone who likes biography, or is just interested in movie history. In my opnion this is much better than the usual Hollywood biography or autobiography. As the title of the book says this is a book about the life of Douglas Fairbanks Sr.' IN HIS OWN WORDS', what ordinary biography can make that claim?