Douglas Fairbanks was that most remarkable screen actor in the 1920's and 30's. He starred in some of the spectacular and popular films of the time, and went on to become one of the biggest names in Hollywood. A fencer through and through, Fairbanks' relation to USC extended from his friendship with dueling partner and USC's President, Rufus von KleinSmid. He and von KleinSmid planted the seeds for the prestigious USC School of Cinema/Television. And he popularized swordplay in a way that few others have ever matched.
        In "Swordsmen of the Screen," Jeffrey Richards writes, "The swashbuckler as we know it is very largely the creation of one man - Douglas Fairbanks Sr. He did not direct his films but he was their auteur. He masterminded their creation, writing the screen stories, selecting the cast, supervising the production details, collaborating on stunt design. The great tales of costume adventure - Zorro, Robin Hood, the Three Musketeers - were re-fashioned to fit them to the Fairbanks character. The ingredients - character archetypes, elaborate sets, acrobatic set-piece fights and stunts, stylized content - were definitely set by Doug's films in that unforgettable series that began with "The Mark of Zorro" in 1920 and ended with "The Iron Mask" nine years later. Before Doug there had been adaptations of the old heroic stories - but adaptations that still literal and literary in concept. After Doug, the swashbuckler took off as a cinematic genre, in which physical movement and visual style predominated. But for sheer verve and vitality there was never anyone equal to Doug."
        In Gary Carey's biography, "Doug and Mary," he writes, "The United Artists publicity mills ground out lots of copy about Fairbanks's mastery of the foil, most of it pure fabrication. For Zorro, Doug had hired Henry Uyttenhove, fencing coach of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, who showed him the correct method of parry and attack, the proper position for guards and lunges. On screen he looked as though he had been born with an epee in hand, but both Uyttenhove and Fred Cavens (fencing coach of the later Fairbanks films) have claimed he never acquired more than a modicum of technique.
        But a little technique was all Doug really needed. When combined with his considerable gymnastic skills, it produced dazzling results, and in "Musketeers" he performed what has been called the "single most difficult feat of his career" - the left-handed handspring balanced on a short dagger with which he wipes out an entire regiment of the Cardinal's Guards. (Men who saw the film when they were boys still remember this moment with awe in their eyes.)"
        In "Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks", Booten Herndon writes "swordplay also fascinated him. Doug was an accomplished boxer, gymnast, swimmer, rider, roper, and tennis player, and now he took up fencing. To his stable of boxers, wrestlers, and cow punchers he added the suave, graceful Henry Uyttenhove, a former Belgian fencing champion. While competition fencing may be a rather dull spectator sport, to the participant it is one of the most demanding contests of all, requiring immense mental concentration, physical quickness, and stamina. With Uyttenhove's tutelage and his own natural ability, Doug quickly learned to put on the most dazzling display of swordsmanship, exaggerating the classic movements in a way that made fencing experts wince but delighted theatergoers. He worked out regularly from then on, and fencing became another sport in which he could probably have achieved world ranking."