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ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:

CINEMA

Volume 22

SWORDSMEN OF THE SCREEN

This page intentionally left blank
 SWORDSMEN OF TUE SCREEN
From Douglas Fairbanks to Michael York

JEFFREY RICHARDS
First published in 1977
This edition first published in 2014
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OXI4 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Frands Group, an informa business
© 1977 Jeffrey Richards
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,

and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-83865-8 (Set)

eISBN: 978-1-315-85201-0 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-415-72670-2 (Volume 22)
eISBN: 978-1-315-85575-2 (Volume 22)

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this book but points out that
some imperfections from the original may be apparent.

Disc1aimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome
correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.
Swordsmen
of the Screen
First published in 1977
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
39 Store Street,
London WC1E 7DD,
Broadway House,
Newtown Road,
H enley-on-Thames,
Oxon RG9 1EN and
9 Park Street,
Boston, Mass. 02108, USA
Set in Monophoto Ionic
and printed in Great Britain by
BAS Printers Limited, Wallop, Hampshire
© Jeffrey Richards 1977
No part 01 this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism
ISBN 0 710084781
For my fellow swashbucklers
Phil Bonney Charles Preece
Bob Walker Tony McDermott
JeffHulbert Bill Ward
All for one
and one for all
'Hoist your sails! Away! Away!
Steer for any cloud you please ;
Lost Atlantis, far Cathay,
Isles of the Hesperides,
All their whispering wizardries
Waste like foam to one refrain;
Nothing shall your hearts appease.
Would I were a boyagain.'
Alfred Noyes Ballad of Boyhood
Contents

General Editor's Preface xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction xv

1 Swashbuckling - a Profile of the

Genre 1

2 The Swordsmen of the Screen 25

3 'All for one - and one for all' 46

4 When Knighthood was in Flower 72

5 Cavaliers and Conquistadores 115

6 Blades and Brocades 137

7 The Masked A vengers 162

8 Under the Greenwood Tree 187

9 Ho , for the Open Road! 217

10 ' Nea th the Skull and Bones 230

11 On the Spanish Main 250

12 The Sheikhs of Araby 270

Select Bibliography 284

General Index 287

Index of Film Titles 294

 Illustrations

1 The Three Musketeers (1921) 2 42 Black Magie 59

2 Adventures 01 Don Juan 3 43 The Three Musketeers (1948) 65
3 The Buccaneer (1958) 6 44 The Man in the Iron Mask 65
4 Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves 7 45 The Iron Mask 66
5 Anne 01 the Indies 7 46 The Three Musketeers (1935) 66
6 The Three Musketeers (1948) 11 47 The Iron Mask 67
7 Lorna Doone (1950) 11 48 The Black Knight 76
8 Star olIndia 14 49 Prince Valiant 77
9 Star olIndia 14 50 The Black Shield 01 Falworth 77
10 The Black Swan 15 51 Knights 01 the Round Table 82
11 Mark 01 the Renegade 15 52 El Cid 82
12 Don Q, Son 01 Zorro 16 53 Ivanhoe 83
13 The Prisoner 01 Zenda (1952) 16 54 The Dark Avenger 83
14 The Adventures 01 Robin Hood 17 55 Prince Valiant 92
15 Ivanhoe 17 56 Prince Valiant 92
16 11 I Were King 20 57 El Cid 93
17 Robin Hood (1922) 21 58 Prince Valiant 98
18 Don Juan 21 59 The Black Knight 99
19 Captain Irom Castile 22 60 The Black Arrow Strikes 99
20 Men 01 Sherwood Forest 22 61 Knights 01 the Round Table 106
21 Shadow 01 the Eagle 23 62 Knights 01 the Round Table 107
22 The Count 01 Monte Cristo 29 63 The Crusades 110
23 Fortunes 01 Captain Blood 29 64 The Crusades 111
24 The Adventures 01 Robin Hood 32 65 The Crusades 111
25 The Mark 01 Zorro 32 66 The Golden Horde 111
26 Adventures 01 Don Juan 33 67 El Cid 113
27 The Sea Hawk (1940) 33 68 El Cid 113
28 The Three Musketeers (1948) 39 69 Don Juan 118
29 The Prisoner 01 Zenda (1937) 39 70 The Adventures 01 Don Juan 118
30 The Three Musketeers (1948) 43 71 Prince 01 Foxes 119
31 The Crimson Pirate 43 72 Captain Irom Castile 119
32 The Iran Mask 43 73 Swordsman 01 Siena 125
33 The Three Musketeers (1973) 47 74 Swordsman 01 Siena 125
34 The Count 01 Monte Cristo 47 75 Bardelys the Magnilicent 128
35 The Iron Mask 52 76 Bardelys the Magnilicent 128
36 The Iron Mask 52 77 The Exile 129
37 The Three Musketeers (1948) 53 78 Under the Red Robe 129
38 The Three Musketeers (1935) 53 79 The Exile 134
39 The Iron Mask 58 80 The Searlet Blade 134
40 The Man in the Iron Mask 58 81 The Moonraker 135
41 The Corsican Brothers 59 82 The Fighting Blade 134
X ILLUSTRATIONS

83 Monsieur Beaucaire 138 130 Rogues 01 Sherwood Forest 206

84 Monsieur Beaucaire 138 131 Rogues 01 Sherwood Forest 207
85 Shadow 01 the Eagle 139 132 San 01 Robin Hood 207
86 Shadow olthe Eagle 139 133 111 Were King 214
87 The Swordsman 143 134 Gypsy Wildcat 214
88 Captain Lightloot 143 135 The Court fester 214
89 The Fighting 0' Flynn 146 136 The Flame and the Arrow 215
90 Rob Roy 146 137 Dick Turpin 219
91 The Master 01 Ballantrae 147 138 Dick Turpin's Ride to York 219
92 The Fighting Prince 01 Donegal 147 139 The King's Highway 220
93 Fury at Smugglers' Bay 150 140 Dick Turpin's Ride to York 221
94 The Brigand 150 141 Dick Turpin's Ride to York 221
95 Dangeraus Exile 151 142 Dick Turpin's Ride 224
96 The Fighting Eagle 151 143 The King' s Thiel 225
97 The Prisoner 01 Zenda (1937) 155 144 The King' s Thiel 225
98 The Prisoner 01 Zenda (1937) 155 145 Captain Blood (1935) 233
99 The Prisoner 01 Zenda (1952) 158 146 Captain Blood (1925) 234
100 The Prisoner 01 Zenda (1952) 159 147 The Sea Hawk (1940) 234
101 The Prisoner 01 Zenda (1922) 159 148 Captain Blood (1925) 235
102 The Wile 01 Monte Cristo 164 149 Yankee Buccaneer 235
103 The Return 01 the Searlet Pimpernel 165 150 Captain Kidd 239
104 The Scarlet Pimpernel 166 151 Blackbeard the Pirate 239
105 The Searlet Pimpernel 166 152 Last 01 the Buccaneers 239
106 The Elusive Pimpernel 170 153 Tripali 244
107 The Return 01 the Searlet Pimpernel 170 154 The Sea Hawk (1924) 244
108 The Searlet Pimpernel 171 155 Prince 01 Pirates 245
109 The Purple Mask 171 156 The Sea Hawk (1940) 246
110 The Mark 01 Zorro (1920) 174 157 The Sea Hawk (1940) 246
111 The Mark 01 Zorro (1920) 174 158 Seven Seas to Ca lais 247
112 Don Q, San 01 Zorro 175 159 Seven Seas to Ca lais 247
113 The Mark 01 Zorro 175 160 The Black Pirate 254
114 The Masked Pirate 178 161 The Black Pirate 254
115 Mark 01 the Renegade 178 162 The Crimson Pirate 255
116 The Mask olthe Avenger 179 163 The Crimson Pirate 255
117 Searamouche (1923) 184 164 Captain Blood (1935) 259
118 Scaramouche (1952) 184 165 Captain Blood (1935) 259
119 Searamouche (1952) 185 166 The Spanish Main 265
120 Scaramouche (1952) 185 167 The Crimson Pirate 265
121 Robin Hood (1922) 192 168 The Black Swan 269
122 Robin Hood (1922) 193 169 Captain Blood (1935) 269
123 The Adventures 01 Robin Hood 198 170 Sinbad the Sailor 276
124 Rogues 01 Sherwood Forest 198 171 The Magic Carpet 276
125 The Story 01 Robin Hood 199 172 Thiel 01 Damascus 277
126 Bandit 01 Sherwood Forest 199 173 Princess 01 the Nile 277
127 The Story 01 Robin Hood 203 174 The Prince who was a Thiel 281
128 The Adventures 01 Robin Hood 203 175 The Desert Hawk 281
129 Bandit 01 Sherwood Forest 206

The pre-eminent popular art form of the first
half of the twentieth century has been the
cinema. Both in Europe and America, from
the turn of the century to the 1950s cinema-
going has been a regular habit and film-
making a major industry. The cinema
combined all the other art forms - painting,
sculpture, music, the word, the dance - and
added a new dimension - an illusion of life.
Living, breathing people enacted dramas
before the gaze of the audience and not, as in
the theatre, bounded by the stage, but with
the world as their backdrop. Success at the
box office was to be obtained by giving the
people something to which they could relate
and which therefore reflected themselves.
Like the other popular art forms, the cinema
has much to tell us about people and their
beliefs, their assumptions and their atti~
tudes, their hopes and fears and dreams.
General Editor's
Preface
This series of books will examine the
connection between films and the societies
which produced them. Film as straight
historical evidence; film as an unconscious
reflection ofnational preoccupations; film as
escapist entertainment; film as a weapon of
propaganda - these are the aspects of the
question that will concern uso We shall seek
too to examine and delineate individual film
genres, the cinematic images of particular
nations and the work of key directors who
have mirrored national concerns and ideals.
For we believe that the rich and multifarious
products of the cinema constitute a still
largely untapped source of knowledge about
the ways in which our world and the people in
it have changed since the first flickering
images were projected on to the silver screen.
J effrey Richards
This page intentionally left blank

I should like to thank the fOllowing friends
and cOlleagues who kindly gave their time
and their knowledge: John Baxter, Allen
Eyles, Kevin Brownlow, Anthony Slide,
Kingsley Canham, Tony Rayns, Jeremy
Boulton, Pat Coward, Elaine Burrows,
Anthony Tuck, Douglas Fairbanks Jr,
Rowland V. Lee, Herve Dumont, Caroline
Huxham and John Mackenzie. Thanks are
also due to the Information, Cataloguing and
Stills Departments of the British Film
Institute and to the staff of the British
Library Reading Room and the Birmingham
Reference Library for their unfailing cour-
tesy and helpfulness.
Acknowledgments
The stills reproduced in this book first
appeared in films distributed by the fOllowing
companies, to whom thanks are due : Warn er
Bros, RKO Radio Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, Uni-
versal, Columbia, Uni ted Artists, Eros,
Hammer, British Lion, Rank, Walt Disney,
Regal International, Pathe and Gaumont
British.
Parts of this book appeared in different
form in the periodical Focus on Film and I am
grateful to the editor for permission to re-use
the material.
This page intentionally left blank

The swashbuckllllg t'ilm ::;eem::; ct::; much apart
of the past now as the Hollywood musicals of
Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire, with which
it has so much in common: stylization ofplot
and setting, elaborate choreography and
carefree innocence and charm. Yet no one
with a taste for style and elegance, with a
heart to be stirred by deeds of derring-do and
a mind that maybe half-hankers for a world of
velvet capes and lace ruffles, moonlight
trysts with lovely ladies, breakneck rides
across windswept downs and the clash of
swords on the King's Highway can resist the
spell of a good swashbuckler. It is not simply
self-indulgent nostalgia to say with a sigh
that they don't make pictures like that any
more. It is a fact of life. We do not see and are
unlikely to see pictures quite like them ever
again. For one thing, they cost too much to
produce. For another, the fashion in film
heroes has changed. It is hardly feasible to
put Clint Eastwood or Steve McQueen into
doublet and hose. The ringing speech, the
romantic gesture, the balletic grace, the
virtues which the swashbuckling hero
incarnated (courage, loyalty, patriotism) are
alien to today's style, which is tough, cynical,
laconic, individualistic - in a word, 'cool'.
The swashbuckling genre, then, is one
which can be set in a historical perspective
and that is what this study, unashamedly
affectionate, but also, I hope, illuminating,
Introduction
seeks to do. It concentrates on what I have
called the Anglo-Saxon swashbuckler, which
is to say the films produced in Bri tain and the
USA. Other countries, both occidental
(France, Italy) and oriental (Japan, Hong
Kong), have produced swashbucklers but they
are the fruits of a different tradition and a
different culture. The Gallic swashbuckler,
for instance, has a streak of melancholy,
which is largely absent from the Anglo-
Saxon.
It is a genre which has attracted compara-
tively little critical attention, partly be-
cause it is one of the most fundamentally un-
serious of genres, a jeu d'esprit. But this does
not mean that it cannot be examined
seriously. Why were swashbucklers popular?
What values did they embody? What pI ace do
they occupy in the long tradition of popular
folkloric entertainment? I hope to look at all
these problems as well as trying to capture
the elusive essence of their magic.
For amoment, then, let us forget slow-
motion death, ultra-violence, destructive
motor-car chases and return to the golden
days of the silver screen when full-bellied
sails billowed on the horizon, swords clashed
on seashores, arrows thudded into oak trees
and the voice of Errol Flynn rallied the ranks
- 'It's cutlasses now, men'.
Jeffrey Richards
This page intentionally left blank

Swashbuckler.1560. (Lprec.+BuCKLER sb.";
hence lit. one who makes a noise by
striking his own or his opponent's shield
with a sword). A swaggering bravo or
ruffian; a noisy braggadocio
attrib. The s. manners of the youth of
fashion in the reign of Elizabeth 1816.
Hence swashbuckling a.
Shorter Oxlord English Dictionary
Never to have sailed the Spanish Main with
Errol Flynn, never to have ridden the King's
Highway with Louis Hayward, never to have
fought the Cardinal's Guard with Douglas
Fairbanks is never to have dreamed, never to
have lived, never to have been young. For at
their best, the swashbuckling films brought
to life the heroic dreams and romantic fancies
that are the heart of the folk tradition of the
English-speaking world. To see them today,
their power undimmed by the years, is to
recapture not just the golden, carefree days of
childhood but also lost ideals and vanished
virtues, swamped by the cynical rat-race
reality ofthe modern, white-hot, technologi-
cal world - chivalry, gallantry, patriotism,
duty and honour.
Characteristics
Perhaps O'1e of the main reasons why so little
has beeil written about the swashbuckling
film is that while everyone knows what
constitutes a swashbuckler, no one has been
able to define precisely what it iso If we turn
to the dictionary, we find adefinition which
in cinematic terms isimprecise. Aswashbuck-
ler may, in Elizabethan times, have been a
ruffian. But in the cinema, he is un-
questionably agentIeman. The word, as so
Swashbuckling: a
Profile of the
Genre
often in the English language, has been the
subject of upward revaluation.
Certain basic characteristics can be
deduced from the films themselves. The
swashbuckler is set in the past. It has a
European or Europeanized (e.g. Spanish
California) setting. It involves swordplay. Its
heroes are invariably gentlemen. But these
are not automatic indicators of a swash-
buckling film. Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet
have historical settings, gentlemen heroes
and swordfights - but they are hardly
swashbucklers.
The swashbuckler shares a historical
setting with other distinct genres (the epic,
the historical biography, the romantic
melodrama, the costume drama). Some films
have swashbuckling elements but are not
true swashbucklers: horror films (Tower 01
London and The Black Castle), musicals (The
Pirate and The FireflY), classic novels (The
Prince and the Pauper and Kidnapped), period
adventure films (Anthony Adverse and Son 01
Fury), maritime dramas (Captain Horatio
Hornblower and Captain Caution), early
American adventures (Mississippi Gambier
and Foxes 01 Harrow). Some films are poised so
delicately on the borderline of genres that it
is almost impossible to classify them with
any certainty.
But i t is basically in form and ethos that the
swashbuckler is to be distinguished from
other genres. Stylization rather than real-
ism, fictional adventure and not historical
fact are the keynotes. Settings, costumes,
stories, action, all are stylized. Content is
ritualized, emotions stereotyped, the charac-
ters are archetypes rather than individuals.
To this extent the genre is peculiarly rigid
and unyielding. It makes no concessions to a
change in audience interests and outlook. It
The swashbuckler as we know it originated very largely with one
man - Douglas Fairbanks Sr.
1 Doug in The Three Musketeer s (1921 )
The pattern was decisively established under his successar, Erral Flynn.
2 Erral in Adventures 01 Don Juan
4 SWASHBUCKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE
never gives way to the psychological
complexity of the latter-day western, the
social significance of the problem drama, the
violence and cynicism of the policier. But at
its best, it is an exhilarating excursion into
pure style, a heady blend of male beauty and
agility, the grace and colour of historical
costume, the opulence and splendour of
period sets and the spellbinding legerdemain
ofhorseback chases, chandelier-swinging and
dazzling swordplay.
The swashbuckler has been unfashionable
with the critical establishment, largely, I
suspect, because it does not fit any of the
currently fashionable schools of criticism.
No director has worked consistently in the
genre, as directors have, say, in the western
or the musical, though it has over the years
attracted some of the cinema's great visual
stylists, men who can respond to the grace of
movement and the pictorial potential of
period settings and who have utilized the
trappings and atmosphere to create stun-
ningly good-Iooking works - men like Frank
Borzage, James Whale, Rouben Mamoulian,
Michael Curtiz, Max Ophuls, Jacques Tour-
neur, George Sidney, John Cromwell, Robert
Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Rowland V. Lee.
But the swashbuckler is pre-eminently a
collaborative effort - of art director, costume
designer, fencing master, stunt arranger,
cinematographer, writer, cast and director.
Sometimes the true 'creator' of a swashbuck-
ler is the producer, the man who assembles
the talents and masterminds the production:
David O. Selznick on The Prisoner 0/ Zenda
(1937), Alexander Korda on The SearZet
PimperneZ (1935), Douglas Fairbanks Sr on all
his swashbucklers.
Equally important are the stars. When
films glorify heroes, the actors need to look
like heroes, to combine male beauty and
acrobatic skill. They need to be able to wear
period costume with ease, to handle a sword
deftly, to project charm, spirit and a joyous
love of adventure. Without such figures the
films would fail. The cinema has been
fortunate to have produced a succession of
actors able to fulfil these requirements: the
Fairbanks, father and son, Errol Flynn, Louis
Hayward, Cornel Wilde, John Derek, Stewart
Granger, Burt Lancaster, etc. Ironically,
many of the actors involved in the films,
being actors, resented being typed as costume
heroes. Some, like Burt Lancaster, strictly
limited their swashbucklers to a handful and
moved on rapidly to other things. Errol Flynn
only made four swashbucklers in his heyday,
but they have eclipsed all his other films in
the folk memory. Typical of these actors'
attitudes is that of Basil Rathbone, finest of
all swashbuckling villains, who, in his
autobiography, says alm ost nothing about
his work in swashbucklers, preferring to
concentrate on his classical film roles (A TaZe
01 Two Cities, Anna Karenina, David Cop-
perlieZd) and theatre work. Cornel Wilde was
evenmore outspoken, saying, in 1970: 'Ifound
a great deal of pleasure and fulfilment in
acting-in certain roles. In others, not at all. I
did the best I could with what there was. I love
horseback riding, and fencing and archery,
and in a case like Bandit 0/ Sherwood Porest,
that's all there was to it. I was prime material
for all that crap in the general opinion. I
looked too right for it.' Only Douglas
Fairbanks Sr devoted hirns elf wholeheart-
edly and unreservedly to swashbuckling,
and in so doing, created a succession of
classics. It is perhaps understandable that
the actors should have sought to avoid type-
casting. But we can be grateful for the fact
that when doing the films, they showed no
signs of disgruntlement and performed their
heroics with a verve which has etched them
indelibly into cinema history.
The ethos of the films may be a Simple one
but it is infrangibly strong and pro vi des the
bedrock upon which the structure of the
action is reared. The values are the values of
the knightly class, as embodied in the
chivalric code, and this therefore dates the
historical scope of the films from the
eleventh to the nineteenth centuries, when
this code prevailed. It rules out the Vikings,
the Romans and the Greeks, who were not
gentlemen. The typical swashbuckling herD
is the gentleman hero, weIl born, comfortably
off, a man of breeding and polish, daring and
humour, gallantry and charm. He maintains
adecent standard of behaviour, fights for
King and Country, believes in truth and

justice, defends the honour of a lady. Even if
our hero is an outlaw, as he very often is, he
continues to incarnate these virtues.
The swashbuckling villain is the reverse
side of the coin, the dark side of the mirror.
The villains are often gentlemen themselves
and embody some ofthe same qualities as the
hero: courage, resourcefulness, swordsman-
ship. But they are fatally flawed by ambition,
greed or simply hubris. This leads them to
flout the finer points of the chivalric code,
often with an engaging sense of audacity and
boldly sardonic humour, which enables them
to domina te a film, if teamed with a
colourless hero. But they always meet their
come-uppance in the end. Their plans come to
nought, they pay with their lives for their
presumption, and their deaths triumphantly
affirm the validity of the Code.
The Code is, of course, the Code ofthe ruling
class and its prominence strongly implies an
Establishment mentality behind the films.
The metaphor for the Establishment is most
frequently the monarchy. As director Row-
land V. Lee put it, in a letter to this author:
'Kings and Queens have fascinated audiences
and peoples everywhere. From early fairy
tales through present fiction, jighting jor the
throne has been an interesting subject
always.'
The Crown functions as an object of
devotion, the sanction of the action, the
symbol of all that is true and good and worth
fighting for. The King is a personification of
the State, the Establishment, Authority.
Therefore, by association, the Establishment
is true and good and worth fighting for. To
stress the links of the Crown and the ordinary
people (Le. the cinema audience), an extra
dimension is added. The plot-lines of
swashbucklers often involve unscrupulous
individual members of the aristocracy, who
plot to gain power for themselves and who,
during the course of the film, perpetrate all
kinds of outrages against the people. The
monarchy, on the other hand, is seen as
embodying fair-minded and disinterested
central government, opposed to the anarchie,
centrifugal tendencies of these individual
power groups. The interests of the monarchy
are thus identical with the interests of the
SWASHBUCKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE 5
people. The monarch by being monarch is ipso
jacto defender and protector of the people's
rights. He embodies the soul and the
traditions of the nation. As Sir Edward Hyde
tells Charles II in The Exile: 'You are their
past, future, memory, emblem, flag.' The true
gentleman is one who supports the monarchy
and endorses its role as the even-handed
dispenser of justice.
When it needs to be spelled out, monarchy is
ofthe constitutional rather than the absolute
variety. But the King is the King. The
restoration of the King is the subject of
countless Robin Hood films. Even if the King
is bad (King John in Rogues oj Sherwood
Forest), he is not killed, but simply made
subject to legal limitation. Most frequently,
however, it doesnothave to be spelled out and
the monarchy is simply utilized and accepted
as a symbol of all that is right and good.
The ritualization of events and the
stylization of characters assert the static
nature of society and the inevitability of the
triumph of good over evil and the meting out
ofpunishment to evildoers. In swashbuckling
films this is partly due to the introduction of
the Hays Code, which prohibited attacks on
Government, the Establishment and the
canons of society. It is noticeable how French
Revolutionary subjects, with criticism of
Crown and aristocracy, and English Civil War
films, with Roundhead heroes, decline in
number after 1934, though both had been
produced in Hollywood in silent days. The
French Revolution, which figures pro-
minently in the 1923 version of Scaramouche,
is simply omitted from the 1952 re-make.
When the Revolution does appear (e.g. The
Scarlet Pimpernel, The Purple Mask) , it is
depicted in terms of dictatorship rather than
democracy; though even in silent days,
Douglas Fairbanks's films, which set the
mood and tone of the swashbuckling genre,
were invariably about aristocratic adven-
turers, devoted to King and Country.
The genre was occasionally used for overt
propaganda, mainly during wartime. Adrian
Brunel, in his memoirs, recalled working on
the script of The Return oj the Scarlet
Pimpernel (1937) and talked of 'evolving a
story of Robespierre and the Terror during
There were some short-
lived variations on the
genre .
3 (left) The
psycho1ogica1
swashbuckler - Yu1
Brynner in The Buccaneer
4 (right) The Orienta1
swashbuck1er - Kurt
Katch in Ali Baba and the
Forty Thieves
5 (below) The fema1e
swashbuck1er - Jean
Peters in Anne o[ the
Indies
8 S W ASHBUCKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE
the French Revolution which would remind
audiences of Hitler and the Nazis'. The Sea
Hawk (1940), passionately propagandistic,
equates sixteenth-century Spain with Nazi
Germany and extols national preparedness.
Similarly The Son 01 M onte Cristo (1940) and Ali
Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944) tell
simplistic but recognizable stories about
foreign occupation, military dictatorship
and the evils of collaborationism. But these
films are deviations from the norm, which
was generalized support for the Establish-
rHent.
This Establishmentarianism can best be
seen in operation in the case of the outlaw
heroes. Outlaws, highwaymen, pirates - in
reality grim, desperate men, often ruthless
blackguards, lining their pockets at the
expense of the honest, law-abiding citizen -
became steeped in an aura of popular myth.
Their bold adventures, devil-may-care style
of life, freedom of movement, easy wealth,
made them objects of admiration and
identification, escape figures from the
harshness and monotony of everyday life.
But escape is the key word here. They
represent harmless wish-fulfilment and
satisfying daydreams, reverie rather than
revolution. Robin Hood is the prototype and
he ~ even in his medieval incarnation - was far
from a revolutionary. His activities in books
and films are not primarily criminal
activities but chivalric - rescuing damsels,
preserving the life of the King, protecting the
peasantry from oppression. But always the
achievement of justice within the system and
not the overthrow of that system is his aim.
The pi rate and highwayman heroes of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were
fitted into this prototype. But films take
great pains to distinguish between privateers
(good, patriotic gentlemen) and pirates
(bold, self-seeking ruffians) and when taking
real-life pirates as their heroes, to whitewash
and glamorize them out of all recognition.
The underlying idea is that even if all is not
weIl with society, it simply needs a little
adjustment and that can be accomplished by
an idealized hero-figure.
Origins
The greatest Anglo-Saxon swashbucklers
were produced in the United States. Britain
was to all intents and purposes an adjunct of
Hollywood in this field. Indeed, although
swashbuckling films were quite plentiful in
Britain in the silent era, virtually none were
produced between 1930 and 1950. Thereafter,
apart from the large-scale films produced by
Hollywood units on location in Britain, the
native British swashbucklers were good-
natured but generally inferior imitations of
the definitive Hollywood models. British
swashbucklers boasted genuine locations and
enthusiastic casts, but on the whole they
lacked the polish and artistry of their
American counterparts. Ironically, however,
it was Britain and France which provided the
books and plays which served as the
inspiration for the Hollywood films.
For the swashbuckler was quintessentially
a product of Romanticism, the movement in
art and letters which exploded in Western
Europe in the period 1750-1850. The humanism
of the Renaissance had gi yen way in the early
eighteenth century to the Age of Enlighten-
ment, when Reason and Common Sense
prevailed, when equilibrium and compromise
were the order of the day, when science
provided rational explanations for every-
thing. During this Age, Art was seen as a
reflection of reality and a vehicle for
moralizing. But this weltanschauung even-
tually provoked a violent reaction - Roman-
ticism. It was bold, individualistic, uncon-
ventional. It exalted the imagination, the
emotions, dreams and fantasies, mysticism,
everything that was alien and abhorrent to
the measured, passionless classicism that
prevailed. Change was in the air, political
revolution in France and America, industrial
revol u tion in Bri tain, and from this turbulent
background there came a burst of creativity
of a kind rarely equalled in Man's history.
It is difficult to define Romanticism
because it was so all-embracing and so
widespread. But it had at its roots a burning
desire for freedom from restraint and the
unshackling of the imagination. Once this
was done, then the human spirit could fly in

all directions: to wild excess or morbid
introspection, to an idealized past or a
fantasized future. It had certain basic
fascinations: the past, especially the medi-
eval past, the cult of naturalism and
spontaneity, individualism, the occult - but
above all the primacy accorded to imag-
ination. It produced the historical novel, the
lyric poem, the romantic drama; the poetry
of Byron, Keats and Shelley, the music of
Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner, the paintings of
Delacroix, Turner and Goya.
But as a movement, Romanticism took
different directions in different countries.
Allan Rodway discerned in the movement
two wings, the radical and the reactionary.
He has written:
What radical and reactionary romantics
have in common - in addition to their
anti-rationalism - is the feeling that they
are outsiders - and feeling an outsider in
your own society naturally leads to ...
subjectivism, utopianism and extremism.
The difference is that reactionaries think
society iS, or rather was, natural, and
therefore they want to be insiders, but in a
society of an older type. Hence, their
support for feudalism or an authoritarian
monarch and Church. The radicals think
society is or was unnatural and therefore
do not wish to be insiders. They would be
at one only with the universe.
So in Germany, Romanticism found ex-
pression in a passionate defence of 'throne
and altar', absolute monarchy and the
Catholic Church, the spirituallegatees ofthe
Middle Ages; and in France in republicanism
and atheism, as arevolt against the
established order.
The swashbuckling novel sterns from the
reactionary school of Romanticism, descend-
ing directly from the historical novel and in
particular the titanic figure of Sir Walter
Scott. The very term 'Romantic' derives
originally from the romance - the medieval
tale of chivalry, love and adventure, re-
discovered in the mid eighteenth century.
The revulsion from classicism sent the new
enthusiasts scurrying to what was the
anti thesis of classicism - the Gothic,
SWASHBUCKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE 9
originally a term of abuse applied to 'The
Dark Ages' but coming to stand for a new
literary form, which took its inspiration
from the spirit of medieval myth and legend.
On the one hand there was a great awakening
ofinterest in chivalry and chivalric romance,
as witnessed by an increasing number of
learned studies: Richard Hurd's Letters on
Chivalry and Romance (1762), Sir Walter
Scott's Essay on Chivalry (1814) and G. P. R.
James's History 01 Chivalry (1829). All of them
stressed not so much the historical detail as
the spirit of chivalry. Alongside this there
was the appearance of collections of ancient
rhymes and ballads (e.g. Thomas Percy's
Reliques 01 Ancient English Poetry) and early
attempts to imitate them, notably
MacPherson's Ossianic poems. It is in these
stirrings that we can see the ingredients of
the swashbuckler taking shape.
The first fruit of the new interest in the
Gothic, however, was the Gothic novel. Tales
of mystery, imagination and the super-
natural, often in a medieval setting, they
poured from the presses in the wake ofHorace
Walpole's epoch-making Castle 01 Otranto
(1764). The Gothic novel had two by-products.
One was the pure horror story and the other
the historical novel, which combined the
imaginative power and narrative drive ofthe
Gothic novel with the results of the
researches into chivalry and minstrelsy.
After the early, crude but immensely popular
works of writers like Clara Reeve (The Old
English Baron) and Thomas Leland (Long-
sword, Earl 01 Salisbury), the breakthrough
came with Sir Walter Scott.
It is almost impossible to overestimate the
importance of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832).
Unquestionably the father of the historical
novel, he was enormously popular and
influential both in Britain and on the
Continent. It was said that everyone in Berlin
went to bed with Waverley under his pillow
and read Rob Roy while sipping his morning
chocolate. After aseries of epic poems on
chivalric and historical themes (Marmion,
Rokeby, The Lady olthe Lake), his first novel,
Waverley, was published in 1814, and from then
on he never stopped writing. Although critics
have generally preferred his Scottish novels,
10 SWASHBUCKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE
the crucial works for the development of the
swashbuckler were his medieval romances
(The Talisman, Quentin Durward, Count Robert
oi Paris) and his Tudor and Stuart tales
(Kenilworth, Woodstock, Peveril oi the Peak).
Their appeal was summed up by Henry Beers:
Scott apprehended the Middle Ages on
their spectacular, and more particularly,
their military side. He exhibits their
large, showy aspects: battles, processions,
hunts, feasts in hall, tourneys, sieges and
the like. The motley medieval world
swarms in his pages, from the King on his
throne down to the jester with his cap and
beIls. But it was the outside of it that he
saw: the noise, bustle, colour, stirring
action that delighted him. Into its
spiritualities he did not penetrate far. It
was the literature of the knight, not of the
monk that appealed to him. He feIt the
awfulness and the beauty of Gothic sacred
architecture and of Catholic ritual. The
externalities of the medieval church
impressed him, whatever was picturesque
in its ceremonies or august in its power.
It is avision already eminently cinematic.
Like all great men, Scott was a complex
being, in whom contradictory impulses
pulled. The out ward Scott was the refined,
commonsense, hard-working, practical man
of the law, upholder of the Hanoverian
settlement and the Anglican Church. The
inner Scott was the arch-Romantic, dream-
ing of the sacred lost cause of Scotland
(Jacobitism) and hankering for the past to
the extent of bui1ding himself a palatial
retreat at Abbotsford - which helped to
bankrupt him. Immersed in ballads and folk-
tales, medieval romances and chronicle
histories, and stimulated by the first works of
the Romantic movement, he began to spin his
own tales of gallantry and heroism, which
achieved, in the words of Thomas Crawford,
an 'imaginative synthesis of the aristocratic
and the folk, the epical and the romantic'.
Far from being compromised by his con-
tradictory impulses, his novels were enriched
by them. For time and again he dramatizes
the reconci1iation of riyal sides, which blend
themselves into nations: cavalier and Round-
head, highlander and lowlander, Norman and
Saxon, Jacobite and Hanoverian. His novels
reveal his reverence for royalty and family
pride, his love of heraldry, his feeling for
landscape, his exaltation of the gentleman
hero. All these were to be important for the
development of swashbuckling.
The model set by Scott became the
inspiration for a rapidly burgeoning school of
English historical novelists: W. Harrison
Ainsworth, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, R. D.
Blackmore, etc. But it was a Frenchman,
Alexandre Dumas, who, professing his
admiration of Scott, refined the ingredients
of the swashbuckler from the historical novel
set in the swashbuckling period. It was
Dumas who laid down the characters and
archetypes which were taken up by a school of
English writers who developed the literary
genre that can truly be called the swash-
buckling novel and is qualitatively different
from the historical novel per se. The bulky
historical detail was pared down and the
characteristic elements, both physical and
moral, were evolved. Those facets of Roman-
ti ci sm (individualism, spontaneity, the past)
which had been handed down through the
historical novel, now became wedded to a
ritual of events (dueis, escapes, chases) built
around two herD archetypes: the gentleman
adventurer and the gentleman outlaw.
Ironically, the movement which had begun as
arevolt against formalism came in its
swashbuckling manifestation to develop the
formalism of rules and rituals.
In the late nineteenth century the prolific
writers of swashbuckling romances were
Robert Louis Stevens on (The Black Arrow,
Kidnapped, St Ives), Stanley J. Weyman (A
Gentleman oi Prance, Under the Red Robe) and
the now largely forgotten S. R. Crockett (The
Red Axe, The Black Douglas, The Raiders).
Following on from them came that group of
authors who carried on writing into the
twentieth century and brought the swash-
buckling novel to a fine art, providing the
screen with ready-made and much-loved
subjects: Baroness Orczy, creator of The
Scarlet Pimpernel; Anthony Hope, author of
The Prisoner oi Zenda; and Rafael Sabatini,
who wrote a whole series of bestsellers,
The ethos was profoundly
Establishmentarian, favouring the
monarchy, the chivalric code, the status quo.
6 (right) Angela Lansbury as the Queen,
June Allyson and Gene Kelly in The Three
Musketeers (1948)
7 (beIow) Richard Greene, Barbara HaIe,
MaIcolm Keen and Lester Matthews as the
King in Lorna Doone (1950)
12 SWASHBUCKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE
including Captain Blood, Scaramouche, Barde-
lys the Magnijicent and The Sea Hawk.
The achievement of these writers was the
dilution of the original Romantic impulse. In
essence, the period, costumes and settings
were retained but the continent was gen-
teelized. The element ofrevolt against nature
became mere love of adventure and revolt
against society became open-air high jinks in
the forest. The tormented larger-than-life
Byronic anti-hero became the swashbuckling
villain, just as broodingly good-Iooking but
much less complicatedly villainous. The
tragic outcast rebel lost his demonic aspect
and became a jolly outlaw, retaining an
ultimate loyalty to the Crown. The anarchic
tendencies were contained within acceptable
limits.
The vivid characters and incidents of the
swashbuckling novels were tailor-made for
the stage and for a mass audience hungry for
colour and excitement. Scott's novels were
dramatized almost immediately. In 1820
alone there were seven separate stagings of
Ivanhoe, and six of Kenilworth in 1821. In
France, all of Dumas's novels became stage
hits and inspired a whole school of 'cape and
sword' dramas. The most notable of the sub-
Dumas plays were Dennery and Dumanoir's
Don Cesar de Bazan (1844) and Anicet-
Bourgeois and Feval 's Le Bossu (1862), both of
which became favourites with the Anglo-
Saxon world in English translation. Most of
the later nineteenth-century swashbuckling
novels sustained their popularity in long-
running stage versions. Edward Rose's
adaptation of The Prisoner oj Zenda (1896) wi th
Sir George Alexander in the lead was a
tremendous hit and Rose also adapted Under
the Red Robe for the stage. Indeed it was
Rose's stage versions of these novels which
served as the bases for the subsequent films.
Anthony Hope hirns elf adapted Rupert oj
Hentzau for the stage, Baroness Orczy did The
Scarlet Pimpernel and Sabatini adapted
Scaramouche and Bardelys the Magnijicent.
These plays had all the elements which were
to become staples of screen swashbucklers -
stylized plots, exciting swordplay and
matinee idols. The great matinee idols, with
their noble profiles, resonant speaking voices
and grand gestures, were direct forerunners
of the swashbuckling film stars and became
totally identified with their swashbuckling
roles. In America James O'Neill played the
title role in The Count oj Monte Cristo 5,342
tim es, and for years James K. Hackett toured
in The Prisoner oj Zenda and Kyrle Bellew in A
Gentleman oj Prance. In England, Lewis
Waller (Monsieur Beaucaire, Brigadier Gerard)
and Matheson Lang (The Purple Mask,
Prisoner ojthe Bastille) donned cape and sword
with distinction for impressively long stage-
runs.
It was a relatively painless process to
transfer the stage play to the screen. In 1913
James O'Neill re-created his Count oj Monte
Cristo, complete with painted scenery, for the
camera. Soon after, Edwin S. Porter directed
the film version of The Prisoner oj Zenda with
James K. Hackett. The Moving Picture World
(1 March, 1913), reviewing the film, pointed to
the difference between the media: 'The
judicious employment of outdoor scenes
knitted the splendid story into a rapid and
continuous whole, ofwhich neither novel nor
stage can give us even the shadow of a
conception.' It was a prophetic statement, for
films moved in to take over the hardy annuals
of stage swashbuckling and to imbue them
with added dimensions.
Cycles
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 oj 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 were
still literal and literary in concept. After
Doug the swashbuckler took off as a
cinematic genre, in which physical move-
ment and visual style predominated. But for
sheer verve and vi tali ty there was never
anyone to equal Doug.
Yet when he launched The Mark of Zorro he
did so with apprehension. The cinema
industry had taken fright at the failure ofthe
massively expensive multi-episode historical
epic Intolerance and wise heads warned Doug
against abandoning his contemporary
comedy-adventures. But it was the wise heads
who were confounded. The Mark of Zorro was a
smash-hit, revealing the existence of a huge
audience hungry for escape, and launched
Doug on the dazzling series of spectaculars
which made him a legend in his own lifetime.
Swashbucklers were in favour and remained
in favour throughout the 1920s.
The Jazz Age they called it, an age of
sheikhs, flappers and lounge lizards: when
bootleggers brewed gin in bathtubs; when the
well-publicized 'Lost Generation' noisily
practised the new morality or, as some said,
lack of it; when the even better-publicized
gunmen and gangsters set new fashions in
fedoras and violent crime. This was America
in the 1920s - at least, according to the
newspaper headlines. In reality, the late
nineteenth-century, mid-western small-
town mentality, so mercilessly derided by
Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis and H. L.
Mencken, still represented the dominant
view of the majority of Americans, was
personified by Republican Presidents Warren
Harding and Calvin Coolidge and manifested
in such key phenomena of the 1920s as
Isolationism, Prohibition, the Scopes Trial,
the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, the Red Scare
and the Bolshevik deportations.
In a sense the attitudes of old and young
were two si des ofthe same coin. That co in was
the bitter disillusionment and weariness of a
nation which had gone to war in a blaze of
rhetoric and idealism in 1917 and had emerged
bruised, bloodied and bewildered in 1918. The
rebels of the younger generation manifested
their discontent - predictably - in the
rejection of the 'Victorian' standards of their
S W ASHBUCKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE 13
elders, and the older generation - equally
predictably - reacted with fear, distrust and
incomprehension and took refuge in the safe
familiarity of their old prejudices. To escape
the strain and stress of achanging world,
ordinary people retreated in ever-increasing
numbers to their cinemas, where flickering
into life on the silver screen came all those
qualities they feared were dead in the world-
romance, heroism and adventure. No one
embodied the spirit of heroism more fully or
more convincingly than Douglas Fairbanks
Sr. Indomitable, irrepressible, with flashing
smile and leaping limbs, Doug made the world
for a while seem a brighter, cleaner, airier
place to be.
No other silent screen star dared to try and
make a career out of swashbuckling. But
many silent idols donned cape and sword for
isolated forays into the field already being
described as 'Fairbanksian' : J ohn Barrymore
(Don Juan), Rudolph Valentino (Monsieur
Beaucaire), J. Warren Kerrigan (Captain
Blood), Rod La Roque (The Fighting Eagle),
Ricardo Cortez (Eagle ofthe Sea), John Gilbert
(Bardelys the Magnificent), Milton Sills (The
Sea Hawk), Ramon Novarro (Scaramouche,
The Prisoner of Zenda). Even such unlikely
candidates for fencing honours as Richard
Barthelmess (The Fighting Blade) and Tom
Mix (Dick Turpin) tried their respective
hands.
It was a technical revolution - the coming
of sound - that put paid to the first cycle of
swashbucklers. Although the first film with
synchronized musical soundtrack was Don
Juan (1926), the first film actually to 'talk'
was The Jazz Singer (1927). As the studios
geared their production lines for tal kies and
the cinemas wired for sound, the swashbuck-
ler was forgotten. In his last silent film, The
Iron Mask (1929), Douglas Fairbanks symboli-
cally died. Musicals, gangster films, stage
adaptations were the rage and were being
produced in droves.
But the swashbuckler did not languish long
in 0 bscuri ty. Its revi val was d ue in part to the
enforcement of the Hays Code. Increasingly
vocal concern was being expressed through-
out the early 1930s by powerful pressure
groups, such as the Catholic Legion of
According to Colurnbia
Pictures, swashbucklers
appealed to rnen and
wornen for different
reasons.
8-9 Wornen like a good-
looking herD seen in
contrasted fighting and
rornantic rnoods. Thus
Cornel Wilde with Jean
Wallace in Star oi India
Wornen also liked plentiful
displays of the hero's rugged
torso.
10 (above) Tyrone Power's torso
in The Black Swan
11 (right) Ricardo Montalban's
torso in Mark 01 the Renegade
Men, on the other hand, admired athletic prowess in their heroes.
They got it in plenty with the top swashbuckling stars.
12 (below left) Douglas Fairbanks Sr learned the use of the
bullwhip for Don Q, Son 01 Zorro
13 (below right) Stewart Granger in action in The Prisoner 01 Zenda
(1952)
Men also went for action scenes. Besides the plentiful fencing scenes,
there were also
14 (opposite) Archery contests (The Adventures 01 Robin Hood)
15 (opposite below) Jousts (Ivanhoe)
18 S w ASHBUCKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE
Decency, about the content of films: the
sensationalism, immorality, glorification of
crime. In self defence Hollywood decided in
1933-4 to rewri te and strictly enforce the Hays
Code, drawn up in 1927 to regulate film
production and designed to reduce the sexual
content of films, eliminate criticism of the
Government and American institutions and
prevent the flouting of the 'accepted canons
of American morality'. A censorship office,
und er Joseph I. Breen, was set up to vet every
Hollywood script and ensure that the Code
was observed. The Code was to remain in
operation for thirty years.
The result of this action as far as film
production was concerned was that from 1933
onwards there was a dramatic increase in
'safe' subjects: adaptations of classic novels
(Little Warnen, Great Expectations, David
Copperfield) and historical dramas (Clive of
India, Cardinal Richelieu, Hause of Rothschild).
With its period setting and stylized content,
the swashbuckler was an obvious candidate
for revival. After carefully watching the box-
office returns of MGM's Treasure Island and
Uni ted Artists' Count of Monte Cristo, both
1934 adaptations of classic novels with
swashbuckling elements, Warn er Bros set in
motion their remake of Captain Blood (1935),
which was to spark off the swashbuckling
revival and introduce Douglas Fairbanks's
successor as the King of Swashbuckle, Errol
Flynn.
The new swashbuckling cycle, like the old,
fulfilled a deep-seated need for escapism. In
the 1930s there were new evils to escape. The
Jazz Age had been replaced by the Depression.
The Wall Street Crash of 1929 had ended the
decade of 'normalcy' and burst the specu-
lative bubble that had swollen monstrously
in business-dominated post-war America.
Millions ofinvestors lost their savings, prices
cOllapsed, wages were slashed, trade sI umped.
Factories, banks and farms went out of
business. To the moral and psychological
collapse of the 1920s was added the economic
and social disaster ofthe 1930s. The nation, at
its lowest ebb, turned to Franklin D.
Roosevelt for leadership and he mobilized
America with 'The New Deal'. The fight back
to solvency began. The reality of the fight
was hardship, poverty and suffering. But
always around the corner, beckoning, invit-
ing, was the local picture palace. In the Bijou
or the Roxy the problems and difficulties
could be forgotten for a while and a nation of
hard-pressed men and women could relax in
the company of Errol Flynn and his merrie
men. Even in the darkest days of the early
1930s when few could afford it, 60-75 million
people in America went to the movies every
week.
The addition of colour and sound to the
available technical resources made swash-
buckling films bigger and better than ever
before. This time, however, there was not just
one swashbuckling star. Errol Flynn varied
his output with comedies, dramas and
westerns and other studios developed their
own swashbuckling stars: Tyrone Power at
20th Century-Fox, Louis Hayward at Uni ted
Artists. Douglas Fairbanks Jr took up his
father's rapier and showed hi.mself every bit
the equal of Doug Sr. Eminent screen actors
like Fredric March (The Buccaneer) and
Ronald Colman (The Prisoner of Zenda) lent
their own brand of distinction to the genre.
The second cycle of swashbucklers was
ended dramatically by the outbreak of war-
for America, in 1941. The mood of the country
changed. Audiences still wanted to be
entertained, but now with streamlined and
heroized dramatizations of the war effort and
with pictures stressing the fundamentals of
the American way of life for which they were
fighting. There was a major revival of
westerns, beginning in 1939 wi th such prestige
productions as Union Pacific, Dodge City and
Northwest Passage, which highlighted the all-
American virtues and principles. The cos-
tume stars exchanged doublet and hose for
battledress. Douglas Fairbanks Jr joined the
United States Navy, Tyrone Power and Louis
Hayward the Marines. Errol Flynn, rejected
as 4F, did his wartime service on the screen
(Desperate Journey, Northern Pursuit, Objective
Burma). The production of swashbucklers
virtually ceased.
But when the war ended, somewhat the
same conditions that had given birth to the
first cycle prevailed again. There were new
problems now (Austerity, the Iron Curtain

and the Cold War, Korea. the shadow of the H-
Bomb) but they only served to heighten the
inevitable disillusionment and war-
weariness which set in when the fighting
ended. Swashbucklers were once more a
colourful means of escape. Douglas Fair-
banks Jr, Errol Flynn, Louis Hayward and
Tyrone Power took up the sword again and
there were new heroes to challenge their
eminence (Cornel Wilde, Richard Greene,
John Derek). But by 1949 the halcyon days of
the cinema as a mass entertainment medium
were numbered. Hollywood was plunged into
crisis by lengthy strikes and labour prob-
lems, the 'freezing' by several European
countries of American film companies'
earnings, the bitterly divisive investigation
into Communism in the film industry and the
resultant blacklists and, most serious of all,
the mushroom growth of television. There
was a cutback of production, ruthless
economy drives, mass redundancies of studio
personnel. Some ofthe studios put their faith
in properties which television could not yet
do on the same scale and with the same
lavishness - and swashbucklers were among
them. But they achieved this lavishness often
by producing the films outside America,
partly to utilize their 'frozen' funds. MGM
produced Ivanhoe, Knights 01 the Round Table
and Adventures 01 Quentin Durward in
England. Disney produced The Story 01 Robin
Hood, Rob Roy and The Sword and The Rose in
England. Fox produced Prince 01 Foxes in
Italy, Captain lram Castile in Mexico and The
Black Rose in England and Morocco.
In Hollywood itself, two studios, Columbia
and Universal, produced a stream of 'bread
and butter' swashbucklers, modestly bud-
geted and generally filmed on all-purpose
sets, standardized rather than stylized to
deprive them of distinctive and recognizable
features. The familiar rituals were gone
through in colour. But the big budgets needed
to produce the lavish feel of yore were gone
for ever, and however much verve the director
might infuse there was always that hint of
economy in, for instance, the recurrent use of
Universal's medieval castle set, which must
have become the most familiar standing set
in Hollywood to swash-fans, seeing service in
S W ASHBl'CKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE 19
Gypsy Wildcat, Son 01 Ali Baba, The Golden
Blade, The Purple Mask, The Veils 01 Bagdad
and The Black Shield 01 Falworth, as well as a
wide variety of other genre pieces : horror
(The Black Castle), fantasy (lack the Giantkil-
ler), Imperial epic (Bengal Brigade), thriller
(Deadly Roulette). As they became a staple
rather than a special event, swashbucklers
began to be turned over to the western
directors (George Sherman, Lesley Selander,
Henry Levin) who could turn out pictures at
breakneck speed. The casts began to reflect
this wi th familiar western supporting actors
(Edgar Buchanan, Ray Teal, Harry Cording)
turning up in Lincoln green and chain mail
when clearly more at home in stetson and
chaps.
There were also mutations of the genre,
attempts to revitalize the old ideas with new
settings or variations. The most long-lasting
was the hybrid oriental swashbuckler, which
appeared during the war and attained its
initial popularity more for its exotic
Technicolor settings and the sight of Maria
Montez in-and out of-a yashmakthanforits
actual swashbuckling content. There was the
highly unsuccessful attempt to create a
psychological swashbuckler (Prince 01 Foxes,
Captain Irom Castile, The Buccaneer (1958
version», perhaps to try and duplicate the
success ofthe then fashionable psychological
western. But the rituals and archetypes ofthe
genre were not susceptible to an infusion of
Freudianism. There was the novelty of the
female swashbuckler, in which the ladies,
hitherto the objects of the heroes' devoted
defence, took up the sword themselves to
fight for truth and justice (The Wile 01 Monte
Cristo, Anne 01 the Indies, The Son 01 Robin
Hood - who turned out to be a daughter).
But television inexorably caught up with
the cinema and by the mid-1950s overtook it.
The small screen in Bri tain was flooded wi th a
host of swashbuckling series, which were
rapidly exported to America and pre-empted
the ground hitherto occupied by the cine-
matic swashbuckler. Small-scale, black and
white, often studio-bound, these series were
none the less well acted, fast-moving and
entertaining, perfect pocket-sized versions of
the great cinema originals. They boasted
Swashbuckling films
were essentially a
collaborative effort.
Among the vital artists
involved were the art
directors.
16 (left) 1[ 1 Were King
with Ronald Colman. Set
designed by Hans Dreier
and John Goodman
17 (right) Robin Hood
(1922). Set designed by
Wilfred Buckland
18 (below) Don Juan. Set
designed by Ben Carre
In the years following the Second World War, film-makers
increasingly turned to genuine settings and locations outside the
confines of the Hollywood studios.
19 (left) Mexico in Captain jrom Castile
20 (below left) England in Men oj Sherwood Porest
21 (below) Venice in Shadow ojthe Eagle
24 SWASHBUCKLING: A PROFILE OF THE GENRE
some notable heroes and villains. The most
successful was the long-running Adventures 01
Robin Hood with Richard Greene in the title
role and two successive and superb Sheriffs of
Nottingham in Alan Wheatley and John
Arnatt. Several subsequently distinguished
Bri tish film directors (Lindsay Anderson,
Karel Reisz, Terence Fisher) worked on the
series. But there was also The Adventures 01 Sir
Lancelot with William Russell, William Tell
with Conrad Phillips and the magnificent
Willoughby Goddard, The Buccaneers with
Robert Shaw and Peter Hammond, The Gay
Cava li er with Christian Marquand and Ivan
Craig, The Count 01 Monte Cristo with George
Dolenz, The Sword 01 Freedom with Edmund
Purdom and Martin Benson - a memorable
Lorenzo de Medici, Sir Francis Drake with
Terence Morgan, and Jean Kent as Elizabeth
I, Ivanhoe with Roger Moore, Richard the
Lionheart with Derrnot Walsh and The Scarlet
Pimpernel with Marius Goring and Stanley
VanBeers.
So in the mid-1950s Hollywood turned from
the swashbuckler to the epic in its search for
the audience-puller. If television could
swashbuckle with small casts and limited
sets, at least it could not re-create the glories
of Babyion and Rome in widescreen, stereo-
phonic sound and colour. So D'Artagnan,
Scaramouche and Captain Blood gave way to
Alexander the Great, Cleopatra and Ben-Hur
on the big screen.
Since then there have been sporadic but
unsuccessful revivals of the swashbuckler
from time to time. The early 1960s saw a wave
of Italian-made imitations of the great
Hollywood swashbucklers, many of them
starring expatriate Hollywood stars. It was a
wave which produced some startlingly good
and many dismayingly tatty films. It was so
extensive a wave as to require a book of its
own. In the mid-1960s, Universal produced
dismal remakes of Against All Flags (The
King's Pirate) and Ali Baba and the Forty
Thieves (Sword 01 Ali Baba) and Disney
resumed production in England with The
Legend 01 Young Dick Turpin and The Fighting
Prince 01 Donegal. The Hong Kong-produced
'martial arts' pictures in the early 1970s
gained a cult following. The product of a
culture and background very different from
the matrix ofthe Anglo-Saxon swashbuckler,
they nevertheless possess at their best the
grace of movement, captivating visual power
and capacity for stylization of their Holly-
wood counterparts.
Even as I wri te, we seem to be in the midst of
a revival of interest in swashbucklers. It was
initiated almost single-handed by Richard
Lester with his remake of The Three
Musketeers (1973), eventually shown in two
parts. Lester has sustained his interest with
Royal Flash (1975) and Robin and Marian (1976).
The Monty Python team of television
satirists have sent up the Arthurian legend in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Roman
Polanski plans a la vish hommage to the
swashbuckler called Pirates. The new cycle
has even produced a romantic star in the
traditional mould-Richard Chamberlain. He
showed his class as the bold, bad Lord Byron
in Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) and went on from
that to play Aramis in The Three Musketeers
and The Four Musketeers, Prince Charming in
The Slipper and the Rose and Edmond Dantes
in The Count 01 Monte Cristo, with consider-
able style.
But I believe this revival to be illusory. It
must be seen in the context of the age in
which we live, pre-eminently an age of form
over content, surface appearance rather than
inner values, innovation rather than orig-
inality. In short, it is an age in which parody
flourishes in the absence of true creative
spark. For as with the most successful of
recent western and horror films, the most
successful ofrecent swashbucklers have been
parodies. The cinema is now feeding more
than ever before on its mythic past and it was
only a matter of time before the swashbuck-
ler came in for the send-up routine. But
parody is essentially parasitic, it rapidly
exhausts itself and moves on to other
subjects. It is hard therefore to see this cycle
continuing. The keynote is requiem rather
than renaissance. The swashbuckler in fact
shows little sign ofreal revival because while
the style may be imitated, the underlying
ethic has been irreparably undermined.

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