Sounds Of Silents

Robin Hood - 1922 - with snyced symphonic music

A silent classic revitalized with synchronized music, image enhancement, original title cards reproduction and a new opening-titles sequence

 

Big, lavish, expensive productions were abundant in the 1920's--The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Orphans of the Storm, Scaramouche, The Queen of Sheba, The Sea Hawk, The King of Kings, to name but a few--but for sheer entertainment, few could match Douglas Fairbanks' 1922 production of Robin Hood.
 

 
Though not the first film based on the medieval folk tales of a fallen Saxon noble who robs the rich and rewards the poor (a short British feature, Robin Hood and His Merry Men, was made  in 1908), this production, with its colossal sets and a cast, literally, of thousands, was one of the first films to cost over one million dollars.

Fairbanks himself wrote the story (as "Elton Thomas," his favorite pseudonym) and hired Alan Dwan to direct.  One of the so-called "Big Four" directors of the 1920's (the others were D. W. Griffith, Cecil B. De Mille and Rex Ingram), Dwan was a master at mixing comedy with drama, thus he worked well--and often--with Fairbanks, whose films always had a playful, devil-may-care tone.
 

Some interesting incidentals:

   * Robin Hood was the first film to have its world premiere in Hollywood.  The great event
     was held on October 18, 1922, at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre at 6706 Hollywood 
     Blvd. (now the home of the American Cinematheque).

   * Alan Hale (father of Alan Hale Jr., who played the Skipper in the TV series Gilligan's
     Island) played Little John in both this 1922 production and ithe 1938 Technicolor 
     production The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn.

   * Some of the sets for Robin Hood were designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

   * The famous castle set was bigger even than the massive Babylonian set in D. W.
     Griffith's 1917 epic, Intolerance.

   * A year after appearing in Robin Hood, Wallace Beery (who had the dubious honor of
     being Gloria Swanson's first husband) portrayed King Richard again in the 1923 film
     Richard the Lionhearted.

   * In 1938, when Douglas Fairbanks learned that a "remake" of Robin Hood was in pre-
     production, he threatened to sue Warner Bros. for copyright infringement of his 1922
     screen story and wasn't appeased until his lawyers read the shooting script for The
     Adventures of Robin Hood and determined there were no grounds for a lawsuit.

Now, almost 100 years after its premiere, Sounds of Silents proudly presents the GCM Production of a MaxManLA Video, ROBIN HOOD, with synchronized symphonic music, digital image enhancement, original title cards reproduction and a new opening titles sequence.  The link below offers FREE online viewing and several FREE downloading options.

ROBIN HOOD (1922)