Douglas Fairbanks in Lloyd Ingraham's "American Aristocracy" (1916) - story by Anita Loos

A wealthy industrialist, Leander Hicks (C.A. de Lima, as Charles De Lima), who frequents the resort at Narraport-by-the-Sea, Rhode Island, is anxious that his restless daughter, Geraldine (Jewel Carmen), should marry Percy Horton (Albert Parker), a wealthy manufacturer, and mollycoddle and in no way measures up to Miss Hick's ideas of the man she wants to marry. Horton has dealt in war munitions and has secretly sold to the Mexican government. His legitimate business is the manufacture of malted milk.

While riding in her car, Miss Hicks declares to her girlfriends that she intends to kiss the first real man she sees. Then, Miss Hicks sees a handsome young man in the roadway. He is an entomologist, Cassius Lee (Douglas Fairbanks), on a field expedition. Lee has volunteered his services as a secret service agent to the government. After their encounter, Miss Hicks jumps back into the car and speeds away. The young man decides to find the girl, and proceeds to search the hotels.

Lee attends a ball that night at the best hotel. So does Miss Hicks, accompanied by her father and Percy Horton. While young Lee, who chances to be attired exactly the same as Percy Horton, is standing on the edge of the crowd, trying to find the girl, a Mexican spy, Delgado (Artie Ortego), disguised as a hotel porter, mistakes Lee for Horton, and slips a note in his hand. Lee's suspicions are aroused when he discovers the note to be a message directing Horton to ship 20,000 rounds of munitions the next day on a yacht.

Late that night, Lee steals into the Horton factory and discovers that the malted milk cans really contain gunpowder. He beaten by Horton's guards, tied, and locked in the cage of an elevator. Percy departs for Mexico, taking as captives Geraldine and her father. Lee finally makes his escape.

The next morning, Lee, having notified the government officials that he is on the trail of one of the gang he has been on the lookout for, starts in pursuit of the yacht. No tug being available, he uses a hydroplane, leaps from that to a speedboat and just as a United States torpedo boat destroyer comes up and takes a hand in the case, overhauls the yacht in a powerful speedboat, and engages Percy's gang in a battle that is resolved by the arrival of American armed forces.. The undoing of Horton is complete and the girl; of course, she marries the real man she has chanced upon so accidentally.

A 1916 American Black & White silent adventure comedy drama film directed by Lloyd Ingraham, produced by D.W. Griffith, story by Anita Loos, cinematography by Victor Fleming, starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jewel Carmen, Charles DeLima, Albert Parker, Charles Stevens, and Artie Ortego. Released by Triangle Film Corporation.

Screen debut of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. who appears as a Newsboy, uncredited.

The car that Percy drives is a 1912 Stutz racer.

The seaplane is a Curtiss Type F.

The torpedo boat destroyer (#36) was the former US Navy ship Patterson, in commission 1911-19.

Cassius Lee (Douglas Fairbanks) is titled as an FFV. This means First Families of Virginia. The Lees were at the core of Virginian aristocracy for centuries.

Anita Loos (1888-1981), born Corinne Anita Loos in Sisson (now Mount Shasta), California,, was an American actress, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. In 1912, she became the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, when D. W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She is best known for her comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), her screenplay of the adaptation of "The Women" (1939), and her Broadway adaptation of Colette's novella "Gigi" (1951). By age six, Anita wanted to be a writer. While living in San Francisco, Anita accompanied her father, an alcoholic, on exciting fishing trips to the pier, exploring the city's underbelly (the Tenderloin and the Barbary Coast) and making friends with the locals. This fed her lifelong fascination with lowlifes and loose women. Anita sent her first attempt at a screenplay, "He Was a College Boy", to the Biograph Company, for which she received $25. "The New York Hat" (1912), starring Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore and directed by D. W. Griffith, was her third screenplay and the first to be produced. By 1912, Anita had sold scripts to both the Biograph and Lubin studios. Between 1912 and 1915, she wrote 105 scripts, all but four of which were produced. Anita wrote 200 scenarios before she ever visited a film studio. Loos wrote as a magazine contributor, appearing regularly in Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

This wonderfully light comedy is one of the movies that made Douglas Fairbanks, along with Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson and Charlie Chaplin, the leading member of the new American aristocracy, the Movie Star. It is a pure star vehicle, with Fairbanks leaping gracefully over park benches and wire fences, leavened with a little social satire. If you don't know Fairbanks' work, you've got a treat ahead of you.

Видео Douglas Fairbanks in Lloyd Ingraham's "American Aristocracy" (1916) - story by Anita Loos канала Donald P. Borchers