This now classic portrait of Douglas Fairbanks - the swashbuckling original King of Hollywood - was first published in 1940. Long out of print and hard to find, Alistair Cooke's posthumous biography was the first serious consideration of the career of the great silent screen star and husband of America's sweetheart, Mary Pickford. Reissued here in a facsimile edition, Douglas Fairbanks: The Making of a Screen Character treats, step by step, the course of Fairbanks' career, and sheds light on the mysterious ingredients of screen popularity and on the history of motion pictures generally. Alistair Cooke, the distinguished journalist and broadcaster, was assistant to Charlie Chaplin when he met Iris Barry, MoMA's first film curator, in 1938. Barry invited Cooke to participate in the Museum's groundbreaking film course at Columbia University and commissioned him to write Douglas Fairbanks: The Making of a Screen Character.