Programme notes CH 01 — The Silent Signal
Don Q, Son of Zorro
Zorro’s son, finishing his education in Madrid, is framed for the murder of a visiting archduke and has to die in public to clear his name.
Five years after The Mark of Zorro, Douglas Fairbanks sent the hero’s son to Spain and gave him a bullwhip in place of a sword. Don Cesar wins the court, the queen’s favour and Mary Astor with the same easy grin, until a courtier who wants all three kills a guest of state and lets the blame fall on him. Donald Crisp directed and plays that courtier, so the villain had the best view of the picture. The whip does everything the sword used to: it disarms, it swings him onto balconies, it ends arguments. Watch the last reel, when Zorro rides in from California and Fairbanks fights beside himself, father and son in the same frame.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Donald Crisp
- Photographed by
- Henry Sharp
- With
- Warner Oland · Douglas Fairbanks · Charles Stevens · Mary Astor · Jean Hersholt · Donald Crisp
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Fairbanks five years apart, as the man in the mask and as the son who inherits it. The sword becomes a whip and California becomes Madrid; in the last reel the father rides in, and Fairbanks plays them both.