“The Black Pirate was Fairbanks’ greatest success and also the first film with a major star to be entirely shot using the two-colour Technicolor process, based on red and green colour separation. The Phantom of the Opera came out that same year (1925), with protagonist Lou Chaney. However, only a few sequences were shot in colour. According to Rudi Behlmer, ‘Fairbanks was a shrewd impresario. He spent 125,000 dollars and 15,000 metres of film in order to test and choose the appropriate colours, the grades of make-up, the colours for the toning of the film and to examine the possibility of doing outdoor shooting. The Catalina islands were rejected because the sand and the foliage did not give satisfactory results on screen. After various tests it was decided to shoot ninety five per cent of the film at United Artists Studios […] Billie Dove was chosen as Fairbanks’ partner because her complexion and colouring were filmed to good effect in Wanderer of the Wasteland (1922), the first Technicolor western, filmed entirely on location’”.

(Federico Magni)

“After Robin Hood (1922), which was accompanied by a typical facile score by Victor Schertzinger, Douglas Fairbanks began to popularize the idea of using original scores by major, serious composers. For the purpose, he chose the American composer Mortimer Wilson (1876-1932). Although still melodious and diatonic, the musical structure and harmonic language of Wilson’s scorse were complex, often aimed at the emotion of an entire scene. They always had an overall musical unity that was lacking in compiled scores. It was this tradition of using an original score that became the dominant musical tradition for the accompaniment of feature and docmuentary films after 1929. Initially, Fairbanks’ aproach was not without its detractors as there were many, accustomed to the hodgepodge approach of the compiled score, who preferred it, but the adoption of the original score approach in the sound-film era is a tribute to Fairbanks’ foresight”.

(Gillian B. Anderson)