1920: Hollywood Royalty Gets Married

We are kicking off decade number 2 here at 100 Years and the cultural event of the year was the marriage of filmdom's two biggest stars: Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.  Because both were divorced (the start of a Hollywood tradition), they approached their European honeymoon with concern about crowd reaction (Pickford had only divorced weeks earlier from her previous husband).  In the end, they were treated like royalty and mobbed by adoring fans everywhere they went.  They also bought a mansion and named it "Pickfair", apparently beginning the unnecessary tradition of combining the names of Hollywood couples.

In national news, 1920 saw the first radio broadcast and the first votes for women.  As far as film milestones go, this is a quiet year.  Fairbanks moves from comedies and westerns into the swashbucklers that defined him with The Mark of Zorro.  Buster Keaton headlines his own comedy short without Fatty Arbuckle for the first time in One Week.  And the first true color animation appears in the form of The Debut of Thomas Cat.

What are watching?  I'm finally viewing my first Fairbanks feature with The Mark of Zorro.  I also want to track down Keaton's solo debut.  Beyond that, I'm eying D.W. Griffith's Way Down East, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with John Barrymore, and Cecil B. DeMille's Why Change Your Wife (all on Netflix Watch Instantly).  Also, I'm a huge fan of Michael Mann's Last of the Mohicans so Maurice Tourneur's version is a must watch.

And of course, Kay Hoog!  Spiders, Part 2!  More goofy awesomeness!

NOTE: An anonymous commenter pointed out that the picture in the original article was not in fact Pickfair.  After careful research (okay, 15 seconds of googling) I confirmed and have updated the picture (which comes from The Silver Screen Affair.