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The Good Bad-Man

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The Good Bad Man
1916 trace art theatrical poster
Directed byAllan Dwan
Written byDouglas Fairbanks
Produced byDouglas Fairbanks
StarringDouglas Fairbanks
CinematographyVictor Fleming
Production
company
Fine Arts Film Company
Distributed by
Release dates
  • April 21, 1916 (1916-04-21) (Original release)
  • October 19, 1923 (1923-10-19) (Re-release)
Running time
50 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent (English intertitles)

The Good Bad Man (1916) is an American silent Western film directed by Allan Dwan. The film stars Douglas Fairbanks (who also produced and wrote the film) and Bessie Love.

The film was originally distributed by Triangle Film Corporation. The film was edited and re-released by Tri-Stone Pictures in 1923.[1] A still photo from the film published in Overland Monthly (November 1916) refers to the film as Coyote of the Rio Grande and gives the name of Fairbanks' character as "Coyote McCall".

Cast

Bessie Love and Douglas Fairbanks in Overland Monthly (November 1916) where title of film is given as Coyote of the Rio Grande

Preservation status

No print of the original 1916 release exists, but a print of the 1923 re-release is preserved at the Library of Congress.[2]

On May 31, 2014, a restored print of the 1923 version was shown at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival at the Castro Theatre. This print has an original title at the beginning: "Supervised by D. W. Griffith".

Legacy

Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance finds The Good Bad Man fascinating for what it reveals about Fairbanks the man. Vance writes:

Passin' Through's unresolved relationship with an absent father and concerns of illegitimacy were also central to the identity of the offscreen Fairbanks, born Douglas Ulman. His mother, Ella Fairbanks (née Marsh), had been twice married before meeting attorney H. Charles Ulman, the son of German-Jewish immigrants. An alcoholic and bigamist, Ulman abandoned his new family when Douglas was five years old. At that time, Douglas's mother changed the family's surname to that of her deceased first husband, "Fairbanks." H. Charles Ulman died in 1915 and was undoubtedly in Fairbanks's thoughts in early 1916 when he developed the story of The Good Bad Man. The personal concerns and anxieties Fairbanks felt toward his identity were deeply concealed, which makes their exploration with his film's restless hero fascinating to watch.[3]

References

  1. ^ The Good Bad Man at silentera.com
  2. ^ Lombardi, Frederic (2013). Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios. McFarland. p. 60. ISBN 0-786-43485-6.
  3. ^ Vance, Jeffrey. The Good Bad Man San Francisco Silent Film Festival program book, May 29 – June 1, 2014.

Further reading

  • Vance, Jeffrey. Douglas Fairbanks. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-520-25667-5.