A Modern Musketeer

1917 AdventureComedy 68 minutes Directed by Allan Dwan

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About A Modern Musketeer

A prologue shows Douglas Fairbanks as D'Artagnan in a tavern brawl. He becomes Ned Thacker of Kansas, raised on The Three Musketeers. Ned leaves home in a car, meets Elsie Dodge and her rich, disliked suitor Forrest Vandeteer on a washed-out desert road, and drives the party to a Grand Canyon hotel by putting the car on railroad tracks. The outlaw leader Chin-de-dah kidnaps Elsie. Ned and James Brown, who hates Vandeteer, pull the captives up a cliff. Ned makes Vandeteer write a note clearing Brown and sign over a $100,000 reward. Elsie kisses Ned.

Cast & crew

More about A Modern Musketeer

Allan Dwan wrote and directed from Eugene P. Lyle Jr.'s story "D'Artagnan of Kansas" (Everybody's Magazine, September 1912). Fairbanks produced. Artcraft distributed it. New York opening 30 December 1917. Copyright LP11871, 26 December 1917, Artcraft Pictures, five reels. Hugh McClung, Harry Thorpe, and Victor Fleming photographed it. Billy Shea cut it, with Dwan supervising. Filming began in fall 1917 at the Grand Canyon, with more scenes at Canyon de Chelly and at the Lasky studio.

Themes

  • a Kansas D'Artagnan
  • a rich man with hidden wives
  • a kidnapping at the canyon
  • a written confession on the cliff
  • Ned Thacker
  • Elsie Dodge
  • Grand Canyon
  • Chin-de-dah
  • D'Artagnan

Look

Victor Fleming, Hugh McClung, and Harry Thorpe shot the Grand Canyon and Canyon de Chelly sequences, including the cliff lift.

Preservation

A complete print survives and is in the public domain. The Danish Film Institute and MoMA restored it. A 2006 alternate version runs 68 minutes. A timed copy runs 1 hour 8 minutes 29 seconds.

Notes

  • Marjorie Daw plays Elsie, Kathleen Kirkham her mother, Eugene Ormonde plays Vandeteer, and Frank Campeau plays Chin-de-dah.
  • ZaSu Pitts has an uncredited bit as a Kansas City belle. Tully Marshall plays James Brown.
  • The Danish Film Institute and the Museum of Modern Art restored the film after further footage was found.
  • Flicker Alley issued the restoration on DVD on 2 December 2008 in the set Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer.

Scenes

  • Fairbanks duels in the seventeenth-century prologue, then appears as Ned in Kansas.
  • Ned sets his car on the railroad tracks to reach the hotel.
  • Vandeteer hangs from the cliff until he writes the note Ned demands.

Influenced by

  • Eugene P. Lyle Jr., "D'Artagnan of Kansas" (1912)
  • The Three Musketeers

Also available

  • Flicker Alley DVD (Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer, December 2, 2008)

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