Henry Carter Hull

An aristocratic Californian becomes a masked avenger to rid his people of a tyrannous and corrupt government.

In The mark of Zorro, his first full-blown effort at the costume thriller, Fairbanks portrays Don Diego Vega, a comically effete young nobleman with a taste for tasseled sombreros and juvenile silk-hanky magic tricks.

Long before Superman or Batman made their first appearances, there was Zorro. Born on the pages of the pulps in 1919, Zorro fenced his way through the American popular imagination, carving his signature letter Z into the flesh of evildoers in Old Spanish California. Zorro is the original caped crusader, the first hero to have a band called the Avengers, and the character who laid the blueprint for the modern American superhero: the mask, the alter-ego,...