The Good Bad Man
| The Good Bad Man | |
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1916 trace art theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Allan Dwan |
| Produced by | Douglas Fairbanks |
| Written by | Douglas Fairbanks |
| Starring | Douglas Fairbanks |
| Cinematography | Victor Fleming |
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Production
company |
Fine Arts Film Company
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| Distributed by |
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Release date
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Running time
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50 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent (English intertitles) |
The Good Bad Man is a 1916 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. 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".
No print of the original 1916 release exists, but a print of the 1923 re-release is preserved at the Library of Congress.
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".
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.
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Wikipedia