Douglas Fairbanks Sr. night

This past summer during Summer Under the Stars, TCM spent a day with actor Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Tomorrow evening (November 19), they'll be spending the prime-time lineup with his father, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. I've only mentioned Fairbanks Sr. a couple of times, mostly because his career was in the silents and TCM tends to put its silents in the Silent Sunday Nights block just that once a week.

Fairbanks Sr. was of course the original swashbuckler, long before Errol Flynn. You can catch some of that swashbuckling in The Mark of Zorro at 10:00 PM. I think this is the only one of the night's movies that I've seen in its entirety, having watched it some time back when it was being run as part of some other prime time theme that had a bunch of silents. At that time, the print they showed was excellent for a movie from all the way back in 1920.

I've also seen the beginning of The Thief of Baghdad, which follows at midnight, but that one runs nearly two and a half hours, so I couldn't bring myself to sit down for the whole thing. I think that might have been during its airing as part of the "Arab Images in Film" spotlight back in 2011, when it began at 10:30 PM and I wasn't going to stay up until 1:00 AM. I've got a DVR now, but it's almost full. :-(