Substantially Similar--A Blog on IP Issues, Writing and Film

Question and Answer #9: What About the Copyright for Sherlock Holmes?

by John Aquino on 08/06/13

Question: You wrote about the copyright for the song "Happy Birthday." What about the copyright for Sherlock Holmes? Isn't somebody suing about this?

Answer: This again brings up the question about the ability to claim copyright protection for a fictional character. Copyright law protects works of authorship--fiction, nonfiction, plays, films, audiorecordings, and so on. It's words on paper, images on film, sound on disc. Characters like Nick and Nora Charles, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Captain Kirk, Indiana Jones are fictional characters in a copyrighted work. You cannot use the expression in a work--copy it, rework it, perform it--without permission of the copyright holder. But some fictional characters can exist inside and outside of a particular work. The cliche rings true: they have a life of their own. You say, "Sherlock" or "Indiana Jones," and people know what you mean. Philip Marlowe appears in a number of Chandler novels. He floats over them like a phantom, he covers them in a spider web. He's a conception--more than an idea, since he's been created in the work, but the character is not a separate work of authorship. But people could ask, If you're not stealing Chandler's expression, isn't Philip Marlowe like an idea that cannot be protected by copyright?

In U.S. law, the consensus is that a well-defined character is protected by copyright. Judge Learned Hand wrote in Nichols v. Universal Pictures in 1930, "the less developed the characters, the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctively." And so,under U.S. law, a distinct fictional character can be protected by copyright law.

Extrapolating on this, if a work has fallen into the public domain and is, then, not protected by copyright, then the copyright on the characters must have expired as well. If the characters are protected, it is not by a separate copyright but by virtue of the copyright in the work from which they came. If the works are no longer protected by copyright, how can the characters, for which no copyright registration is possible, continue to be protected?

As you can see, there is reason to this thinking, but it would surely be easier to claim copyright protection for a fictional character if you could register the character just like you are able to do for the work itself. But you can't. In 1976, when Congress revised U.S. copyright law, it didn't add a category for fictional characters. The copyright protection for fictional characters is just accepted for characters in copyrighted works that are well delineated, like Sherlock Holmes.

The first book in which Sherlock Holmes appeared, which was actually first serialized in a magazine, was Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887. Doyle published his last collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, in 1927. The earliest of those stories was published in 1921, the latest in 1927. Under UK law, the copyright for the Holmes books expired in 2000. Under U.S. law, any work published prior to 1923 has fallen into the public domain. The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes is, then, protected by copyright.

When Leslie S. Klinger wanted to publish a collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories, the Conan Doyle estate said he would have to pay a fee. In the lawsuit, Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, N.D. Ill., No. 1:13-cv-01226, filed 2/14/13. Klinger, who is also an attorney, argues that once the Sherlock Holmes stories--except for The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes--fell into the public domain, so did the copyright of the Sherlock Holmes character.

The estate's position appears to be that, in writing the stories in The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle was obviously reestablishing the copyrighted character that he had created and the copyright in the character continues until The Case Book falls into the public domain in 2023. Since the copyright for a fictional character tags along with a copyrighted work, shouldn't the copyright for Sherlock Holmes tag along with the copyright for The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes?

The public sentiment at the moment appears to be on the side of Klinger. And as an author I would enjoy writing Sherlock Holmes stories without having to even think about getting permission to do so. But given the vaporous nature of copyright protection for fictional characters, you do have to ask, what was Conan Doyle doing in those last stories--using his own creation that had fallen into the public domain, or recreating his creation, and thereby reestablishing the copyright?

The case is pending, and we'll have to wait for the outcome. But, as a writer as well as an attorney, I findsome credence to the argument that when he was writing new Sherlock Holmes stories after 1923, Doyle was recreating his Sherlock Holmes character and not in the same situation as a writer reusing a fictional character that someone else had created. In other words, he was coming home, he was picking up where he left off. At least, that's a possible argument.

The Doyle estate did not submit any responsive pleadings, and on July 29, 2013 Klinger submitted a motion for summary judgment. The court gave the estate until August 27, 2013 to respond to Klinger's summary judgment motion, and Klinger will have until Sept. 10 to respond to the response.

Then, hopefully, we'll see.

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Playing or Pretending to Play Musical Instruments in Films

by John Aquino on 08/01/13

Having written so far on voice dubbing in movie musicals and doubling in sword fighting scenes, I've been asked about the doubling that occurs when a character in a film plays a musical instrument.

This is, to me, a special type of doubling. Even the many of us who do not sing professionally do sing in the shower or join in on "Happy Birthday," so it's not a foreign thing for an actor to try to sing some in a film or to mime someone else's voice singing. Young boys grow up pretending to be the masked man with the sword or with the gun and run around waving twings as swords and fingers as guns. And so doing some of a fight scene or at least setting one up for a double is not an unusual experience for an actor.

But many of us do not play a musical instrument and don't even know how to hold a violin or flute or cello. We've all seen films in which a character in a movie plays taps-or "charge" and know that it's dubbed in. When Kay Kendall in the 1953 comedy Genevieve starts to play a French horn and her date assumes she can't and she really does play it, she really doesn't play it. Kendall later illustrated the technique in the 1955 comedy Simon and Laura when, as an actress in a television series, she leads friends in a sing-a-long on the piano, and we see the piano is actually being played by a woman off-camera. When actors accompany their singing by playing a guitar and all they do it hold the neck with one hand and strum with the other, they're not really playing.

But when more extended playing is needed, when the film is about a musician and the actor has to be playing all the time and be the focus of attention playing the instrument, what do an actor and a director do?

One of the saddest stories in this vein concerns the classic film Casablanca. Dooley Wilson played Sam the piano player in Rick's Cafe. He immortalized "As Time Goes By." Wilson could sing and was a drummer, but he couldn't play the piano. And so Elliott Carpenter did it out of camera range while Wilson sang. If you look at Wilson's hands, he didn't even try to learn how to finger the keys correctyly. He sits there banging his hands on the presumably soundless keys as if they were a drum. When the movie became an international sensation, Wilson was offered thousands of dollars to sing and play the piano to promote the film in theatres or to perform in nightclubs, but he had to turn all the offers down because he couldn't play. He returned to the Broadway stage where he sang.

In contrast, Tyrone Power portrayed the pianist Eddie Duchin in the 1956 movie The Eddie Duchin Story. Power practiced pretending to play the piano for months, working with a Nat Brandywynne, an orchestra leader and pianist who had known and played with Duchin, rehearsing on pianos that the studio arranged to have at his home, hotels when he was shooting another movie, and his gym. Power was able to master the complete fingering and mimick Duchin's unique playing style for 20 musical numbers that were played on the soundtrack by Carmen Cavallero. The scene in which Power as Duchin plays incredible variations on chopsticks with a young boy on a battered piano during World War Two is amazing, and there is no sign that Power is not really playing.

And, of course, a few actors have actually played musical instruments on film. In Pretty Woman (1990), Richard Gere wrote as well as plays the number in the hotel bar in the early morning hours as Julia Roberts watches, Dustin Hoffman wrote and plays the composition he performs for Emma Thompson in Last Chance Harvey (2008) and also plays the piano in Tootsie (1982), Dudley Moore plays the piano himself in 10 (1979) and Arthur (1981), and James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Jaimie Foxx, portraying Ray Charles in Ray (2004), did all of his own piano playing (and none of the singing). At the end of Song of Love (1947), Katherine Hepburn insisted that the movie end quietly with her as Clara Schuman playing one of her late husband's compositions on the piano, which Hepburn performed herself and was quite pleased with herself to be able to do so. There's also a wonderful episode of "The Jack Benny Show" from Oct. 3, 1954 titled "Jam Session at Jack's" that has as a premise that Jack, who plays the violin, has a weekly jam session with Dick Powell (trumpet), Fred MacMurray (saxophone), Tony Martin (clarinet), Dan Dailey (drums), and Kirk Douglas (banjo). And they really play! They didn't play much if at all in movies, though.

But most actors cannot play musical instruments and are faced with learning to mimick like Power, or learning a little, or just being dubbed.

Montgomery Clift, as part of his craft, learned to play the bugle for his role in From Here to Eternity (1953), even though he knew his playing would be dubbed. Robert DeNiro portrayed a saxophone player in New York, New York (1977). To be convincing, DeNiro learned to play the saxophone somewhat. He mastered the basic technique in order to appear to be playing authentically but on the soundtrack the saxophone parts are played by Georgie Auld. I read in an interview later that after he saw his performance on film he said, "Maybe I should have spent less time with that damn saxophone."

Some actors have been either unwilling to devote the time to appear to be playing accurately or were basically worried that no matter how hard they tried their "playing" would look fake. Sometimes the director and cameraman have had to find ingenious ways to make an actor's playing of an instrument, even when dubbed, look realistic.

In the 1946 movie Humoresque, John Garfield plays a violinist. When he peforms in concert, the camera is positioned so that one violinist's hand fingers and a violinist on the other side bows. (The actual playing on the sountrack is by Issac Stern.) This effect on screen was so convincing that Garfield complained later that when he was invited to parties after the film's release people kept handing him violins to play and he'd have to say that he'd hurt his arm in a fight scene and just wasn't up to bowing. In The Bishop's Wife (1947) Cary Grant, portraying an angel, is supposed to play a harp. He has been taught the basic technique to set it up but then the camera quicky goes to a low angle with Gail Laughton's hands in the foreground with Grant in the background seen through the harp's strings.

On a scale of embarrassment in front of the cast and crew, I would imagine that an actor having two people press against you so that they could substitute their arms for yours would be way up there, much worse than miming someone else's voice or having a double take over for you in a fight scene.

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Question and Answer # 8: Can You Copyright a Title?

by John Aquino on 07/29/13

Question: I have been reading that Warner Bros. is suing The Weinstein Company to block its use of the title "The Butler" for an upcoming movie. I thought you couldn't copyright a title.

I've been reading about that too, variously that the suit is about copyright law or trademark law.

Attorneys who work in intelllectual property law often complain that the media and even attorneys who work in other areas of the law toss around IP terms recklessly. I was just reading how IP attorneys claim members of their own law firms will routinely ask, "Should I copyright this name?" or "Should I trademark this book."

U.S. law provides copyright protection for works of authorship. A title running from one to five words has generally not been seen as qualifying as a work of authorship. It is possible to have trademark protection for the title of a movie or tv shows, such as "Star Trek" and "Star Wars." But the "mark" must cotinue to be used in commerce. I've seen news stories that Warners was asserting either trademark protection or copyright ownership based on a 1916 comedy titled "The Butler" to which it owns the rights. This suggests the title has not been used in commerce for 97 years. It could also be argued that "The Butler" is a generic and not a descriptive term and so could not merit trademark protection, just as a magazine publisher would have difficulty in registering a trademark for a magazine called "Movies" but maybe could for a title the publisher actually invented such as "MoviesDazzle."

I think editors have been bandying the terms "copyright" and "trademark" around in regard to "The Butler" in order to cover something that is a little more difficult to describe easily in a headline.

This is not a legal issue but a self-regulatory issue. In order to guard against two movie companies simultaneously coming up with the same title and also because copyright and trademark law may not easily protect a title, the U.S. movie industry self-regulates this aspect of the business and has created a Titles Registration Bureau as part of the Motion Picture Association of America. Membership in this registration is voluntary, but, once a member, the movie company agrees to follow the registration rules, which includes registering the title so many months in advance of release so as to give notification to a movie company that may have a competing title, and to agree to MPAA arbitration in case of dispute. The Weinstein Company and Warners agreed to be part of the registration process, and Warners claimed The Weinstein Company did not register the title "The Butler" in accordance with the rules.

On July 2, 2013, arbitrators agreed with Warners, Weinstein appealed the deecision, the MPAA appeal was rejected on July 22, and The Weinstein Company was fined $400,000 for not abiding by the July 2 arbitration ruling and was also required to pay for Warners' legal fees. The MPAA allowed the Weinstein Company to distribute the film as "Lee Daniels' The Butler," using the director's name in the title. The Weinstein Company issued a press release that it was glad the dispute was over.

There are stories about Hollywood's "golden age" and title disputes. One of the oddest film titles came about because of a worry that Warners would be sued over a title. Warners had bought the right to Maxwell Anderson's 1930 play "Elizabeth the Queen." It was filmed in 1939 starring Bette Davis as Queen Elizabeth and Errol Flynn as the Earl of Essex. The initial plan was to release the movie with the name of the play. But Flynn reportedly objected to being seen as a supporting player in the movie because of the title. He insisted that the title cover his character too. The logical thing to do was to call the movie "Elizabeth and Essex." But the biographer Lytton Strachey had written a book called "Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History" in 1928. Strachey had died in 1932, but Warners was convinced that it would be sued by his publisher for copyright infringement (!).

As mentioned, the publisher would not have been able to claim copyright protection for a title. The publisher might have been able invoke trademark law to argue "likelihood of confusion"--with people assuming that the movie was based on Strachey's book--and thus affecting the marketability of its "mark." But a mark named after two historical characters would apear to be generic in that Strachey didn't invent the mark, and to give him and his publisher control over the use of the names of two historical characters would arguably close off anyone else writing about them.

But, fearing litigation, Warners created one of the strangest titles in movie history: "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex," a title that was completely Warners own, and they could have it.

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Copyright infringement of a Single Line

by John Aquino on 07/20/13

I've written in this blog about fair use of copyrighted material and whether an ad lib or a single line can be copyright protected. A recent ruling about a movie's use of a single line from a famous author's novel/play is of interest

There is a fair use provision in the copyright law. Much to the frustration of ,both copyright holders and those who want to use copyrighted material, the law does not describe what is or is not protected by fair use but instead provides the court with various factors to consider: the purpose of the use, the purpose of the copyrighted material, the amount of the material to be used, and the effect of the use on the market for the copyrighted material.

Copyright law protects works of authorship. I previously told the story of how the dramaturg for the musical Rent sued the author's estate, claiming that she had contributed 20% of the musical and was therefore the joint owner of the copyright. The court ruled that for there to be a joint copyright there must have been an agreement between rthe authors to that effect. The court found no such agreement for the copyright of Rent. After this ruling, the dramaturg announced that she intended to file litigation to assert her ownership for each line that she claimed she wrote. Rather than litigated the ownership of every line, the author's estate settled with the dramaturg for what was reported to be a modest amount. Whether a single line constitutes a work of authorship was consequently not established.

In a case that was decided July 18, the estate of the novelist William Faulkner sued Sony Pictures over Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, a movie about a writer who travels back and forth between the past and the present. In that movie, Owen Wilson says that William Faulkner wrote, "The past is not dead. Actually, it's not even past." He credits the statement to Faulkner in the movie. The Faulkner estate argued that the use was unauthorized and therefore was copyright infringement.

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi granted Sony's motion to dismiss. Judge Michael P. Mills addressed the situation from a fair use perspective. I have written before that if your use is educational or news reporting you're half way home to fair use. Here, the use was clearly commercial: a motion picture designed to make money. But the other factors weighed strongly in Sony's favor.

Judge Mills wrote, "It should go without saying that the quote at issue is of miniscule qualitative importance to the work as a whole. Thus the court considers both the qualitative and quantitative analysis to tip in favor of fair use."

Mills also wrote that he did not understand why Hollywood's literary allusion to Faulkner did not result in celebration rather than a lawsuit. He suggested that the quote could actually enhance the market value of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun, from which the quote was taken.

The ruling was a victory for fair use of a single line. The court did not consider whether a single line merits copyright protection. Nor did the court deal with the use of a line by a famous author that is so widely quoted that it is almost iconic.

Faulkner also said in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "I believe that man will not merely survive: he will endure." Lillian Hellman said before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in 1952, "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion." Will and should a credited allusion to such statements result in an infringement suit?

The court addressed only the length and market aspect of such a situation and dismissed the action, finding such use is fair.

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On Doubling in Movie Sword Fights

by John Aquino on 07/09/13

A short time ago I wrote an article on this blog on voice doubling in movie musicals, using the recent example of Les Miserables as a starting point, and some have suggested the similarities to doubling in movie sword fight scenes.

There are similarities in that singing and sword fighting are skills that some people have and some people don’t. You could argue that more people can sing than can use a sword, and that may be true. I had mentioned as to voice dubbing that non-singers often make vocal tracks and some of those can end up on the soundtrack, blended with the singing of the dubber. And the same thing happens in movie sword fights, with the actors doubled in part of the fight—sometimes in large parts.

In silent films, there was not much concentration on sword fights. Actors who had stage training often knew how to hold a sword and some basic moves. Mostly, the actors appear to wave the swords around.

As movies grew older, film sword fights grew bolder. In Warners’ 1926 Don Juan, known as the first movie with a synchronized musical score, John Barrymore as the title character fights an elaborate sword due with Montagu Love as the villain. Barrymore leaps from a balcony to face Love and they fight up the stairs, into the bedroom, and then back down the stairs. There are shots from the perspective of each fighter as the camera pans. It’s an elaborate scene. But a good deal of the time Barrymore and Love are still just waving their swords around. In the long shots, they are clearly doubled, and the doubles are not good matches for the actors. (Barrymore was quoted as saying he had learned that waving his sword around wildly got attention and he didn’t care what his style looked like. He followed this maxim ten years later as Mercutio in M-G-M’s Romeo and Juliet, much to the dismay and disgust of Basil Rathbone playing Tybalt.

But the pattern was set: close-ups of the actors interspersed with long shots of doubles and reaction shots of alarmed heroines.

But things continued to change. One major reason for this was the emergence in Hollywood of Belgium-born fencing master Fred Cavens who later teamed with his son Albert. Cavens was the fencing master for Douglas Fairbanks’ The Mark of Zorro (1920) and The Black Pirate (1925), but when sound came in at first the primitive sound technology made jumping around with a sword difficult to follow and there was also a focus on contemporary stories.

In the 1935 Warners’ movie Captain Blood, which had Errol Flynn in his first starring role, Cavens as fencing master teamed with fight coordinator Ralph Faulkner and director Michael Curtis, who later directed such classics as Yankee Doodle Dandy, Casablanca, and Mildred Pierce. Curtis liked to move the camera, Accompanied by a rousing musical score by Wolfgang Korngold, Flynn and Rathbone start to flight on the beach under palm trees, then move across the sand in long shot to the rocks, where they duel to the death, with Rathbone falling into the water and lying there with his eyes open as the water washes over him. The actors are clearly doing their own fighting in two-shots, were likely doubled in the long shot in which they move across the sand to the rocks, and Flynn seems to be doubled with his back to the camera as he forces Rathbone to climb onto the rocks. They are not doubled in the final shots in which Flynn dispatches Rathbone. The entire fight lasts just over two minutes.

This was something new. Cavens continued to be fencing master and sometimes fight double for some of the best remembered movie duels for the next 20 years. (There is a continuity in Hollywood stunt work. Dick Green, the stunt man who doubled for Barrymore in leaping from the balcony in Don Juan, was doing stunts in 1965 for The Great Race, a Blake Edwards comedy that did homage to classic slapstick comedy and sword duels.).

In 1938, Warners’ The Adventures of Robin Hood reunited Curtis, Flynn, Rathbone, Cavens, and Korngold and ends with an elaborate sword fight between Flynn as Robin Hood and Rathbone as Sir Guy of Guisbourne. Rathbone had taken an interest in sword fighting and had become quiet proficient. Flynn didn’t have the same discipline, but he was a natural athlete who looked good with a sword. Using modified broadswords held with one hand rather than two, they fight down the stairs into an open area, knock over an elaborate candle holder, and then the camera switches to an overhead long shot, with the actors likely doubled, and the two men’s shadows cast against the stone walls. Then they fight over a table and stool and move into another area where Flynn skewers Rathbone, who falls over a balcony and is shown lying dead, his eyes again open. This fight too takes just over two minutes. Except for the long shot and probably where Flynn leaps over the table with his back to the camera, the actors do not appear to be doubled.

In 1940, Cavens staged two elaborate duels for two different studios. In Twentieth Century Fox’s The Mark of Zorro, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, Cavens returned to a story for which he had choreographed the sword fights 20 years earlier for Douglas Fairbanks. Rathbone is pitted against Tyrone Power in a one-room duel with sabers. It is staged furiously. Rathbone appears to be in every shot, Power in most, doubled when Don Diego has his back to the camera and rams his sword into the glass of a bookcase next to Rathbone and when Don Diego kills the Commandant. Rathbone dies with his back to the wall, the sword entering his chest and a small red dot growing bigger (from a squibb under his shirt) before he falls. Power is later joined by Montagu Love, once John Barrymore’s adversary in Don Juan, in a mass fight taking over the city. Love still appears to be just waving his sword around.

Power was more diminutive than Flynn and is clearly doubled in some shots, but, as far as his ability with a sword, Rathbone later said Power could mop up the floor with Flynn. A sad side-note is that in 1942 Power dueled with George Sanders as staged by Cavens in the pirate movie The Black Swan. Power was 28, Sanders 36. Sixteen years, Power, who had developed a heart condition, insisted on doing his own stunts in a duel with Sanders in Solomon and Sheba. He should have been doubled. Sanders disliked the exertion and following the choreography and complained and complained. They had to do it over and over until Power experienced chest pains. He was taken to the hospital and died at the age of 44.

For Warners’ The Sea Hawk, made the same year as Zorro, Curtis, Flynn, Faukner, and Korngold were joined by Henry Daniel as the villain. Daniel, while praised for his acting in the film, has been widely criticized as no Rathbone with a sword, with rumors that he refused to do more than move his head back and forth in close-ups and left the entire duel to his double. In watching the scene, this turns out not to be true. Daniel is in some two-shots with Flynn as well as the close-ups. Actually, Flynn is doubled as much as Daniel, with the duel mostly done in long shot, with a shadows-on-the-wall segment that is more elaborate than Robin Hood. It could have been a question of discipline, with Flynn rather than Daniel objecting to the need to train and choreograph the sequence, or perhaps over-scheduling Flynn with other projects.

The Sea Hawk example actually became the norm, with exceptions like Robin Hood and Captain Blood. Even well-done fight scenes in films like The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) follow this blueprint: the actors circle each other and strike a few blows, then there are a series of long shots in which the actors are doubled, interspersed with close-ups of the actors seemingly fighting and with two-shots of the actors with their swords tight together and offering witty repartee. The smaller and less well-financed studios paid even less attention to how well the doubles matched the height and width of the actors.

Rathbone suffered a doubling humiliation when in 1956 he appeared as the villain in Paramount’s Robin-Hood spoof The Court Jester starring Danny Kaye. Kaye was no fencer but he was taught how to use a sword. Rathbone, even at age 63, could handle a sword well. But Kaye had a mind like a camera and once he learned the choreography he became too fast for Rathbone and Faulkner had to double Rathbone with his back to the camera.

An interesting side-note is the story of Cornell Wilde. He was a trained fencer and was reportedly part of the team for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin until he gave it up to be in a play. He did a number of film duels and not surprisingly looks good with a sword. Surprisingly, his duels are usually lackluster, with Wilde and the double for the villain alternating advancing and retreating, back and forth and back again, which is more faithful to actual fencing techniques but less exciting. There is little jumping on tables or hacking at giant candleholders. Wilde is never doubled in A Thousand and One Nights, the Bandit of Sherwood Forest, At Sword’s Point, and the Scarlet Cloak, but maybe he should have been, just a little.

Cavens staged the longest sword duel ever filmed in MGM’s Scaramouche in 1952. It runs just over six minutes and carries Stewart Granger and Mel Ferrer throughout a theatre—in the boxes, on the railings around the boxes, over banisters, down stairs, backstage. Granger and Ferrer are in a good many shots but are also clearly doubled in the long shots with them on the railings outside the boxes and jumping over banisters and treating a couch like a trampoline.

Cavens also worked with actresses for movie sword fights, most notably jean Peters for in Anne of the Indies (1951) and Maureen O’Hara for At Sword’s Point (1952).

Perhaps the best movie sword duel, to my taste, is the one in Warners’ The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) starring Errol Flynn. Flynn, turning 40 and doing his first swashbuckler since Sea Hawk, appeared to have taken it seriously. He plays his age, appeared strained at times, struggling to keep up, but finding the strength that comes with experience. Cavens staged it on a gigantic staircase in the royal palace and doubled in a number of shots for the villain Robert Douglas. The only doubling I see for Flynn is when he leaps onto Douglas after the latter is pushed down the staircase. The leap was probably done by Jock Mahoney, who had doubled for Flynn in an earlier leap in the prison scene. It appears to have been modeled on the one in the silent Don Juan with Barrymore and Love. Mahoney was the stepfather of actress Sally Fields, star of the late 1950s tv series Yancey Derringer, both Tarzan and a Tarzan villain in the 1960s, and stunt coordinator for Tarzan the Ape Man in 1981.

Sword fight movies fell out of fashion in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. When sword duels were staged in the 1970s, as in Richard Lester’s Three Musketeer movies, they were more mixed arts affairs, with punching, kneeing, eye poking, and shoving added in, which may have been the way such things were done. Any doubling was usually in the long shots and for falls and such, since the skill that was needed had been minimized.

The lightsaber duels between Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movies were, however, extensively doubled.

The issue of doubling in movie sword fights has been so prevalent that when director Rob Reiner began The Princess Bride (1987), he told Cary Elwes and Mandy Patikin that he wanted it done without any doubling. The actors trained for six weeks and filmed the fight scene themselves, with the only doubling being for a back flip to be done by Patikin.

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