American Aristocracy is a silent 5-reel 52-minute comedy released by Triangle Film Corporation on November 12, 1916, starring Douglas Fairbanks in one of his earliest roles.

Directed by Lloyd Ingraham, the film presents Jewel Carmen as Fairbanks’ love interest and Albert Parker as the antagonist. It marks the film debut of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., who plays a newsboy. The scenario was written by Anita Loos and is based on her short story. Victor Fleming, who would go on to direct The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, was the cameraman. D.W. Griffith was the supervisor. It was filmed on Watch Hill, Rhode Island.

Here’s the first tongue-in-cheek intertitle: “Does America have an aristocracy? We say yes! And to prove it, we take you to Narraport-by-the-Sea where we find some of our finest families whose patents of nobility are founded on such deeds of daring as the canning of soup, the floating of soap, and the borating of talcum.”

Narraport is where the titans of industry are gathered – the barons of brewing, the soup tycoons, the soap magnates, and the whisky bosses. A game of one-upmanship is played by all parties, trying to out-snub and out-slight each other. Geraldine Hicks (Carmen), daughter of the king of hatpins, is being courted by the malted milk mogul Percy Horton (Parker), who is outwardly dull but has a secret life as a smuggler.  

In waltzes Cassius Lee (Fairbanks), a patrician but broke entomologist who is ostensibly in pursuit of a rare caterpillar. He lives in a tent but still has a valet and spends his time in intrepid feats like leaping over boulders and fences and vaulting into trees. Geraldine, bored with the men around her, promises her girlfriends that she will kiss the first man she sees. That would be Cassius, conveniently standing on the side of the road as she is driven by – Geraldine, of course, ignores the porter and the driver of her car, whom she sees before coming across Cassius.

Percy makes a plan to make Geraldine admire him. He enlists Cassius to swap clothes, pretend to be him, and also engage in daredevil feats like driving a car recklessly and flying a seaplane so that Geraldine will be fooled. For some reason, Geraldine allows herself to be fooled. Perhaps because anything is better than languishing around and leaning against walls gazing vacantly off into the distance.

After many adventures involving the aforementioned smuggling, a kidnapping of the heroine, and a rescue by the hero, Geraldine and Cassius have their happy-ever-after. But not before Cassius is put through one more test. “I’m afraid father won’t consent. You’ve never had a full-page ad in a magazine,” Geraldine woefully declares. In one of the film’s many amusing scenes, Cassius steps up to the challenge to satisfy his future father-in-law and win the hand of his lady.

Fairbanks gets top billing in the opening credits. After that, only director Ingraham and writer Loos get recognition. The rest of the cast is billed on the intertitle that precedes their entrance into the story.

Even this early in his career, Fairbanks was a star. His charisma and charm shine right through the screen despite the fact that he isn’t a conventionally handsome man. His athleticism is on full display with all the action he’s called on to do, no stuntmen necessary. If the viewer sees this as a star vehicle for his talents, the somewhat ludicrous plot and holes in the story become unimportant.

The film was re-released in 1921. A poster advertising the screening reads, “A production in which the inimitable Doug outdoes himself in a virile characterization of an American who was not afraid nor ashamed.” Matinees were 20¢; nights 25¢, tax included.

Fairbanks moved away from comedies to swashbuckling roles in films such as The Mark of Zorro (1920), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Baghdad (1924), and The Black Pirate (1926, which restoration was also funded by the HFPA). When he married actress Mary Pickford, in 1920, the two of them ruled Hollywood as royalty. Fairbanks founded United Artists along with Pickford, D.W. Griffith, and Charlie Chaplin in 1920, and was a founding member of AMPAS, hosting the first Oscar ceremony in 1929 as its first president. His career dwindled once talkies came in.

Carmen, born Florence Lavinia Quick, appeared in several films in the 1910s but had a career marked by scandal. She was involved in a statutory rape trial when she accused an automobile dealer in Los Angeles of sexual assault, but the case was dropped as she could not give proof of her age. She changed her name and entered the industry. Among the highlights of her career are Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) and Frank Lloyd’s A Tale of Two Cities and Les Misérables, both released in 1917. She married director Roland West and was then embroiled in another scandal in 1935 when the actress Thelma Todd was found dead in the garage of their house. Carmen testified that she had seen Todd alive on Hollywood Boulevard after the time she had been determined dead, presumably to cover for her husband, who was having an affair with Todd. The death was ruled accidental, and Carmen left West soon after.

Albert Parker went on to a distinguished directing career between 1917 and 1938, then moved to Hollywood where he became an agent. He represented Golden Globe Winner Helen Mirren in the 1960s.

Anita Loos was the first female staff writer in Hollywood, starting at the Triangle Film Corporation where Griffith paid her $75 a week to start. She co-wrote the intertitles on Intolerance. Her best-known films are Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928), based on her 1925 novel, and the 1951 Broadway adaptation of Gigi, based on Colette’s novel. She wrote five films for Fairbanks.

American Aristocracy was restored with funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in association with The Film Foundation. The George Eastman Museum, in Rochester, New York, has a 35 mm preservation negative and positive, as well as a 16 mm reduction positive in its film archives. The film is now in the public domain and can be seen on YouTube, jarringly interrupted by commercials.