Double Trouble (1915)

Douglas Fairbanks couldn’t attend the premiere of his first film, The Lamb. By the time of its unveiling at the Knickerbocker Theater in New York on 23rd September, he was out west shooting Double Trouble.

Christy Cabanne, director of The Lamb, was reunited with Fine Arts’ new star for Double Trouble, and also adapted Herbert Quick’s 1906 novel for the screen. D. W. Griffith was the production supervisor, but the extent of his involvement is debatable. There is no record of the reserved director and flamboyant leading man ever clashing, but it’s possible they were of such diverse personalities that Griffith felt he couldn’t work with Fairbanks.

Margery Wilson, who starred with Fairbanks in Double Trouble, said Griffith’s production company was having money problems before they started filming. Efficiency experts sent out west by his New York backers to examine all aspects of the business recommended sweeping cuts. The studio summarily dismissed lesser names, including Wilson. The unemployed actress took to sitting in the studio’s outer casting office each morning, hoping to be selected for a part. After over two weeks, Griffith expressed surprise at seeing Wilson sitting there, and the next day summoned her to a rehearsal that night. Waiting to meet her was Fairbanks, who had requested an actress with stage experience for his next leading lady. “We ran through a couple of scenes, and Mr. Fairbanks, with his customary enthusiasm for anything that met his approval, said he was delighted to have me,” Wilson recalled in her autobiography. “His breeziness and good humor, rising up like the vapor from a pot of boiling energy, gave his personality great impact.”

Performers further down the cast list included comic actor Billy Quirk as a camp bellboy who propositions Fairbanks’ character. Quirk had enjoyed a brief period of success with Biograph (often appearing opposite Pickford) and Solax. When a move to Universal proved unsuccessful, Quirk signed with Vitagraph. It was there that his career faltered, eclipsed by bigger comedians with stronger material, such as John Bunny and Sidney Drew. By 1919, he was working for the Eastern Film Company, a tiny independent outfit operating out of Providence, Rhode Island. In February 1920, despondent over the failure of his career, he threw himself from a third-floor window of Harlem Hospital, where he was staying following a nervous breakdown. A snowbank broke his fall, and he recovered. He died in 1926 at the age of fifty-three.

Another member of the cast to meet an unfortunate end was Monroe Salisbury, who played a hotel clerk in the movie. Salisbury enjoyed a brief spell of stardom after playing the romantic lead in Ramona  (1916). He retired from acting in 1922, and an attempted comeback in 1929 met with little success. He was working as a hotel clerk in 1935 when he was admitted to Patton State Hospital for the Insane in San Bernardino, California. Shortly after arriving, he died after hitting his head. He lay in the morgue for two days before his sister identified him, and only four mourners attended his funeral.

Double Trouble followed a trend for ‘dual role’ pictures which possibly started with the 1913 drama, German of Prague. Many silent stars would explore the concept of dual personality – although Fairbanks was one of the first. According to John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh in Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century, Double Trouble bears more than a passing resemblance to the plot of Max Mack’s 1913 thriller, Der Andere (The Other).

Location shooting took place in Santa Ana in California. To shoot a parade scene for Double Trouble, Cabanne got permission from its mayor to use the town’s polling booth, its fire and police departments, the municipal band, and 4,000 extras. For scenes in which Fairbanks’ character underwent two personality changes, the director had a complete, authentic reproduction of a Pullman car constructed in the Fine Arts Studio on Sunset Boulevard under the supervision of the Los Angeles district manager of the Pullman Company. The production cost $40,488.33, and Fairbanks spent just twenty-two days filming it.

The film premiered at the Knickerbocker Theatre on 5th December 1915, alongside Thomas Ince’s The Golden Claw and Mack Sennett’s Saved by Wireless. Although generally favourable, praise for Double Trouble was not as generous as it had been for The Lamb. Moving Picture World wrote, “There is a depth of meaning to the screen version, and it affords Douglas Fairbanks abundant opportunity to display his versatile talents, but there is a tendency to drag at times and more than one incongruity that could have been completely eliminated where the main purpose is so obviously that of light and amusing entertainment.” Motion Picture News noted: “Here again as in The Lamb, these titles are mindful of George Ade and consequently very humorous. No strong dramatic situations arise, partly because of the character of the titles, but the picture is quite novel in development and interesting.” It was not so generous about Fairbanks’ performance, stating, “…with the Knickerbocker audience as a criterion, responsible for no small amount of laughter, the exaggerated zeal displayed by Fairbanks in order to create an effective contrast, may be passed over with no more than slight regret.”

Double Trouble has not aged well, although the criticism of Fairbanks’ performance feels unfair compared to other performers from the period. He does exaggerate, but Double Trouble is a comedy, and his flamboyant gestures don’t feel out of place. The film’s biggest problem is that it simply isn’t funny, despite some amusing intertitles.