The Americano

Lured by the vision of President Valdez's beautiful daughter, Juana, American engineer Blaze Derringer travels south to the Latin American country of Paragonia. His mission is to reopen the mines and help restore prosperity, but on arrival he finds his company's offices deserted and the president a prisoner of self-appointed dictator, Colonel Gargaras. Blaze must concoct a plan to free the president from the impregnable San Mateo prison, if Paragonia is to be freed from oppression.

Only eighteen months after his debut in D.W. Griffith's The Lamb (1916), handsome, athletic, charismatic Douglas Fairbanks had established himself as Hollywood's third highest paid actor, behind only Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. The mighty triumvirate of friends went on to found United Artists in 1919, and the studio's financial success was fueled to a great extent by Fairbanks' motion pictures. As the first president of the Motion Picture Academy Of Arts and Sciences, Fairbanks presented the very first Oscars in 1927. He is best known for his lavish swashbuckling adventures, most notably The Mark Of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922) and The Thief of Bagdad (1924).