Week 1: The Feature

This week's feature - The Mark of Zorro.

The theme for the first month of the matinee series is Heroes and Villains and here is our hero - dashing Tyrone Power as Don Diego Vega, better known as Zorro (the Fox). Our villain is a two-fer: Basil Rathbone as Captain Esteban Pasquale and J Edgar Bromberg as Luis Quintero.

I had a hell of a time summing up the plot of this week's Zorro serial, but the plot of the feature is pretty straight-forward. Greedy governor Quintero, backed by his ruthless enforcer, plunders the local farmers for taxes. Nobody can defeat Pasquale and his soldiers, and good people do not even try, because Quintero operates under color of law. As harmless fop Don Diego, Zorro infiltrates Quintero's household, while the masked fox steals ill-gotten tax revenue from Quintero's men. When the time is right, Zorro bests Pasquale with a sword and leads an uprising, casting down Quintero and restoring his father as the rightful authority.

I started writing a bit about heroes and villains - such as the fact that Zorro steals and terrorizes the governor, even though he is the hero, but that is beside the point. My wife was quite taken with Tyrone Power’s wonderful hair and pretty eyes, and he delivered a hilarious performance as the fop. The sword fight with Basil Rathbone moved fast and looked good, from drawing their swords to Zorro running Pasquale through - under the Z, titular Mark of Zorro!

The foppishness of Zorro's secret identity pays off lots of laughs. Also, it works as a plot device. Not only does Don Diego get close to his enemies without danger, but he can also tweak them personally and play them against each other. He was obvious about pursuing the wife of Quintero taking her affections away from Pasquale. (I do have to wonder what the arrangement was between these three people - Quintero, Pasquale, and Quintero's wife. Pasquale offers to take her away with him to Spain. They go riding every day. Quintero can't be unaware.)

There I go, getting serious again!

The Mark of Zorro was a swashbuckling good time!


The cool bits: Tyrone Power talking about shopping. Zorro jumping his horse off the bridge into the water. The already-mentioned sword fight. All the scenes with Basil Rathbone and the governor. Something about a June morning.

The movie experience: Ever notice moments of silence, now and again, when everybody stops talking at once? There are quiet moments in movies, too, when a scene fades to black with no music. Just as one of those moments came on, we heard - "Will you stop kicking the back of my chair? It is very distracting."

Comedy gold: An intemperate priest - I mean “Padre” - kept angrily declaring how he would kill the governor or his men for their terrible wrongs. Then he would cross himself and say, “God forgive me!” In the melee at the end of the film, every time he hit a soldier he crossed himself and said, “God forgive me!”

Movie Trivia: When this movie played in theaters in 1940 and 1941, after 373 women swooned at the sight of Tyrone Power’s glorious hair and pretty eyes, theaters required all female patrons to sign waivers of right to sue. Maribeth Sampson refused to sign and sued a theater in Arizona. The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice of the United States Charles Evans Hughes, held that, if Maribeth Sampson refused to sign the waiver, she could only attend the movie wearing a blindfold.