In The Blogs

Robin Hood

| Wed Jul. 15, 2009 7:18 AM PDT

My colleague Binyamin Appelbaum noticed something interesting yesterday: Robin Hood movies are tied to recessions. We're talking here about the adult Robin Hood movies. So set aside "Men in Tights" and the Disney cartoon. Instead, look at first major Robin Hood film, "The Adventures of Robin Hood". Release date? 1938. Similarly, "Prince of Thieves" came out in 1991, another recessionary year. And I ran a quick Google search: Sure enough, there's another Robin Hood movie slated for May of 2010.

1938 marked the first major Robin Hood film? Please. I claim a point of personal privilege. My father's name was Dale Douglas Drum. His first name was based on the character Allan-a-Dale and his middle name was taken from the actor Douglas Fairbanks. Why? Because shortly before he was born my grandparents had seen the 1922 version of Robin Hood starring Fairbanks and the names were fresh in their heads. It was quite famous in its day. But was there a recession in 1922?

Decide for yourself. NBER says there was an 18-month recession from January 1920 to July 1921 and a 14-month recession from May 1923 to July 1924. So it was a generally contractionary period. But 1922 itself? Recession free! I claim a foul.

In related news, my father was born in 1926, which just goes to show how long it took movies to make their way into smaller cities back then. The good citizens of Portland get better treatment from Hollywood these days.

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Comments

Cherry picking dates is

Submitted by Trippp on Wed Jul. 15, 2009 7:32 AM PDT.

Cherry picking dates is always suspect but maybe it took from 7/1921 until 1922 to get the movie concept approved, cast, shot, and distributed for release.

Or not.

Tripp

Broaden the survey...

Submitted by Greg in FL on Wed Jul. 15, 2009 7:43 AM PDT.

Restricting to Robin Hood movies narrows to very small sample sizes and hence poor statistics. Perhaps the correlation might become apparent if one looks at "movies that portrayed rich people as villains" more generally.

Also, owing to production time, I would suspect that movies follow societal trends with a 1-2 year lag.

Movies exist to make money. Artistic flair, social commentary, documentary value, all are really secondary. Hollywood tries to guess what there is a market for people to buy tickets and videos for. When it gets a breakout success, a dozen copycats come along, to milk the cash cow to the very end. Then Hollywood continues the (nearly) random walk until another success comes along. I'm sure that during the middle 1930's there was a decent market for portraying millionaires as Snidely Whiplash.

Probably bankers will be the antagonists in the next Spider-Man movie.

And I've noticed that every

Submitted by crave (not verified) on Wed Jul. 15, 2009 7:55 AM PDT.

And I've noticed that every time I wear a yellow shirt, the Sun is also yellow!

did robin hood just strangle

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Jul. 15, 2009 8:40 AM PDT.

did robin hood just strangle to death the sheriff of nottingham!?!?

Kevin's right

Submitted by Shawn Stone (not verified) on Wed Jul. 15, 2009 8:42 AM PDT.

Douglas Fairbanks had shifted from doing modern-day comedies to historical swashbucklers in 1920, with Zorro, followed by The Three Musketeers in '21, Robin Hood in '22, and Thief of Bagdad in '24 and on till the end of the decade. He was a wealthy, independent (United Artists!) filmmaker-producer-star; I doubt he made Robin Hood as a reaction to anything by the huge grosses on 3 Musketeers.

"In related news, my father

Submitted by marcel (not verified) on Wed Jul. 15, 2009 11:30 AM PDT.

"In related news, my father was born in 1926, which just goes to show how long it took movies to make their way into smaller cities back then."

Or maybe, how long it took people in smaller cities to make babies back then (Jes' sayin').

Shawn, You're correct that

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Jul. 15, 2009 11:39 AM PDT.

Shawn,

You're correct that Fairbanks was intent on making another epic, but he actually hit upon another idea first - a film version of Ivanhoe. To spice it up, others proposed interweaving aspects of the Robin Hood tale. In the middle of 1921 - right at the recession's nadir - Fairbanks decided to forward both proposals to United Artists. 'Robin Hood' was deemed the more marketable of the two potential films.

Fairbanks didn't actually begin pre-production until New Year's Day of 1922. And, although it was released in October, it had an extended run in 'Road Show' release in many cities, charging stage-level prices for limited showings, including a remarkable six months at Grauman's. So it's not implausible that it was still in some second-run houses as late as the beginning of 1924. But 1926 sounds like a bit of a stretch.

The fine people of Portland ...

Submitted by John Rogers (not verified) on Wed Jul. 15, 2009 12:32 PM PDT.

... are indeed treated better by Hollywood these days -- they're getting money and jobs. In a weird coincidence, our modern-day Robin Hood show LEVERAGE shoots in Portland this year.

And, reinforcing Ezra's theory, we premiered last winter, gained numbers all through the calamitous economic meltdown, and were rushed back into production for this summer. Even TV Robin Hoods do better during recessions. Indeed, you can probably track the TV cycle more effectively, since its limited production time is more fluid and adapts more quickly to overall social conditions.

Second season premieres tonight, Wed at 9 on TNT, conveniently enough, and I assure you, will be the only guns & heisting action show you see this year with the bank bailout as a major plot point. It's Wonk Pulp!