The Iron Mask

D'Artagnan dies at the end and walks off into the beyond with the three musketeers, and the exit is meant as Fairbanks's own. The queen bears twins, Richelieu has the second raised in Spain, and the pretender comes for the throne with a mask of iron for the king. Fairbanks, at forty-six, speaks two short prologues and otherwise plays it silent, with the athletics scaled back and the swordplay kept; Marguerite De La Motte is back as Constance from The Three Musketeers eight years earlier. The last of the great silent swashbucklers. Allan Dwan for United Artists, 1929.