The rollout for a Douglas Fairbanks movie during the summer was becoming a much-heralded annual ritual for movie fans. During the steamy days of 1925, the actor/producer released his sequel to the highly successful 1920 "The Mark of Zorro" in July 1925's "Don Q, Son of Zorro." Cinematic special effects created a double of Fairbanks as he appears in the film's later scenes as an aging Don Diego Vega (Zorro) while his son (Fairbanks) is seen in the same frame.
The actor/producer combined the Hesketh-Prichard 1909 novel 'Don Q.'s Love Story' with the Zorro character. Don Q, Cesar, possessed as his main defensive weapon a whip, but was also adept with the sword. And he never wears a mask to hide his identity. The story's location in Spain allows "Don Q" to have a totally different cast of characters, including Cesar's arch love rival, Sebastian (Donald Crisp), head of the Queen's Palace Guard. Crisp, released previously by Buster Keaton for his handling of portions of 1924's "The Navigator," capably directed "Don Q." Crisp was no slouch when it came to directing, sitting in the monogrammed chair for some 70 films before he went full-time acting.
It was an interesting time for lead actress Mary Astor, who played the love interest between Fairbanks and Crisp as Dolores. Just 19 years old and only a three-year veteran of the screen, Astor was one of a number of very young actresses whose parents lived off her salary. After discouraging actor John Barrymore from marrying their daughter while making 1924's "Beau Brummel," Otto and Helen Langhanke (Mary's birth name was Lucile Langhanke before Paramount Pictures changed it) controlled every aspect of her life.
Just after filming "Don Q," Mary was closely kept to her parents' hips when they bought a Moorish-style mansion known as 'Moorcrest,' in the hills above Hollywood just below the recently built famous sign. Charlie Chaplin previously rented the 1921 house, right across the Theosophical Society's utopian community called Krotona. The Langhankes became friends with Marie Hotchener, a Theosophist. When Marie heard the parents were taking Mary's entire $2,500 a week salary to pay the mortgage and other luxury items, she convinced the Langhandes to give their daughter $5 per week as an allowance.
Soon tiring from her father's physical and psychological abuse, Mary climbed out of her bedroom window and sought refuge in a Hollywood hotel. Mrs. Hotchener again became the intermediary between the family and negotiated her return to the parents by forcing them to deposit $500 in her bank account. Mary also supposedly obtained control of her finances, which never happened until she was 26, four years after she had married director Kenneth Hawks, the brother of film director Howard Hawks.
