A Fairbanks Follow Up in Time for Christmas

NEW YORK, NY -- In Doyle's November 5, 2025 auction of property from The Estate of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was, in the eyes of this writer, the most arresting Art Deco, full-length portrait in bronze of the great actor imaginable (lot 165). I was familiar with the sculpture and had long been entranced by it; we had sold a painted plaster cast in our first selection from the Estate in 2011. But the tabletop bronze, imposing at two feet tall, is magnificent. Young Douglas casually leans backwards on a staircase and is impeccably dressed as always. He's tall and lean with that impossible waist. He looks to the right, extending his enviable jawline, his eyes focused, his head topped by a stylish haircut that could breeze down any catwalk today. He is the picture of health and youth, and the sculpture exudes the best of Art Deco elegance. The bronze is dated 1932. He was 23 years old.

The bronze graced our gallery for several days and was successfully sold in the auction, and the time came to bid adieu to my favorite object sold in Stage & Screen. But a few weeks following the sale, imagine my joyous surprise to learn that this bronze was in fact one half of a pair, long separated from its mate, a corresponding bronze of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s wife in 1932, the inimitable Joan Crawford. This was brought to my attention by the eagle-eyed collector who spotted the bronze in the catalogue and has very proudly reunited the pair. In the email that arrived that Saturday morning, the collector reported to me that he had "long coveted" the bronze of Douglas and had waited decades for it to appear on the market so that he could pair it again with Joan, which had been in his collection for years. There was no promise it would ever appear at auction; he had patiently waited and searched, and then there it was at Doyle, that missing puzzle piece that completes the image.  

The collector told us much more: that Joan Crawford had commissioned the pair of bronzes in 1932 during the brief but spectacular marriage of Hollywood's "Golden Couple." They had first met in 1927, after Joan attended a play starring Douglas at the Belasco Theatre in Los Angeles, a star-studded event in which his father Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin were in the audience. As was noted by a reporter shortly thereafter: "The night I saw him on stage, Joan Crawford, swathed in white fox, sat alone in an upper box, following his performance spellbound, sending optic messages down to him." Crawford, while signed to MGM since 1925, was not yet a major star. The actress coyly sent Fairbanks, Jr. a handwritten note asking for "a signed photo and a telephone call, if he should be so inclined." At this time, Fairbanks Jr. was the crown Prince of Hollywood on the brink of stardom, and Crawford was, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “the best example of the flapper, the girl you see at smart nightclubs, gowned to the apex of sophistication, toying iced glasses with a remote, faintly bitter expression, dancing deliciously, laughing a great deal, with wide, hurtful eyes. Young things with a talent for living.” They fell hard for one another and became the most talked about couple in Hollywood. The studio capitalized on the tabloid fodder by giving Crawford the starring role in 1929's Our Modern Maidens and borrowed Fairbanks, Jr. from First National Pictures to star as her love interest. Now linked both on and off the screen, the sky was the limit. 

Despite the protests of his family, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was 19 when he married 23-year-old Joan Crawford. The young couple took beautiful pictures that captured the ascendent spirit of the age. In a photograph of them on the beach, not unlike the bronzes, he looks forward with laser focus as she languidly lays over his back in the sun. The marriage would not last long, and it was perhaps at their peak, or in an attempt to recapture their magic, that Joan Crawford commissioned the bronze portraits of her and her husband. Perhaps it is no surprise that as they were drifting apart they would be cast separately in bronze, bookends rather than a tableau. 

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. recalled the sculptures but seems to have misremembered the artist who sculpted them, writing in his memoir Salad Days, "We were both sculpted by a Russian emigre, Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy -- small individual bronze figurines of ourselves -- and we had a couple of portraits done by reasonably good painters. Money went out as quickly as it came in, but I was rapidly catching up..." (Salad Days, p. 173). We know now that the bronzes were sculpted by Gilbert Riswold, in his day the well-known sculptor of large city monuments who had retired to Los Angeles in 1930. In his bronze, Fairbanks Jr. wears the long coat recalling his aviator uniform in Dawn Patrol (1930) and Joan is depicted in a long gown similar to those worn in This Modern Age (1931). Once reunited, we see that Douglas is looking down towards her while she gazes upward at him, the flow of her gown accentuating her lithe torso, filling the space, her right legbent at the knee causing the fabric to drape across her legs.

We know you can't go home again, but can you freeze time? While their earthly romance wasn't meant to last beyond their divorce in 1933, when both grabbed their respective bronzes and headed for greener pastures, larger roles, and other loves, there is something reassuring about knowing that these statues of Douglas and Joan are back together after nearly 100 years, as the artist envisioned. We are eternally grateful to the passionate collector who brought this story to our attention and encourage other collectors to tell us their tales of objects sourced at Doyle that have corrected history or fulfilled their collecting journey. 

All at Doyle join me in wishing you a very happy and healthy holiday season and all the best for the year ahead.