March 25 movie: The Mark of Zorro. I'm not that up on the whole Zorro mythos, so I don't know how well this movie fits in. Come to think of it, I don't even know where Zorro comes from. Is it a folk legend, like the Mexican Robin Hood? Or just an adventure story that has been used for movies lots of times?
In any case this wonderful swashbuckler stars Tyrone Power as Zorro and Basil Rathbone as his nemesis. Power's Zorro trained as a swordsman in Spain, earning the title "The California Cockerel," which, as double entendres go, is almost as good as "The Gay Blade." Back in California, Zorro decides that the best way to throw off suspicion is to convince everyone that he's a useless "Scarlet Pimpernel" style dandy. So he spends the entire movie doing magic tricks, fanning himself with a lace hankie, and mincing around in extremely tight pants.
Also stars Eugene Pallette, reprising his Friar Tuck role from The Adventures of Robin Hood as Fray Felipe, a warrior monk who wades through fight scenes clubbing people on the head and muttering "God forgive me!" after every clonk. The only thing that would have made it better is Alan Hale among the merry men, er, I mean the caballeros.
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Zorro originated in pulp magazines--The Curse of Capistrano, by Johnston McCully in All-Story Weekly in 1919. It was re-released as a novel under the title The Mark of Zorro the same year, and the Douglas Fairbanks Sr. movie of that title came in 1920.
Lots of info here http://www.geocities.com/thezorrolegend/, including the (obvious but still worthwhile) point that The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) was probably the single largest influence on Zorro.