Actors Try to Save a Slice of Fencing’s Past

A group of legendary movie actors, including Alexis Smith, Macdonald Carey and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., have rallied to help save a vacant, run-down collection of buildings on Hollywood Boulevard where, some of the actors say, they studied and performed the now almost forgotten art of dramatic swordplay.

The five buildings at 5524-26 Hollywood Blvd. near the corner of Western Avenue make up the rambling Falcon Studios, where the late master swordsman Ralph B. Faulkner taught fencing to Robin Hood, Zorro, Captain Blood and Scaramouche and virtually every other sword-wielding chevalier who ever thrilled a movie audience.

Faulkner’s studio complex includes a collection of Chinese Theater-style cement impressions and signatures, including those of Carey, Fairbanks, Alexis Smith, Basil Rathbone, Anthony Quinn, Gorgeous George, Danny Kaye, Ronald Colman and dozens of other actors and actresses who studied swashbuckling there.

Writer-director Jonathan Polansky, who lives around the corner from the complex, hopes to save it and its contents from destruction. Real estate agents representing the studio’s owners say the owners want to demolish the complex. A new city ordinance blocked their initial plans to turn the property into a mini-mall, according to the agents, but now, they say, the owners are looking “to develop the property for (other) commercial use.” The owners referred a call from The Times to Fred Sands realty agents handling the property.

“My first thought,” Polansky, 39, said in an interview, “was, ‘I want to acquire this property and restore it to what it used to be--a workshop for the performing arts.’ This is my passion. This is such a unique piece of Hollywood history.”

On Feb. 17, Polansky persuaded the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission to grant a 60-day moratorium barring demolition of the studios while the commission considers the property for historic cultural monument status. The commission is expected to make a recommendation to city hall regarding that status by next Wednesday.

In the meantime, Polansky has petitioned area residents and historical societies as well as former Faulkner students and colleagues to join in an effort to save the Falcon complex and, if possible, buy it. At least one redevelopment agency was interested in helping Polansky find funding for rehabilitating the complex, if he acquires the property, he said.

“I’ve got two fairly sizable investors interested in going in on the property and a number of people interested in supporting operational costs,” Polansky said. “But right now everybody’s kind of sitting on the fence, waiting to see what the owners’ response is to our offer.”

Last Wednesday, when potential investors and members of the heritage commission tried to inspect the property, they found that the locks on the main building’s doors had been changed. Jay Oren, consulting architect for the city, said the commission had no plans to return to the site.

County records show that Tep Tan of Cerritos and Paul Tan bought the property on July 15, 1987, for about $550,000. (The Tan brothers also are listed as owners of S & S Liquors, 7600 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood.)

Faulkner--a two-time Olympic saber champion, vaudeville performer and silent-screen actor--died early last year at the age of 95, leaving Falcon to a former student and longtime friend who sold the property to the Tans, and would not comment on the situation.

“I would like to restore the studios with the owners’ blessings,” Polansky said. “I’ve written them two letters--if they would only return my calls. I’m trying to put a down payment down out of my own pocket, and I’m slowly going broke over all of this.” Polansky would not specify how much he has already invested in the project, or how much he hopes to raise.

Polansky said that in one brief conversation with one of the brothers he was told that the property was neither for sale nor for rent; further inquiries were referred to Fred Sands realty agents Jeff Lloyd and Doug Gross, he said.

The owners “are just waiting to see something definite on the table,” Gross said. “Polansky keeps wanting to tramp people through the place. . . . The owners would probably consider a good, solid offer, but I have other people interested in developing the property.”

The Falcon Studios were founded in 1944 by Faulkner and his wife, dancer Edith Jane Plate, seven years after movie producer David O. Selznick approached Faulkner to coach Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in swordplay for “The Prisoner of Zenda.”

Faulkner and Plate (who died in 1975) had studios at various Hollywood sites before settling at the Hollywood Boulevard location.

Faulkner, sometimes known as the “Swashbuckler to the Stars,” appeared both as double and bad guy in several classic films, including “The Prisoner of Zenda,” “The Sea Hawk,” “Captain Blood,” “The Exile” and “Zorro.” In one film it was his lot to be killed five times, as different swordsmen.

“The man with the black mask was always Ralph,” remembered former Faulkner student Macdonald Carey. “In those days, they didn’t call them stunt men, but to the best of my knowledge, Ralph did almost all of the fencing with (Douglas) Fairbanks (Jr.). He would choreograph the whole fight and split the billing with (Fairbanks). Doug was a fine fencer, but Ralph was an Olympics-class artist.

“Falcon Studios was a very important part of the actor’s life; the kind of (workshop) people are too prone to forget in these days of crystals and tai chi,” Carey added.

As recently as 1981, fencing enthusiast and actor Richard Thomas took a few lessons with Faulkner. “He was 80-something and had a crutch under one arm,” recalls Thomas, “but I still couldn’t even touch him (with the epee).”

By telephone from his home in Palm Beach, Fla., Fairbanks Jr. (who fenced competitively in his youth) also remembered Faulkner as “a fine, thorough, dedicated technician. He was a no-nonsense guy.”

Fairbanks said that of all of Faulkner’s students, Basil Rathbone was premier.

“(Errol) Flynn was a remarkable athlete and could pull it off even though he was unschooled. But Rathbone,” said Fairbanks, “was unchallengeably the finest of the saber fighters.”

Actresses Alexis Smith and Frances Rafferty studied at Plate’s dancing school in the ‘30s.

Rafferty remembered Faulkner as “very handsome. Stern and disciplined, but kind. He used to do lifts for the dancers in Edith Jane’s classes, and of course we all thought that was very dashing and attractive.”

Smith and several other ex-students of Faulkner recently wandered the deserted, memorabilia-stuffed buildings.

“It’s strange to see (the studio) the way it is now,” she said, “after having spent so many years of my life there.”