The war years (1915-18) saw the rise (nascita) of the star system in Hollywood and the American films started dominating British screens (schermi). The new American stars were Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Douglas Fairbanks (1883 –1939) was an American actor, screenwriter (sceneggiatore), director and producer, who got his fame (doveva la sua fama) to his heroic roles in silent films such as (come) The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Black Pirate (1926, the first full-length Technicolor film), , The Gaucho (1927) and his last film The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). Founder of the United Artists, member of The Motion Picture Academy, he hosted (ospitè) in his Hollywood Roosvelt Hotel the first Oscar Ceremony in 1929, and was referred to as “The King of Hollywood”, a nickname (soprannome) later passed on to actor Clark Gable. Fairbanks spared no (non risparmiò) expense and effort in this films, which are still considered icons for yhe swashbuckling (avventurosi e eroici) genre (genere). His career rapidly declined with the advent of the “talkies” (film parlati). Fairbanks married Mary Pickford in 1920. Mary Pickford (1892–1979) was a Canadian actress, producer, and writer, known to the public as “America’s Sweetheart”. She started acting in 1900 in the United States where soon (1916) became partner of Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company – a studio which then became part of Paramount Pictures – and started producing her films. Together with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks she created the United Artists, an organization which distributed their own films. Pickford won two Academy Awards in her lifetime: in 1929 as Best Actress in Coquette and in 1975 an Honorary Academy Award “in recognition of her unique contributions to the film industry and the development of film as an artistic medium”. She retired from the scene in 1933 after her last film Secrets (1933). Her most famous film production includes Tess of the Storm Country (1914) , The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), Daddy-Long-Legs(1919) and Pollyanna (1920). She produced also The Taming of the Screw (1929), an adaptation from William Shakespeare’s comedy directed by Sam Taylor, where Pickford stars together with her husband Douglas Fairbanks.