School of Cinematic Arts

The first thing that visitors to the courtyard of the new School of Cinematic Arts complex at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles are greeted by is the swashbuckling bronze likeness of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. -- but not because he was so dazzling in The Mark of Zorro (or in any of his other legendary roles). It was Fairbanks, a titan of the silent-film era as well as one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who, around 1927, first suggested to his fencing partner, USC president Rufus B. von KleinSmid, that establishing a film class at the university might be a boffo idea