Hollywood’s First Fencing Master

Ah, Hollywood. It’s been called “The Land of Broken Dreams” and many other things. Some of them are even flattering. If there is one thing Hollywood has mastered through constant attention to minutia, it’s fighting over who was “first.” It’s an endless, circular battle that usually can’t be won. Facts, in such an argument, come second to belief. Stop me if this sounds familiar. Before you go, let me make my case for Henri Joseph Uyttenhove, Hollywood’s first fencing master.

There are two main contenders for the title of the first Hollywood fencing master, or choreographer, if you prefer, but the facts barely scratch the surface of a confounding problem. Of the two candidates, Uyttenhove and Fred Cavens, Cavens had, by far, the longer career and his film work has been well documented. Uyttenhove’s time working in Hollywood, and any deserved credit for that work, is hampered by several problems. Not the least of these is that fight choreographers were not likely to see their name in the credits at the end of the film. If you watch old movies, you’ll know that by reading the credits it seems it only took about 20 people, including the actors, to make a movie. That wasn’t accurate then or now.

Looking at the Internet Movie Database, you can see on just about any film someone listed as “uncredited.” That means, while they worked on the movie, their name didn’t appear on-screen. It still happens, and is often a company-based decision. Subcontracted companies, like visual effects houses, can get contractually shorted on the number of credits they can have, so people get left out. (Formula: credits = screentime, screentime = $$$). Sole production companies can also leave people off based on a formula related to the percentage of the total production time versus how long you actually worked on the movie. Were you on for half? Credit likely. 10%? Less likely. In general, it’s better now due to myriad Hollywood unions fighting for credits for their members. Back in the 1920’s, there weren’t collective organizations to have that fight, so producers could do whatever they wanted. Sometimes literally. All this to say, somewhere along the line film researchers did the legwork of checking old production records to determine who was paid to work on a film, irrespective of the final credit roll on screen — and made that information available on IMDB.

Professor Uyttenhove with his student Ralph Faulkner in a 1931 photo taken at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

That leads me back to H. J. Uyttenhove (1878-1950), fencing master for the Belgian army, who emigrated to the United States in 1907 and settled in Pasadena, CA. He taught at the then-new Pasadena Athletic Club and the Los Angeles Athletic Club, which he could access via the Red Car’s Pasadena Short Line route to downtown L.A. (For historical context, watch the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit). Uyttenhove’s personal life had some crazy ups-and-downs including his in-laws secretly removing his wife to Arizona, kidnapping his two daughters to Canada, a brief trial (exonerated), divorce, then remarrying the same woman. Even with all that, his work as a fencing master was unequaled in the West for decades. He coached Olympic team members Ralph Faulkner (1928, 1932) and Andrew Boyd (1936, 1948), trained Helene Mayer when she was in Southern California for school at Scripps College and taught the talented and successful competitors Fred Linkmeyer and Muriel (Calkins) Bower. Professor Uyttenhove also was the fencing instructor at the University of Southern California from the late 1920s until the early 1940s, which is where he first encountered Fred Linkmeyer, USC fencing team captain in 1931.

The problem with defending Uyttenhove’s title as the first Hollywood fight choreographer becomes clear if you type in his name into the IMDB search box. He’s only there by proxy. Instead, you’ll find M. Harry Uttenhover and H. J. Utterhore. (The spelling on that last one? Where to even start?) This is exacerbated by period documentation. A 1920 press release from the Douglas Fairbanks company announced the hire of one “M. Harry Uttenhover, of Belgium, thrice world’s champion fencer.” His role with that company was to train not only Fairbanks, but anyone who would cross swords with the star. To quote the article, “For three weeks these players have been put through a regular course of fencing and it was only after they had become thoroughly proficient in their method of combat that they were permitted to engage Fairbanks in duels.”

Henri Uyttenhove (left) poses with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. during the making of 1920’s “The Mark of Zorro” while director Fred Niblo critiques. Photo courtesy of Muriel Bower.

Uyttenhove’s first screen credit, if we forgive the misdirection of the improper spelling, is the 1917 Douglas Fairbanks partly period mashup, “A Modern Musketeer.” Fairbanks wouldn’t begin his reign as the man who put the swash in swashbuckler until 1920 and “The Mark of Zorro.” The photo accompanying this article that shows Uyttenhove (the lefty) and Fairbanks takes place in front of a billboard for “The Mollycoddle,” starring Fairbanks and released in the summer of 1920, giving a spot-on means of dating the picture. “The Mark of Zorro,” his next film, was a turning point in Fairbank’s already good fortunes that would see him playing Zorro (twice), D’Artagnan (twice), Robin Hood, a notorious pirate and Don Juan over the last 14 years of his career as an action star.

In contrast with Uyttenhove, the spelling of Fred Cavens always seems spot-on. His credits span the early 1920’s through his retirement in 1961. Interestingly, his earliest IMDB listing shows him as “uncredited” for working on “The Mark of Zorro.” Could he and Uyttenhove both have worked on the same film? It’s possible, I suppose. However, I’ve got to go with unlikely, based on a highly publicized dispute that splashed across the pages of the Los Angeles Times in June of 1922. It seems during a banquet in his honor at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, Uyttenhove issued a public challenge to anyone willing to try him in a match in all three weapons. Cavens, under the direction of one Captain Arthur Saint-Remie, listed as Caven’s fencing master, accepts, with conditions. One condition was that they fence only with foils, since sabres were considered “beneath the notice of a gentleman.” So says the LA Times, although it is not a direct quote. Supporters of Uyttenhove then kick the stakes up a notch by offering a prize of $2,000 to be matched by the supporters of Cavens and “disposed of as the winner sees fit.” Over the course of several weeks, the stakes, weapons and location are bandied about. The notion of other fencers, listed as seconds, having matches against counterparts from the opposing side are thrown into the mix.

In the end, it seems to have come to naught. No articles reference any actual event occurring. However, it does seem to solidify the future dynamic between, apparently, all fencing masters in Hollywood into the 1960s. Ralph Faulkner worked under Cavens as a stunt double until they began competing for the same work. Jean Heremans, Uyttenhove’s successor at both the LAAC and USC, joined in the late 1940s, and Aldo Nadi, after his 1940 arrival in Hollywood, claimed they were all charlatans compared with his obviously superior ability. He went so far as to write opinion pieces in trade magazines excoriating the swordplay upon the release of swashbucklers he didn’t choreograph.

In considering this period, Nadi found the least amount of work in Hollywood and Faulkner the most. But leading them all into this new era of entertainment was Henri J. Uyttenhove, Hollywood’s first fencing master.