The Taming of the Shrew paired Douglas Fairbanks with Mary Pickford, his wife, in their only film together, as Petruchio and Katharina in Shakespeare’s comedy.
The Taming of the Shrew (1929), directed by Sam Taylor, stars Fairbanks as Petruchio, who sets out to marry the sharp-tongued Katharina, played by Pickford, and to tame her, as the comedy’s title promises. The film, one of the first sound adaptations of Shakespeare, was a major event because it united the two most famous stars of the silent era.
Fairbanks’s Petruchio is boisterous, confident and comic, and his scenes with Pickford have a playful, combative energy that suits the play’s battle of wits. The film’s sound, still new in 1929, gives their dialogue a directness that silent titles could not.
It is a signature role because it is Fairbanks and Pickford together, and because it marks Fairbanks’s move into talking pictures with the most famous comedy couple in the world.