Robin Hood

Robin Hood is the archetypal English folk hero, an outlaw who, in modern versions of the legend, stole from the rich to give to the poor. Although most noted for his material egalitarianism, in the stories he also pursues other types of equality and justice. However, as mentioned below, Robin Hood was not quite so generous in the original medieval legends. In the end, since most events in the various Robin Hood stories are fictional, arguments over the "real" or "true" Robin Hood are unlikely to reach any conclusion. Even if Robin Hood or a similar person did indeed exist, finding concrete evidence about his life is highly improbable.

Movies and TV series

• 1908: Robin Hood and his Merry Men, first appearance of Robin Hood in film.
• 1922: Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks in the first feature length version, a silent movie, Robin is an athletic swashbuckler. Sam De Grasse played the villainous Prince John. It was directed by Allan Dwan.
• 1938: The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn in the first talkie. Flynn is a smarter, more articulate Robin Hood?very aware of the proto-fascist regime he is fighting and the hard times of people around him in this darker story. Maid Marian accuses Robin: "You speak treason!" "Fluently," he replies. It is considered a classic of the adventure genre.
• 1939 Robin Hood Makes Good, a Chuck Jones animated cartoon, where a young squirrel wants to play Robin Hood, but two older squirrels and hungry fox stand in his way.
• 1941: DC Comics introduces its own Robin Hood in the form of the comic book archer Green Arrow (alias Oliver Queen) who operates in the fictional Star City. He uses "trick" arrows, with modified or replaced arrowheads (such as a boxing glove arrow) to foil crime. Originally a minor superhero, his star rose in the late 1960s, when his personality was modified to become a strident champion of the underprivileged, much like his inspiration.
• 1946: Bandit of Sherwood Forest
• 1948: The Prince of Thieves
• 1949: Rabbit Hood, a Chuck Jones animated cartoon where Bugs Bunny takes on the Sheriff and is stunned to be greeted by Robin Hood as played by Errol Flynn.
• 1951: Tales of Robin Hood
• 1952: The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men and Miss Robin Hood
• 1953: Patrick Troughton becomes the first actor to play the part on television when he stars in the six-part series Robin Hood on the BBC Television Service. The half-hour episodes are shown in the Children's Television strand from March 17 to April 21.{{ref|ref01}}
• 1955 - 1960: The British Adventures of Robin Hood TV series (consisting of weekly half-hour episodes, also shown in the U.S.) starring Richard Greene?episodes of which were written by blacklisted Hollywood writers?also has a high degree of social consciousness. Some of those episodes were combined into feature-length colorized films:
• Robin Hood's Greatest Adventures (1956) (also starring Donald Pleasence)
• Robin Hood, the Movie (1958)
• Robin Hood: The Quest for the Crown (1958)
• 1958: Robin Hood Daffy, a Chuck Jones animated cartoon, where Daffy Duck takes on the traditions of Errol Flynn, and a Friar Tuck-ish Porky Pig refuses to take him seriously.
• 1967: A Challenge for Robin Hood, a Hammer version, with Barrie Ingham as Robin
• 1967: Rocket Robin Hood, a space-age version of the Robin Hood legend, where he and his band of Merry Spacemen live in the year 3000 on Sherwood Asteroid and fight the evil Sheriff who rules the space territory of N.O.T.T. (Trillium / Steve Krantz Production)
• 1973: Walt Disney Productions produced the most famous animated version of the legend, which had the various characters depicted as anthropomorphic animal characters, such as Robin Hood and Maid Marian as foxes. See: Robin Hood (1973 movie).
• 1975: The Legend of Robin Hood, a BBC mini-series starring Martin Potter in the title role. The six-episode adaptation was aired on public television in the U.S. in the later 1970s.
• 1975: When things were Rotten, a comedy TV series starring Richard Gautier, Bernie Kopell and Misty Rowe.
• 1976: In Robin and Marian, Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn played the couple at the end of their lives in a revisionist version of the story.
• 1981: Time Bandits, starring John Cleese, Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall; written and directed by Terry Gilliam had a short spoof of the Robin Hood legend, with Robin being portrayed as an upper class twit.
• 1984: The made-for-TV spoof The Zany Adventures of Robin Hood in 1984 starred George Segal (Robin), Morgan Fairchild (Marian), Roddy McDowall (Prince John), and Janet Suzman (Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine), and Robert Hardy turned up at the end as King Richard.
• 1984 - 1986: The 1980s British series Robin of Sherwood, aka Robin Hood, was a New Age fantasy starring Michael Praed as Robin, later replaced by Jason Connery (son of Sean Connery) as Robert, called Robin. In this version the two Robins actually get to wear hoods occasionally. The series set the template for most of the adaptions that followed, most notably the introduction of a Muslim outlaw.
• 1989 - 1994: The British children's TV show Maid Marian and her Merry Men rewrote the legend somewhat, with Marian as the dynamic leader of the resistance against Prince John, Robin as her thick-headed, buffoonish figurehead, and Nottingham as John's put-upon, sarcastic enforcer.
• 1989: An episode in Season 3 of ' featured Robin Hood in "Misadventures in Robin Hood Woods" where the episode is based off a Robin Hood video game called "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" for the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy Color.
• 1991: In the episode "Q-Pid" from the television series ', the bridge crew of the Starship Enterprise are transformed into Robin Hood and his merry men by Q to test the boundaries of human love.
• 1991: John Irwin's Robin Hood, starring Patrick Bergin and Uma Thurman, is an inventive use of some of the best of the Robin Hood heritage.
• 1991: In ', Kevin Costner played the outlaw and Sean Connery performed the customary cameo appearance of King Richard in the finale.
• 1993: The Mel Brooks spoof ' recycles bits from his short-lived late-1975 Robin Hood TV sitcom When Things Were Rotten. Cary Elwes plays Robin in the movie, and Patrick Stewart appears in the ending, spoofing Sean Connery's take on King Richard the Lionheart.
• 1997: The France-U.S. TV series The New Adventures of Robin Hood starred Matthew Porretta and John Bradley as a black leather clad Robin. The tone of the series resembled its contemporaries ' and '. Porretta had appeared as Will Scarlet O'Hara in Men in Tights.
• 1997: Honey Kisaragi transforms into Robin Hood Honey in episode 13 in the series Cutey Honey.
• 1999: The children's series Back To Sherwood featured a teenage descendent of Robin (Robyn Hood) who discovers she has the power to travel back in time, and joins with the children of her ancestor's band (Joan Little, Phil Scarlet, etc.)
• 2001: Robin Hood and the Merry Men make a memorable cameo appearance as unwelcome rescuers in the movie version of William Steig's Shrek. Here, they speak with French accents, partake in Irish step-dancing, and are defeated by a girl.
• 2001: Robin Hood's heroic daughter, Gwyn, Keira Knightley on horseback with bow in hand, takes over her father's role and comes to his rescue in the made for TV movie Princess of Thieves.
• 2005: A ' episode, Operation: L.U.N.C.H. features a villain named Robin Food, who is supposed to cook food in a senior citizen's home but steals kids' lunches instead. He wears Robin Hood-like clothes, but with a chicken drumstick in his hat instead of a feather.

The character of Robin from the Batman series of comics is reported to have taken both his name and the style of his original costume from Robin Hood.

Related Topics:
Robin - Batman

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