Athletic movie star Douglas Fairbanks, his wife Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith founded United Artists in 1919. Casting about for his first film for the new studio, Fairbanks found a swashbuckling novel by an obscure police reporter named Johnston McCulley being serialized in the pulp All-Story Weekly. Called The Curse of Capistrano, it was ideal for for him — a swashbuckling masked avenger in Spanish California fearlessly overcomes corrupt officials, while, in his foppish mundane guise, wooing a beautiful senorita. The movie, titled The Mark of Zorro, became the biggest box office hit of 1920. So successful was the film that the novel was republished under the same title. The black costume worn by Fairbanks, with few alterations, became Zorro’s official outfit in the numerous paper and celluloid sequels that followed.

Thus began the Zorro legend that continues in popularity to this day. From McCulley's original stories, through the movies with Fairbanks and Tyrone Power, the several movie serials, the Disney version for ABC, the Saturday morning cartoon, the 1988 cable remake on the Family Channel, and the two Antonio Banderas films, Zorro still draws audiences. Even today, a monthly Zorro comic book is published by Dynamite Entertainment, and colorized versions of the original black-and-white Disney episodes are cablecast on the Disney Channel, introducing the next wave of children -- and adults -- to "a horseman known as Zorro."  This specially commissioned dramatization is the first major audio play based on the ground-breaking novel.