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Harry Domela

Harry Domela (1905 – 4 October 1979) was a Russian Empire-born impostor who pretended to be a deposed German crown prince.

Biography
Harry Domela was born to German parents in 1905 in Kurland, Russian Empire. At the age of fifteen he fought in the first Freikorps against Baltic rebels. He moved to Germany after World War I. His brothers and his father had died in the war.

Domela was too young to join the army corps after the war and thus held numerous menial jobs. At this same time he was imprisoned several times for his experimenting with impostures of various titles including Baron Korff.

His big break came when he went to Heidelberg and impressed himself on the members of German nobility who had been stripped of their official titles by the Weimar Republic. He presented himself as "Prince Lieven of Latvia", but managed to create an impression that this was only part of the truth. Aristocrats noticed his resemblance to Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, grandson of the deposed Wilhelm II, German Emperor. In no time, upper class circles were rife with rumors that he was in fact the heir of the German throne who was traveling incognito.

As a result, when he travelled in Thuringia and Prussia local pro-monarchy dignitaries and businessmen entertained him at their own expense. He never asked for or received money from them. Soon however he began to attract the attention of the press and thus suspected that his imposture would soon be over. Eventually he decided to leave for France to try to join the French Foreign Legion. He was arrested when he was boarding the train.

For the next seven months he was in prison in Cologne, waiting for his trial. He used this time to write the narrative of his experiences, A Sham Prince: The Life and Adventures of Harry Domela as Written by Himself in Prison at Cologne, January to June 1927. In the trial, the court ruled that his imposture had been harmless and he was acquitted of the charges.

Domela's book sold well, and soon he had sold the movie rights to it. There were two plays about his life; in one he played himself (he sued the actor who played him in the other one, but lost the lawsuit). In 1927 he starred in a film The False Prince, based on his own experiences. However, by 1930 he had disappeared from the public life.

Domela left Germany for the Netherlands in 1933 and lived with false papers as "Victor Zsajka". He befriended Dutch author Jef Last who acquainted him with André Gide. Domela served with Last in the Spanish Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War. Afterwards he stayed in Belgium until he moved to France where he was interned by the Vichy France regime. Gide helped him to leave for Mexico.

Domela later resurfaced as a teacher in Venezuela and contacted Jef Last in 1965. After last being seen in 1978 according to research by Weimar-based scholar Jens Kirsten, Domela died in 1979 in Maracaibo.

Filmography

 * The False Prince (1927)

title: Harry Domela


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Henri Giraud

Henri Honoré Giraud (18 January 1879 – 11 March 1949) was a French military officer who was a leader of the Free French Forces during the Second World War until he was forced to retire in 1944.

Born to an Alsatian family in Paris, Giraud graduated from the Saint-Cyr military academy and served in French North Africa. He was wounded and captured by the Germans during the First World War, but managed to escape from his prisoner-of-war camp. During the interwar period, Giraud returned to North Africa and fought in the Rif War, for which he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

Early in the Second World War, Giraud fought in the Netherlands. In May 1940, he was again captured by the Germans, but made another successful escape from captivity in April 1942 after two years of careful planning. From within Vichy France he worked with the Allies in secret, and assumed command of French troops in North Africa after Operation Torch (November 1942) following the assassination of François Darlan. In January 1943, he took part in the Casablanca Conference along with Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Later in the same year, Giraud and de Gaulle became co-presidents of the French Committee of National Liberation, but he lost support and retired in frustration in April 1944.

After the war, Giraud was elected to the Constituent Assembly of the French Fourth Republic. He died in Dijon in 1949.

Early life
Henri Giraud was born in Paris, of Alsatian descent, and was the son of a coal merchant.

Military career
Giraud graduated from the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in 1900 and joined the French Army as a sub-lieutenant in the 4th Zouaves. In 1907, he qualified for admission to the École supérieure de guerre, and on 10 December was transferred to the 27th Infantry. Having successfully qualified as a staff officer, Giraud was appointed to the staff of the 9th Army Corps on 13 October 1909. On 23 October 1911, he was appointed to the staff of the 1st Brigade of Cuirassiers. Due to the slow pace of promotion in the peacetime army, Giraud only received a brevet promotion to captain on 23 December 1912, over a decade after his promotion to lieutenant. On 23 June 1913, Giraud returned to the 4th Zouaves, and commanded Zouave troops in North Africa until he was transferred back to France in 1914 when World War I broke out.

World War I
Giraud was seriously wounded while leading a Zouave bayonet charge during the Battle of St. Quentin on 30 August 1914, and was left for dead on the field. He was captured by the Germans and placed in a prison camp in Belgium. Giraud managed to escape two months later by pretending to be a roustabout with a traveling circus. He then asked Edith Cavell for help, and eventually he was able to return to France via the Netherlands, with assistance from Cavell's team. Giraud's feat earned him appointment as a knight of the Legion of Honour on 10 April 1915. With effect from 26 February 1915, he was reappointed a staff officer.

Afterwards, Giraud served with French troops in Istanbul under General Franchet d'Esperey.

Interwar period
In 1920 Giraud was transferred to Morocco to fight against Rif rebels. He was awarded the Légion d'Honneur after the capture of Abd-el-Krim (1926). On 20 October 1927, by now a brevet colonel with the 5th Infantry, he was appointed professor of infantry tactics at the École de Guerre, where one of his students was Captain Charles de Gaulle. On 3 February 1930, Giraud was "placed at the disposal of the resident-general of France in Morocco", then Lucien Saint, and was assigned to monitor the Algerian-Moroccan borders as commander of the Moroccan frontier post of Boudenib. He was promoted to brigadier-general on 22 December 1930. On 11 April 1936, he was appointed military governor of Metz, commanding the 6th military region.

World War II: command, capture and escape
When World War II began, Giraud was a member of the Superior War Council, and disagreed with Charles de Gaulle about the tactics of using armoured troops. He became the commander of the 7th Army when it was sent to the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 and was able to delay German troops at Breda on 13 May. Subsequently, the depleted 7th Army was merged with the 9th. While trying to block a German attack through the Ardennes, he was at the front with a reconnaissance patrol when he was captured by German troops at Wassigny on 19 May. A court-martial tried Giraud for ordering the execution of two German saboteurs wearing civilian clothes but he was acquitted and taken to Königstein Castle near Dresden, which was used as a high-security POW prison.

Giraud planned his escape carefully over two years. He learned German and memorised a map of the area. He made a 150 ft rope out of twine, torn bedsheets, and copper wire, which friends had smuggled into the prison for him. Using a simple code embedded in his letters home, he informed his family of his plans to escape. On 17 April 1942, he lowered himself down the cliff of the mountain fortress. He had shaved off his moustache and wearing a Tyrolean hat, travelled to Schandau to meet his Special Operations Executive (SOE) contact who provided him with a change of clothes, cash and identity papers. Through various ruses, he reached the Swiss border by train. To avoid border guards who were on the alert for him, he walked through the mountains until he was stopped by two Swiss soldiers, who took him to Basel. Giraud eventually slipped into Vichy France, where he made his identity known. He tried to convince Marshal Philippe Pétain that Germany would lose, and that France must resist the German occupation. His views were rejected but the Vichy government refused to return Giraud to the Germans.

Cooperation with the Allies

Giraud's escape soon became known throughout France. The Vichy Prime Minister, Pierre Laval, tried to persuade him to return to Germany. Yet while remaining loyal to Pétain and the Vichy government, Giraud refused to cooperate with the Germans. In retaliation, Heinrich Himmler ordered the Gestapo to try to assassinate him and to arrest any members of Giraud's family who could be found, with the intention of holding them hostage in order to discourage Giraud from cooperating with the Allies. Seventeen members of Giraud's extended family were arrested.

Allied authorities secretly contacted Giraud, giving him the code name Kingpin. Giraud was already planning for the day when American troops landed in France. He agreed to support an Allied landing in French North Africa, provided that only American troops were used (like many other French officers he was bitterly resentful of the British, particularly after their attack on Mers-el-Kébir), and that he or another French officer was the commander of such an operation. He considered this latter condition essential to maintaining French sovereignty and authority over the Arab and Berber natives of North Africa.

Giraud designated General Charles Mast as his representative in Algeria. A secret meeting on 23 October with U.S. General Mark W. Clark and the American diplomat Robert Daniel Murphy agreed on the invasion, but the Americans promised only that Giraud would be in command "as soon as possible". Giraud, still in France, responded with a demand for a written commitment that he would be commander within 48 hours of the landing, and for landings in France as well as North Africa. Giraud also insisted that he could not leave France before 20 November.

However, Giraud was persuaded that he had to move. He requested to be fetched by airplane, but General Dwight Eisenhower advised that he should be brought to Gibraltar by the British submarine HMS Seraph (P219), masquerading as "USS Seraph" under the nominal command of American Captain Jerauld Wright, as no US submarines were operating in the vicinity. On 5 November, he and his two sons were picked up near Toulon by HMS Seraph and taken to meet Eisenhower in Gibraltar. He arrived on 7 November, only a few hours before the landings.

Eisenhower asked him to assume command of French troops in North Africa during Operation Torch and to order them to join the Allies. But Giraud had expected to command the whole operation, and adamantly refused to participate on any other basis. He said "his honor would be tarnished" and that he would only be a spectator in the affair.

However, by the next morning, Giraud relented. He refused to leave immediately for Algiers, but rather stayed in Gibraltar until 9 November. When asked why he did not go to Algiers he replied: "You may have seen something of the large De Gaullist demonstration that was held here last Sunday. Some of the demonstrators sang the Marseillaise. I entirely approve of that! Others sang the Chant du départ [a military ballad]. Quite satisfactory! Others again shouted 'Vive de Gaulle!' No objection. But some of them cried 'Death to Giraud!' I don't approve of that at all."

Pro-Allied elements in Algeria had agreed to support the Allied landings, and in fact seized Algiers on the night of 7–8 November; the city was subsequently occupied by Allied troops. However, pro-Vichy resistance continued at Oran and Casablanca. Giraud flew to Algiers on 9 November, but his attempt to assume command of French forces was rebuffed; his broadcast directing French troops to cease resistance and to join the Allies was ignored. Instead, it appeared that Admiral François Darlan, who happened to be in Algiers, had real authority, and Giraud quickly realized this. Despite the fact that Darlan was the de facto head of the Vichy government, the Allies recognized him as head of French forces in Africa, and on 10 November, after agreeing to a deal, Darlan ordered the French forces to cease fire and to co-operate with the Allies.

On 11 November, German forces occupied southern France. Negotiations continued in Algiers, and by 13 November, the Allies recognized Darlan as High Commissioner of French North Africa and West Africa, while Giraud was appointed commander of all French forces under Darlan.

All this took place without reference to the Free French organization of Charles De Gaulle, which had claimed to be the legitimate government of France in exile.

Then on 24 December 1942, Darlan was assassinated in Algiers in mysterious circumstances. On that afternoon, the admiral drove to his offices at the Palais d'Été and was shot down at the door to his bureau by a young man of 20, Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, a monarchist who was tried by court martial under Giraud's orders and executed on the 26th. With the strong backing of the Allies, especially Eisenhower, Giraud was elected to succeed Darlan.

Army of Africa leader

After Admiral Darlan's assassination, Giraud became his de facto successor with Allied support. This occurred through a series of consultations between Giraud and Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle wanted to pursue a political position in France and agreed to have Giraud as commander-in-chief, as the more militarily qualified of the two. Giraud took part in the Casablanca conference, with Roosevelt, Churchill and de Gaulle, in January 1943. Later, after very difficult negotiations, Giraud agreed to suppress the racist laws, and to liberate Vichy prisoners from the South Algerian concentration camps. Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle then became co-presidents of the French Committee of National Liberation and Free French Forces. Giraud wanted to keep all racial laws. In the US, he praised the achievements of Nazi Germany. The Cremieux decree was only restored by General de Gaulle. De Gaulle consolidated his political position at Giraud's expense because he was more up to date with the political situation. Giraud went to the U.S. in July on a useless trip while de Gaulle gained strength. Giraud made a fool of himself in Detroit with a speech praising Nazi achievements in Germany.

Following the Resistance uprising in Corsica on 11 September 1943, Giraud sent an expedition, including two French destroyers, to help the resistance movement without informing the committee. This drew more criticism from de Gaulle, and he lost the co-presidency in November 1943.

When the Allies found out that Giraud was maintaining his own intelligence network, the French committee forced him from his post as a commander-in-chief of the French forces. He refused to accept a post of Inspector General of the Army and chose to retire after forty-four years' service. On 10 March 1944 he received a telegram from Winston Churchill offering Churchill's sympathy for the death of Giraud's daughter who had been captured in Tunisia, and carried off into Germany with her four children. On 28 August 1944, he survived an assassination attempt in Algeria.

Postwar life
On 2 June 1946, Giraud was elected to the French Constituent Assembly as a representative of the Republican Party of Liberty and helped to create the constitution of the Fourth Republic. He remained a member of the War Council and was decorated for his escape. Giraud published two books, Mes Evasions (My Escapes, 1946) and Un seul but, la victoire: Alger 1942–1944 (A Single Goal, Victory: Algiers 1942–1944, 1949) about his experiences.

Henri Giraud died in Dijon, France, on 11 March 1949.

Military ranks
Legion d'Honneur 1926

Decorations

 * Palmes_academiques_Officier_ribbon.svg Academic Officer (Silver Palms) (July 1929)
 * Croix de Guerre 1914-1918 ribbon.svg War Cross 1914–1918
 * Croix_de_Guerre_1939-1945_ribbon.svg War Cross 1939–1945
 * Croix_de_Guerre_des_Theatres_d'Operations_Exterieurs_ribbon.svg War Cross for Foreign Theatres of Operations
 * Medaille_des_Evades_ribbon.svg Escapees' Medal (12 October 1927)
 * World War I Victory Medal ribbon.svg 1914–1918 Inter-Allied Victory medal (France)
 * Medaille commemorative de la Guerre 1914-1918 ribbon.svg 1914–1918 Commemorative war medal (France)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Henri Giraud


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Lili Elbe

Lili Ilse Elvenes (28 December 1882 – 13 September 1931), better known as Lili Elbe, was a Danish painter, transgender woman, and one of the earliest recipients of sex reassignment surgery (gender-affirming surgery).

She was a painter under her birth name Einar Wegener. After transitioning in 1930, she changed her legal name to Lili Ilse Elvenes, stopped painting, and later adopted the surname Elbe. She was the first known recipient of a uterus transplant in an attempt to achieve pregnancy, but died due to the subsequent complications.

The UK and US versions of her semi-autobiographical narrative were published posthumously in 1933 under the title Man into Woman: An Authentic Record of a Change of Sex. A film inspired by her life, The Danish Girl, was released in 2015. An opera based on her life, Lili Elbe, composed by Tobias Picker, premiered in 2023.

Early life
It is generally believed that Elbe was born in 1882, in Vejle, Denmark, the child of Ane Marie Thomsen and spice merchant Mogens Wilhelm Wegener, according to the registry at St. Nicolai Church (Vejle). Her birth year is sometimes cited as 1886 by a book about her in which some facts have been changed to protect the identities of the persons involved. Facts about her wife Gerda Gottlieb's life suggest that the 1882 date is correct because they married while at college in 1904, when Elbe would have been just eighteen if the 1886 date were correct.

It is speculated that Elbe was intersex,  although that has been disputed. Some reports indicate that she already had rudimentary ovaries in her abdomen and may have had Klinefelter syndrome.

Marriage and modelling
Elbe met Gerda Gottlieb while they were students at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, and they married in 1904 when Gottlieb was nineteen and Elbe twenty-two. Gerda came from a conservative family, as her father was a vicar in the Lutheran church. They worked as illustrators, with Elbe specialising in landscape paintings while Gottlieb illustrated books and fashion magazines.

They travelled throughout Italy and France before settling in Paris in 1912, where Elbe could live more openly as a woman by posing as Gottlieb's sister-in-law. Elbe received the Neuhausens præmie in 1907 and exhibited at Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling (the Artists' Fall Exhibition) at the Vejle Art Museum in Denmark, where she remains represented, and in the Saloon and Salon d'Automne in Paris.

Elbe started dressing in women's clothes after she found she enjoyed the stockings and heels she wore to fill in for Gottlieb's model, actress Anna Larssen, who, on one occasion, had been late for a sitting. Larssen suggested the name Lili, and, by the 1920s, Elbe regularly presented with that name as a woman, attending various festivities and entertaining guests in her house. Gottlieb became famous for her paintings of beautiful women with haunting, almond-shaped eyes, dressed in chic apparel. The model for these depictions of petites femmes fatales was Elbe. Elbe stopped painting after her transition.

Surgeries and dissolution of marriage
In 1930, Elbe went to Germany for sex reassignment surgery, which was highly experimental at the time. She contemplated suicide before learning of these options. While in Germany, Elbe stayed in the Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science. Prior to commencing any surgical procedures, Elbe's psychological health was evaluated by German sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, through a series of tests. A series of four operations were then carried out over a period of two years. The first surgery, performed in Berlin, was the removal of the testicles, carried out by Erwin Gohrbandt. The remainder of her surgeries were carried out by Kurt Warnekros, a doctor at the Dresden Municipal Women's Clinic. All of Lili Elbe's medical documents were ruined as a consequence of the Allied bombing raids that destroyed the clinic and its archives. The second operation was to implant an ovary onto her abdominal musculature and the third to remove the penis and the scrotum. By this time, her case had become a sensation in Danish and German newspapers. A Danish court annulled the couple's marriage in October 1930, and Elbe was able to have her sex and name legally changed, even receiving a passport as Lili Ilse Elvenes. The name "Lili Elbe" was first used in print in a Danish newspaper article written by Copenhagen journalist Louise "Loulou" Lassen for Politiken in February 1931. Elbe returned to Dresden and began a relationship with French art dealer Claude Lejeune, whom she wanted to marry and with whom she wished to have children. Gerda went on to marry an Italian man after separating from Elbe, although the marriage ended in divorce shortly after.

In 1931, Elbe returned for her fourth surgery, to transplant a uterus and construct a vaginal canal. This made her one of the earliest transgender women to undergo a vaginoplasty surgery, a few weeks after Erwin Gohrbandt performed the experimental procedure on Dora Richter.

Death
Following Elbe's fourth surgery, her immune system rejected the transplanted uterus, leading to organ rejection due to tissue incompatibility of the allografted uterus from female donor, and ultimately a decrease in immunity. This ultimately caused an infection, which led to her death from cardiac arrest on 13 September 1931 in Dresden, Germany, three months after the surgery.

Elbe was buried in Trinitatisfriedhof (Dresden) (Trinity Cemetery) in Dresden, but the grave was leveled in the 1960s. In April 2016, a new tombstone was inaugurated, financed by Focus Features, the production company that produced The Danish Girl. The tombstone does not indicate the date of Elbe's birth, just her name and places of birth and death.

Paintings
Apart from being one of the earliest recipients of gender-affirming surgery, Elbe was also a painter, but quit once she transitioned. The majority of Elbe's painting focused primarily on landscapes. She had many successful paintings, including Portrait de femme (1923), Parti Fra Capri (1921), View from the Garden of Versailles (1922), Costal View from France (1918), and Trianon (1920), to name a few.

In popular culture
The LGBTQ+ film festival MIX Copenhagen gives out four Lili Awards each year, named after Elbe.

In 2000, David Ebershoff wrote The Danish Girl, a fictionalized account of Elbe's life. It was an international bestseller and translated into many languages. This novel provided one of the earliest fictional accounts of gender affirmation surgery, which shaped LGBTQ+ literature. In 2015, it was made into a film of the same name, produced by Gail Mutrux and Neil LaBute, starring Eddie Redmayne as Elbe. The film was well received at the Venice Film Festival in September 2015, though it has been criticised for casting a cisgender man to play a transgender woman. Both the novel and film omitted several topics, including Gottlieb's sexuality, which is evidenced by the subjects in her erotic drawings, and the disintegration of Gottlieb and Elbe's relationship after their annulment.

On 28 December 2022, Google Doodle celebrated Lili Elbe’s 140th birthday.

Tobias Picker's opera based on Elbe's life, featuring Lucia Lucas, premiered in October 2023 at Theater St. Gallen.

Publications
In 1931, Lili Elbe was living in Denmark collaborating with her friend, Ernst Harthern, on a memoir of her life. Fra Mand til Kvinde was published by her German friend and editor under the name of Neils Hoyer following Elbe's death. The narrative provided details of her life as Danish painter and her gender confirmation surgery. The possibility of Lili Elbe being intersex has been proposed due her reported possession of both male and female reproductive organs and the absence of medical records documenting her pre-surgical anatomy due to the Allied Bombing Raids. However, this theory has been disputed. The narrative was published four times, in three different languages over the course of two years. The UK and US versions, Man into Woman: An Authentic Record of a Change of Sex were both published in 1933.

Man into Woman: An authentic Record of a Change of Sex brought attention to new medical interventions as the story of Lili Elbe was circulated through American publications. American publications, such as "A Man Becomes a Woman” and “When Science Changed a Man into a Woman”, published in the popular magazine, Sexology, associated the story of Lili Elbe with cases of intersex sex changes. These narratives promoted a binary view of gender, reinforcing gender stereotypes among Americans.

Lili Elbe and her memoir became well known in European media, publicized by Paul Weber. The story encouraged political action and brought awareness to the challenges faced by gender non-conforming people.

title: Lili Elbe


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Barry Minkow

Barry Jay Minkow (born March 22, 1966) is a former American businessman, pastor, and convicted felon. While still in high school, Minkow founded ZZZZ Best, which appeared to be an immensely successful carpet-cleaning and restoration company. However, it was actually a front to attract investment for a massive Ponzi scheme. ZZZZ Best collapsed in 1987, costing investors and lenders $100 million in one of the largest investment frauds ever perpetrated by a single person, as well as one of the largest accounting frauds in history. The scheme is often used as a case study of accounting fraud.

After being released from jail, Minkow became a pastor and fraud investigator in San Diego, and spoke at churches and schools about ethics. This came to an end in 2011, when he admitted to helping deliberately drive down the stock price of homebuilder Lennar and was ordered back to prison for five years. Three years later, Minkow admitted to defrauding his own church and was sentenced to an additional five years in prison. He is subject to restitution requirements totaling $612 million.

Beginnings of ZZZZ Best
Barry Minkow was born in Inglewood, California, to a Jewish family, and was raised in the Reseda area of the San Fernando Valley. When he was nine years old, his mother got him a job as a telemarketer with the carpet-cleaning business where she worked. At the age of 16, while a sophomore at Cleveland High School, Minkow started ZZZZ Best in his parents' garage with three employees and four phones. In the early days, he had to rely on friends to drive him to carpet-cleaning jobs since he did not have a driver's license.

At first, Minkow struggled to meet basic expenses. Two banks closed his business account because California law of the time did not allow minors to sign binding contracts, including checks. He was also plagued by customer complaints and demands for payment from suppliers. At times, he found it difficult even to make payroll. Faced with a shortage of operating capital, Minkow financed his business via check kiting, stealing and selling his grandmother's jewelry, staging break-ins at his offices, and running up fraudulent credit card charges.

Soon after, Minkow branched into the "insurance restoration" business. With the help of Tom Padgett, a claims adjuster, Minkow forged numerous documents claiming that ZZZZ Best was involved in several restoration projects for Padgett's company. Padgett and Minkow formed a fake company, Interstate Appraisal Services, that verified the details of these restorations to Minkow's bankers. Flush with loans from these banks, Minkow expanded ZZZZ Best across Southern California.

While most Ponzi schemes are based on non-existent businesses, ZZZZ Best's carpet-cleaning division was very real and won high marks for its quality. However, its insurance restoration division, which eventually accounted for 86% of company revenues, was fraudulent. Minkow raised money by factoring his accounts receivable for work under contract, as well as floating funds through several banks in an elaborate check kiting scheme.

After graduating from high school in 1985, Minkow devoted all of his time to ZZZZ Best. Short of cash despite the recent expansion, he got a loan from Jack Catain, a Los Angeles businessman who had ties to organized crime. Catain later sued Minkow for not paying him his share of the company's profits, but Minkow claimed Catain was a usurer. The suit was still working its way through the courts at the time of Catain's death in 1987. Other organized crime figures turned up as Minkow's advisers, which unnerved his employees. For instance, a major shareholder, Maurice Rind, had been convicted of securities fraud in 1976. Minkow was also a business partner with Robert Viggiano, a convicted jewel thief and reputed loanshark.

Going public
At the suggestion of a friend, Minkow took his company public in January 1986, garnering a spot on NASDAQ. The accountant who audited ZZZZ Best before it went public did not visit the insurance restoration sites himself. Had he done so, he would have discovered they were mailboxes located throughout the San Fernando Valley. Minkow retained a fifty-three percent controlling interest in ZZZZ Best, making him an instant millionaire on paper. Going public seemingly offered him a way to cover up his fraudulent activities. Under securities law at the time, he had to retain his personal shares for two years. He planned to sell a million shares to the public in January 1988, believing this would give him enough money to pay everyone off and go completely legitimate.

In order to obtain more financing, Minkow was persuaded to raise $15 million of capital through an initial public offering of ZZZZ Best stock. When accountants wanted to inspect the company's operations, he borrowed fake offices for a tour of "Interstate Appraisal Services" and used an incomplete building to present a fake restoration job. Mark Morze, ZZZZ Best's financial consultant, tricked the accountants sent to perform the necessary due diligence by faking thousands of documents. The public offering closed in December and Minkow became the youngest person to lead a company through an IPO in American financial history.

Minkow launched a massive television advertising campaign portraying ZZZZ Best as a carpet cleaner that Southern Californians could trust. He owned a Ferrari and a BMW, and bought a mansion in the wealthy Valley community of Woodland Hills. He had ambitions of making the company "the General Motors of the carpet-cleaning industry."

ZZZZ Best's chief financial officer, Charles Arrington, was accused of running up $91,000 in fraudulent charges against customers of his florist business. When the Feshbach brothers, a pair of short-sellers, learned that Minkow still stood behind Arrington, they did further investigating and discovered ZZZZ Best's claimed $7 million contract to clean carpets in Sacramento was likely a fraud. This prompted the Feshbachs to short ZZZZ Best's stock, anticipating that it would fall. Additionally, none of the company's four outside directors had any experience running a public company.

Downfall
By February 1987, ZZZZ Best was trading at $18 a share on NASDAQ, valuing the company at $280 million. Minkow's stake was worth $100 million. The company now had 1,030 employees with offices in California, Arizona and Nevada.

Despite its growth, the company was still facing severe cash flow shortages from paying investors for the non-existent restoration projects. Minkow believed he'd found a solution when he learned that KeyServ, the authorized carpet cleaner for Sears, was being sold by its British parent. He began merger talks with KeyServ, as the cash infusion would solve ZZZZ Best's immediate cash flow issues. Additionally, Minkow thought that KeyServ's Sears business would give ZZZZ Best enough cash to end the Ponzi scheme sooner than originally planned. Drexel Burnham Lambert offered to finance the deal with a private placement of junk bonds.

Although KeyServ was twice ZZZZ Best's size, the two companies agreed to a $25 million deal in which ZZZZ Best would be the surviving company. The merger would have made ZZZZ Best Sears' authorized carpet cleaner, and also would have made Minkow the president and chairman of the board of the largest independent carpet-cleaning company in the U.S. Soon after the KeyServ deal was announced, Minkow began making plans to become even more powerful, planning to raise $700–800 million to buy ServiceMaster in a hostile takeover and intending to expand to the United Kingdom. Outside of carpet cleaning, he had begun preliminary discussions to buy Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners.

Just as the KeyServ merger was about to close, the credit card fraud that helped keep ZZZZ Best afloat in the early years proved to be Minkow's undoing. Minkow had blamed the fraudulent charges on unscrupulous contractors and another employee, and paid back most of the victims. However, he had not paid back a homemaker who had been overcharged a few hundred dollars. When he ignored her requests to pay her back, she tracked down several other people who had been defrauded by Minkow and gave a diary of her findings to the Los Angeles Times. The Times then wrote a story revealing that Minkow had run up $72,000 in fraudulent credit card charges in 1984 and 1985. The story, which ran just days before the merger was to close, sent ZZZZ Best stock plunging 28 percent.

Within hours of the story's publication, ZZZZ Best's banks either called their loans or threatened to do so. Drexel postponed closing until it could investigate further. Later that day, at a press conference, a reporter revealed evidence that the Sacramento carpet-cleaning project didn't exist. More seriously, she'd discovered that ZZZZ Best did not have the contractor's license required for large-scale restoration work. To calm nervous investors, Minkow issued a press release touting record profits and revenues but did so without notifying Ernst & Whinney (now part of Ernst & Young), the firm responsible for auditing the company prior to the KeyServ deal. The press release also implied that Drexel had cleared ZZZZ Best of any wrongdoing, briefly stopping the decline. However, Drexel abruptly pulled out of the deal a few days later, causing the stock price to fall again. Drexel's withdrawal stopped the deal four to seven days before it was due to close.

The day after this press release, Ernst & Whinney discovered that Minkow had written several checks to support the validity of the non-existent contracts. Many of them had been written to an associate who later told Ernst & Whinney officials about the fraud. Minkow denied knowing the man, but shortly after the checks were discovered, Ernst & Whinney discovered that he had cut two checks to the associate for an unrelated matter. When Minkow could not explain the checks, Ernst & Whinney resigned as ZZZZ Best's auditor. However, it did not inform the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of its suspicions until a month later.

On July 2, Minkow abruptly resigned from ZZZZ Best for "health reasons." By this time, his company's stock had fallen to $3.50 a share—an 81 percent drop from its high in February. Minkow later revealed that on June 27, six days earlier, an independent law firm the company had retained to investigate the allegations asked for the addresses for all of the company's restoration jobs. Minkow knew that those projects did not exist and decided to resign. Later, he reportedly told a member of his board that the insurance restoration business had been a sham from the very beginning.

ZZZZ Best's new board conducted an internal investigation that largely substantiated the fraud allegations. On July 6 it sued Minkow, alleging that he had absconded with $23 million in company funds. ZZZZ Best claimed that its assets had been drained to the point that it was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Two days later, the Los Angeles Police Department raided ZZZZ Best's headquarters and Minkow's home, and found evidence that the company was being used to launder drug profits for organized crime.

Conviction and prison
Minkow and ten other ZZZZ Best insiders were indicted by a federal grand jury in January 1988 on fifty-four counts of racketeering, securities fraud, money laundering, embezzlement, mail fraud, tax evasion and bank fraud. The indictment accused Minkow of milking banks and investors of millions of dollars while systematically draining his company of assets. It also accused Minkow of setting up dummy companies, writing phony invoices and conducting tours of purported restoration sites. Prosecutors estimated that as much as ninety percent of the company's revenue was fraudulent. On June 16, prosecutors won a superseding indictment charging Minkow with credit card fraud and two additional counts of mail fraud.

While Minkow admitted to manipulating the company's stock, he claimed that he was forced to turn the company into a Ponzi scheme under pressure from the organized-crime figures who secretly controlled his company, a story he later admitted was false. On December 14, he was found guilty on all charges. On March 27, 1989, he was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. He was also placed on five years' probation and ordered to pay $26 million in restitution. In sentencing him, U.S. District Court Judge Dickran Tevrizian described Minkow as a man without a conscience, rejecting his plea for a lighter sentence as "a joke" and "a slap on the wrist" for someone who had manipulated the financial system. The SEC subsequently banned him from ever serving as an officer or director of a public company again. He served under seven and a half years, most of them at Federal Correctional Institution, Englewood.

While imprisoned, Minkow claimed to have become a born-again Christian. During his prison stay, he became involved in Christian ministry, completing coursework through Liberty University's School of Lifelong Learning.

Release
After his early release from prison in 1995, Minkow went to work as a pastor at the Church at Rocky Peak in Chatsworth, California, and became director of the church's Bible Institute. That same year he wrote a first-hand account of the ZZZZ Best scam, Clean Sweep. All of the book's proceeds went toward repaying his victims. His other substantial debt is a $7 million loan from Union Bank.

In 1997, Minkow became pastor of Community Bible Church in San Diego. Soon after his arrival, a church member asked him to look into a money management firm in nearby Orange County. Suspecting something was amiss, Minkow alerted federal authorities, who discovered the firm was a $300 million pyramid scheme. This was the beginning of the Fraud Discovery Institute (FDI), Minkow's for-profit investigative firm. His original targets were penny stock companies, which are often havens for fraud. However, he soon attracted the attention of media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Fox News, and CBS's 60 Minutes. Several Wall Street investors sent money to Minkow in order to persuade him to pursue bigger targets. Minkow claimed to have uncovered $1 billion worth of fraud through the FDI.

Shorting stock
Minkow's motives were brought into question by multiple news stories, which concluded that Minkow was shorting stock before he released a report on a public company. According to The San Diego Union-Tribune, Minkow had engaged in this practice as early as 2006. His critics denounced this practice as unethical, if not illegal. At least one critic accused him of engaging in short and distort, a form of securities fraud which is a reversal of a pump and dump scheme.

For instance, Minkow accused Herbalife of a "laundry list" of issues and had "correctly revealed that Herbalife's president had inflated his résumé." Herbalife paid Minkow $300,000, after which he issued a press release withdrawing all accusations and contentions against the company, and removed all the accusations from his website. Additionally, Minkow made $50,000 from shorting Herbalife stock. He continued to profit from his short sales position due to sharp decreases in the reported company's stock price immediately after releasing a new report.

On 20 February 2007, Minkow distributed a 500-page report to officials at the SEC, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), accusing USANA of operating an illegal pyramid scheme. On the day Minkow's report was released, USANA's shares had traded at $61.19 but by August the share price had tumbled to less than $35. Minkow later acknowledged that he was shorting USANA's shares, hoping to profit from a drop in the stock price.

USANA filed lawsuits against Minkow, accusing him of stock manipulation and defamation. However, USANA dropped the defamation suit and a judge later threw out four of the five claims brought against Minkow, ruling that the claims violated California's anti-SLAPP law for suing Minkow for fair criticism. The judge also cited two examples where USANA failed to refute Minkow's claims that their products were overpriced and of no better quality than other lower-priced brands. The remaining charge of stock manipulation was settled in July 2008 when USANA and Minkow reached an undisclosed settlement, which included the removal of all USANA-related materials from the FDI website, a related Chinese website, and from YouTube. Minkow also agreed to never trade in USANA's stock again. Separately from the settlement, USANA paid $142,510 in attorney fees to Minkow and the FDI under an order from federal Magistrate Samuel Alba. Court documents show that USANA never pursued others whom they suspected of being part of the alleged stock manipulation nor did they ask for an injunction, their only avenue of release in this case.

Minkow almost always held a position in securities on which he reported. However, he has since stated that while his lawyers advised him this practice was legal, it was probably unethical. Several companies have since sued Minkow for making false accusations against them, with most of the suits being settled out of court.

Lennar
In 2009, Minkow issued a report accusing major homebuilder Lennar of massive fraud, claiming that irregularities in the company's off-balance-sheet debt accounting were evidence of a massive Ponzi scheme. Minkow accused Lennar of not disclosing enough information about this to its shareholders, and also claimed a Lennar executive had taken out a fraudulent personal loan. In an accompanying YouTube video, he denounced Lennar as "a financial crime in progress" and "a corporate bully." Lennar's stock plummeted in the wake of Minkow's reports, tumbling from $11.57 a share to $6.55 in two weeks. Minkow issued the report after being contacted by Nicholas Marsch, a San Diego developer who had filed two lawsuits against Lennar for fraud. Indeed, the language of the FDI report echoed that used in Marsch's filings. One of Marsch's suits was summarily thrown out; the other ended with Marsch having to pay Lennar $12 million in counterclaims.

Lennar responded by adding Minkow as a defendant in a lawsuit against Marsch. Minkow was initially unconcerned, since he had prevailed before in similar cases on free speech grounds. According to court records, Minkow had shorted Lennar stock, buying $20,000 worth of options in a bet that the stock would fall. Even more seriously, he also bought Lennar stock after his FDI report, believing the stock would rebound after its dramatic plunge. Minkow initially denied doing this, only to be forced to recant when confronted with trading records. Minkow forged documents alleging misconduct on Lennar's part and lied about having to go to the emergency room on the night before he was first scheduled to testify. He also went forward with the report even after a private investigator he had hired for the case could not substantiate Marsch's claims. In an unrelated development, it was also revealed that Minkow operated the FDI out of the offices of his church and even used church money to fund the organization—something which could have jeopardized his church's tax-exempt status.

On December 27, 2010, Florida Circuit Court Judge Gill Freeman issued a default judgment against Minkow in response to a motion by Lennar. Freeman found that Minkow had repeatedly lied under oath, destroyed or withheld evidence, concealed witnesses, deliberately tried to "cover up his misconduct", and had even lied to his own lawyers about his behavior. Freeman determined that Minkow had perpetrated "a fraud on the court" that was so egregious that letting the case go any further would be a disservice to justice. In her view, "no remedy short of default" was appropriate for Minkow's lies. She ordered Minkow to reimburse Lennar for the legal expenses it incurred while ferreting out his lies. According to legal experts, terminating sanctions such as default judgments are extremely rare, since they are reserved for particularly egregious misconduct and have the effect of revoking a litigant's right to defend himself. Earlier, Freeman had been so angered by Minkow's behavior that she called him a liar in open court, a rarity for a judge. Lennar estimated that its attorneys and investigators spent hundreds of millions of dollars exposing Minkow's lies.

Insider trading guilty plea
On March 16, 2011, Minkow announced through his attorney that he was pleading guilty to one count of insider trading. According to his lawyer, Minkow had bought his Lennar options using "nonpublic information." The plea, which was separate from the civil suit, came a month after Minkow learned he was the subject of a criminal investigation. On the same day, Minkow resigned as senior pastor of Community Bible Church, saying in a letter to his congregants that since he was no longer "above reproach," he felt that he was "no longer qualified to be a pastor." Six weeks earlier, $50,000 in cash and checks had been stolen from the church during a burglary. Though unsolved, it was noted as suspicious due to Minkow's admitted history of staging burglaries to collect insurance money.

The nature of the "nonpublic information" became clear a week later, when federal prosecutors in Miami filed a criminal information charging Minkow with one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Prosecutors charged that Minkow and Marsch (listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the complaint) conspired to extort money from Lennar by driving down its stock. The complaint also revealed that Minkow had sent his allegations to the SEC, the FBI, and the IRS, and that the three agencies found his claims credible enough to open a formal criminal investigation into Lennar's practices. Minkow then used confidential knowledge of that investigation to short Lennar stock, even though he knew he was barred from doing so. Minkow opted to plead guilty to the conspiracy charge rather than face charges of securities fraud and market manipulation, which could have sent him to prison for life.

On March 30, 2011, Minkow pleaded guilty before Judge Patricia A. Seitz. His attorney, Alvin Entin, admitted that his client had acted recklessly, but had been "deluded and taken advantage of" by Marsch. He faced a maximum of five years in prison, as much as $350,000 in fines and penalties and $500 million in restitution. However, he agreed to cooperate with the government in its probe of Marsch.

The Los Angeles Times obtained a copy of the plea agreement, in which Minkow admitted to issuing his FDI report on Lennar at Marsch's behest. According to the agreement, Marsch offered to have Minkow retract his report if Lennar paid him in cash and stock. It also said that Minkow's report triggered a bear raid which temporarily reduced the market capitalization of Lennar by $583 million. Minkow faced a minimum of thirty years in prison had the case gone to trial. On June 16, Freeman ordered Minkow to pay Lennar $584 million in damages—roughly the amount the company lost as a result of the bear raid orchestrated by Minkow and Marsch. Her ruling stated that Minkow and Marsch had entered into a conspiracy to wreck Lennar's stock in November 2008. With interest, the bill could easily approach a billion dollars—far more than Minkow stole in the ZZZZ Best scam.

On July 6, it emerged that officials with Community Bible Church had accused Minkow of running the FDI with church funds, applying for credit cards in the names of church members and leading his flock into bad investments. Church officials had made the claims as part of a confidential pre-sentencing report. When Entin got word of the letter, he asked for and was granted two weeks to review the allegations and respond to them. This pushed Minkow's sentencing back to July 21. This was the second time Minkow's sentencing had been postponed; it was originally slated for June 16 but was postponed to July 6.

In a pre-sentencing evaluation performed on May 10, 2011, Minkow was diagnosed by a Michael Brannon as having a personality disorder with antisocial and narcissistic features, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety disorder, opioid dependence, anabolic steroid abuse, and migraine headaches.

On July 21, Seitz sentenced Minkow to five years in prison. In imposing the sentence, she stated that Minkow had "no moral compass that says 'Stop.'" Seitz also ordered him to pay Lennar $583.5 million in restitution—an amount that had been imposed a month earlier in the civil case. She also recommended that Minkow serve his sentence at Federal Prison Camp, Montgomery in Montgomery, Alabama. However, on September 20, he was ordered to begin his sentence at Federal Medical Center, Lexington in Lexington, Kentucky.

Church fraud guilty plea
On June 14, 2011; KGTV in San Diego interviewed several members of Minkow's former church, who said Minkow swindled them. One woman said Minkow asked her for $300,000, purportedly to help finance a movie about his redemption story.

On January 22, 2014, Minkow pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and to defraud the federal government. He admitted to embezzling over $3 million in donations to Community Bible Church from 2001 to 2011. He opened unauthorized bank accounts purportedly on the church's behalf, forged signatures on church checks, diverted money from legitimate church accounts for his personal use, and charged unauthorized personal expenses on church credit cards. He also concealed $890,000 of income and $250,000 in taxes from the IRS. Among his victims were a widower who gave $75,000 to fund a supposed hospital in Sudan to honor his wife after she died of cancer, and a woman who gave Minkow $300,000 that would have otherwise gone to help raise her teenage granddaughter.

On April 28, 2014, Judge Michael Anello sentenced Minkow to five years in prison, the maximum possible sentence under his plea bargain. It is to be served after Minkow completes his sentence for securities fraud. While Minkow's attorneys asked for a sentence of forty-one months, Anello felt obligated to impose the maximum for what he called a "despicable, inexcusable crime." On June 2, Minkow reached an agreement with federal prosecutors that called for him to pay $3.4 million in restitution. This will potentially be a ruinous amount for Minkow, on top of the restitution he still owes Lennar, Union Bank and the ZZZZ Best victims. Earlier, he said that the $26 million restitution for the ZZZZ Best scam alone was large enough that he would be writing restitution checks to the victims for the rest of his life. As a result of his latest sentence, Minkow was released on June 6, 2019.

Film adaptation and docuseries
Prior to his 2011 conviction, production began on a film detailing Minkow's life and redemption. The film, featuring Mark Hamill, Justin Baldoni, Talia Shire and Ving Rhames, was partially funded by donations Minkow solicited from his congregation. Minkow insisted on playing the middle-aged version of himself in the film. Following his arrest, the film's release was cancelled and work began on a new ending. The film—retitled Con Man from the original title Minkow—was eventually released in March 2018.

In January 2022, a three-part Discovery+ docuseries, called King of the Con, was released. The series explored how Minkow could reinvent himself and get rich several different times. The miniseries was produced by The Content Group, with Pamela Deutsch serving as executive producer for Discovery+, and has Minkow himself recounting his past, his crimes and the process of reinventing himself.

title: Barry Minkow


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Immortals (Achaemenid Empire)

Immortals (Ἀθάνατοι) or Persian Immortals was the name given by Herodotus to an elite heavy infantry unit of 10,000 soldiers in the army of the Achaemenid Empire. The unit served in a dual capacity through its role as imperial guard alongside its contribution to the ranks of the Persian Empire's standing army. While it primarily consisted of Persians, the Immortals force also included Medes and Elamites. Essential questions regarding the historic unit remain unanswered because authoritative sources are missing.

Herodotus' account
Herodotus describes the Immortals as being heavy infantry led by Hydarnes the Younger; it provided the professional corps of the Persian armies and was kept constantly at a strength of exactly 10,000 men. He stated that the unit's name stemmed from the custom that every killed, seriously wounded, or sick member was immediately replaced with a new one, maintaining the corps as a cohesive entity with a constant strength.

The Persian denomination of the unit is uncertain. This elite force is only referred to as the "Immortals" in sources based on Herodotus. There is evidence from Persian sources of the existence of a permanent corps, which provided a backbone for the tribal levies (raised by satraps) who, together with increasing numbers of mercenaries, made up the bulk of the Achaemenid armies. However these do not record the name of "Immortals". It is suggested that Herodotus' informant has confused the word anûšiya- (lit. 'companion') with anauša- (lit. 'immortal'), but this theory has been criticized by Rüdiger Schmitt.

History
The Immortals played an important role in the Achaemenid conquest of Egypt under Cambyses II in 525 BCE, as well as in the Achaemenid conquest of Indus Valley (western Punjab and Sindh, now located in Pakistan) and European Scythia under Darius I in c. 518 BCE and 513 BCE, respectively. They also notably participated in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE during the Greco-Persian Wars and were amongst the Persian troops who occupied Greece in 479 BCE under Mardonius.

During the final decades of the Achaemenid Empire, the role expected of the Immortals' hazarapatish (lit. 'commanding officer') was extended to include that of chief minister to the King of Kings. The provision of a bodyguard, in direct attendance of the monarch, had already been allocated to a select thousand-strong detachment of the unit.

Equipment

Xenophon (Cyropaedia 6.4.1; 7.1.2) describes the guard of Cyrus the Great as having bronze breastplates and helmets, while their horses wore chamfrons and peitrels of bronze together with shoulder pieces which also protected the rider's thighs. Herodotus instead describes their armament as follows: wicker shields covered in leather, short spears, quivers, swords or large daggers, slings, bows and arrows. They wore scale armour coats. The spear counterbalances of the common soldiery were of silver; to differentiate commanding ranks, the officers' spear butt-spikes were of gold. The regiment was followed by a caravan of covered carriages, camels, and mules that transported their supplies, along with concubines and attendants to serve them; this supply train carried special food that was reserved only for their consumption.

The headdress worn by the Immortals is believed to have been a conical or rouned metal on top and scale or chains on the sides, and ridge helmet or phrygian cap; surviving Achaemenid coloured glazed bricks and carved reliefs represent the Immortals as wearing elaborate robes, hoop earrings, and gold jewellery, although these garments and accessories were most likely worn only for ceremonial occasions.

Sasanian Empire
The first re-occurrence of the word "Immortals" is in Roman historians' description of an elite cavalry unit in the army of the Sasanian Empire. Primary sources suggest that they numbered around 10,000 men in accordance with tradition, with the main formational difference being that they were heavy cavalry. However, recent scholarship has doubted the Roman description of the force, including their name, their size, and that they were modeled on the Achaemenid Immortals, although there may have been one or more of such distinct elite cavalry units during the Sasanian period. Their task was mainly to secure any breakthroughs and to enter battles at crucial stages.

Byzantine Empire
The designation "Immortal" to describe a military unit was used twice during the era of the Byzantine Empire: first as elite heavy cavalry under John I Tzimiskes ((r. 969 – 976)) and then later under Nikephoritzes, the chief minister of Byzantine emperor Michael VII Doukas ((r. 1071 – 1081)), as the core of a new central field army following the disastrous Byzantine defeat at Manzikert to the Seljuk Turks in 1071.

French Empire
During the 19th-century Napoleonic Wars, many French soldiers referred to Napoleon's Imperial Guard as "the Immortals".

Imperial State of Iran
Under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, the Imperial Iranian Army included an all-volunteer known as the Javidan Guard (, lit. 'Immortal Guard'), named after the ancient Persian royal guard. The Javidan Guard was based at the Lavizan Barracks in Tehran. By 1978, this elite force comprised a brigade of 4,000–5,000 men, including a battalion of Chieftain tanks. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ended the Imperial State of Iran and the Pahlavi dynasty, the "Immortal Guard" was disbanded.

Islamic Republic of Iran
The signature shield of the Achaemenid Empire's Immortals has been adopted in the insignia of the 65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade and the 55th Airborne Brigade of the Islamic Republic of Iran Army.

In popular culture
Herodotus' account of two warrior elites—the hoplites of Sparta and the Immortals of Persia facing each other in battle, has inspired a set of fanciful depictions of the battle, especially in regard of the Immortals:

 * In the 1962 film The 300 Spartans, the Immortals carry a spear and wicker shields like the actual Immortals. However, they are mostly dressed in black and other dark colors in contrast to historical depictions.
 * Frank Miller's 1998 comic book 300 and the 2006 feature film adapted from it present a heavily fictionalized version of the Immortals at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE. These Immortals wear Mengu-style metal masks, appear to be inhuman or disfigured, and carry a pair of swords closely resembling Japanese wakizashis.
 * The Immortals also appears in the film Meet the Spartans that is mainly a parody of the film 300.
 * The History Channel's 2007 film Last Stand of the 300 also features the Immortals as part of the reconstruction of the historic battle at Thermopylae in ancient Greece. In this version, the Persian tiara that the Immortals habitually wore is depicted as a full-face black cloth mask transparent enough to see through.
 * The second season of the show Deadliest Warrior featured the Persian Immortals in a simulated match-up against Celtic warriors. The Immortals were found to be victorious.
 * In the video game Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, the protagonist Sargon is part of an elite group called The Immortals, who in the game serve as soldiers in the Persian army as well as bodyguards to the royal family, including the titular prince.

title: Immortals (Achaemenid Empire)


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The Adventures of Robin Hood (TV series)

The Adventures of Robin Hood is a British television series comprising 143 half-hour, black and white episodes broadcast weekly between 1955 and 1959 on ITV. It starred Richard Greene as the outlaw Robin Hood, and Alan Wheatley as his nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham. The show followed the legendary character Robin Hood and his band of merry men in Sherwood Forest and the surrounding vicinity. While some episodes dramatised the traditional Robin Hood tales, most were original dramas created by the show's writers and producers.

The programme was produced by Sapphire Films Ltd for ITC Entertainment, filmed at Nettlefold Studios with some location work, and was the first of many pre-filmed shows commissioned by Lew Grade. In 1954, Grade was approached by American producer Hannah Weinstein to finance a series of 39 half-hour episodes, at a budget of £10,000 an episode, of a series she wished to make called The Adventures of Robin Hood. She had already signed Richard Greene to the project as Robin Hood and been given the backing of US distribution company, Official Films Inc, who were confident of selling it to the US market. Grade was so impressed by her proposal that he agreed immediately to back the series, hoping to make large profits by selling programmes to the lucrative American market. In the UK, the series premiered on ATV London, on Sunday 25 September 1955. ATV Midlands began the series on Friday 17 February 1956, with a staggered start across other regions from 1956 to 1961 as the ITV regional stations came on-air for the first time in the UK. The US premiere was on Monday 26 September 1955 by CBS. The series was shot on 35mm film to provide the best possible picture quality, and had fade-outs where US commercials were intended to slot in (the series was sponsored in the US by Johnson & Johnson (baby products, Band-Aid) and Wildroot Cream-Oil.

In Australia, the show aired on TCN9 in Sydney NSW and HSV7 Melbourne Victoria, actually being the first drama series broadcast by this station and CBC in Canada, and on CBS in the US. In France, RTF1 aired the show from 1965 to 1969 and RTF2 from 1969 to 1972. In Italy, Rai 1 aired the show from 1959 to 1964 and Rai 2 from 1965 to 1967. In Malaysia, RTM aired the show from late 1974 to early 1978. In the Philippines, ABS-CBN aired the show from 1963 to 1967, RBS (now GMA Network) from 1967 to 1972. In Indonesia, TVRI aired the show during the 1970s. In Romania, TVR aired the show from 1966 to 1980. In Poland aired the show in the late 1960s/early 1970s, in a popular programme for young people (each episode of the weekly programme "Ekran z bratkiem" ended with the broadcast of one episode of the series).

The programme continues to air in the United Kingdom on the Talking Pictures TV channel, shown regularly on Saturday mornings and on Sunday afternoons.

Main characters

 * Robin Hood (Robin of Locksley), a Saxon nobleman returned from the Crusades and forced into outlawry in Sherwood Forest. Played by Richard Greene.
 * The Sheriff of Nottingham, a Norman baron and Robin Hood's enemy, who schemes to capture the outlaw. Played by Alan Wheatley.
 * Little John, Robin Hood's trusted friend and his second in command. Played by Archie Duncan. Duncan was briefly replaced by Rufus Cruikshank for ten episodes after Duncan was injured when a horse bolted toward the spectators, mostly children, watching the location filming of the episode "Checkmate" on 20 April 1955. Archie Duncan grabbed the bridle, stopping the horse, but the cart it was pulling ran him over, causing a fractured kneecap and cuts and bruises. He received the Queen's Commendation for Bravery and £1,360 in damages from Sapphire Films.
 * Maid Marian (Lady Marian Fitzwalter), a Norman-Irish noblewoman and Robin Hood's lover. Played in series one and two by Bernadette O'Farrell and in series three and four by Patricia Driscoll.
 * Friar Tuck, a member of Robin Hood's band. Played by Alexander Gauge.
 * Will Scarlet, a member of Robin Hood's band. Played by Ronald Howard (two episodes, series 1) and Paul Eddington (series 4).
 * Derwent, a member of Robin's band. Played by Victor Woolf. Woolf played several other guest roles in the series such as villagers, villains and other outlaws. Excepting Richard Greene, he appeared in the most episodes of the show, a total of 112.
 * Joan, the barmaid at the Blue Boar Inn, a friend of Robin and his band. Played by Simone Lovell.
 * Sir Richard of the Lea, a friend of Robin and his band. Played by Ian Hunter. Hunter had earlier played King Richard the Lionheart in the 1938 production The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn.
 * Lady Leonia, wife of Sir Richard of the Lea. Played by Patricia Burke in five episodes.
 * The Deputy Sheriff of Nottingham, (the Sheriff's replacement in series 4), played by John Arnatt.

Minor characters

 * Alan-a-Dale, a member of Robin Hood's band. Played by John Schlesinger (two episodes, series 2), Richard Coleman (three episodes, series 4).
 * Ethel, Derwent's wife played by Paula Byrne.

Historical characters

 * Queen Eleanor, the mother of King Richard and Prince John. Played by Jill Esmond (two episodes, series 1).
 * King Richard the Lionheart, the King of England, elder son of Queen Eleanor and older brother of Prince John. Played by Patrick Barr (two episodes, series 1).
 * Prince John, the scheming friend of the Sheriff of Nottingham and younger brother of King Richard. Played by Donald Pleasence, Hubert Gregg, and Brian Haines.
 * Princess Avice of Gloucester, the first wife of Prince John, played by Helen Cherry.
 * Isabella of Angoulême, the second wife of Prince John played by Zena Walker before her marriage to John though not played as a 12-year-old.
 * Prince Arthur played by Peter Asher (three episodes, series 1 & 2), Richard O'Sullivan (one episode, series 3) and Jonathan Bailey (one episode, series 4).
 * Constance, Duchess of Brittany (Prince Arthur's mother), played by Dorothy Alison (three episodes, series 1 & 2), Pamela Alan (one episode, series 3), and Patricia Marmont (one episode, series 4).
 * King William the Lion of Scotland played by Duncan McKintyre.

Other actors
Actors appearing in the series who later became better-known included: Lionel Jeffries, Leslie Phillips, Jane Asher, Anne Reid, Edward Mulhare, Patrick Troughton (who in 1953 had been the first actor to portray Robin Hood on TV in a live BBC series), Irene Handl, Nicholas Parsons, Sam Kydd, Desmond Llewelyn, Sid James, Joan Sims, Bernard Bresslaw, Leo McKern, Alfie Bass, Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell (Steptoe and Son), Billie Whitelaw, Paul Eddington, Ronald Allen and Gordon Jackson. John Schlesinger appeared as an actor in three episodes as singing minstrels (Hale and Alan a Dale (series 2)). A number of well-known actresses appeared as Saxon or Norman ladies, including Greta Gynt and Brenda de Banzie.

A number of actors appeared in supporting roles in most episodes: in series 1 these included: Victor Woolf, Willoughby Gray, and John Longden, and for later series included: Paul Hansard, Morris Barry, Nigel Davenport, Kevin Stoney, Ronald Hines, and Max Faulkner, who also did stunt/double work. Frank Maher (later Patrick McGoohan's stunt double) played many small non-speaking parts, and stuntman Terry Yorke, who doubled for Richard Greene, played many small roles throughout all four series. In Series 3, Paul Eddington played a different character in many episodes, before settling down to Will Scarlett.

Plot and writing
The series is set in the 12th century, during the reign of King Richard the Lionheart.

Robin, Earl of Locksley, a Saxon nobleman, returns from the Crusades to find a Norman lord living in his ancestral home, Locksley Hall. He is forced to go to the Sheriff of Nottingham, who represents the law, seeking to reclaim his land. But the Sheriff, another Norman, sides with the usurper. Robin is tricked into signing a document fatal to his claim, but when the plot to then murder him goes wrong Robin ends up as a hunted man. In the forest he meets a peasant (Alfie Bass), who is due to have his hands mutilated for killing his lord's deer, but Robin rescues him. The hunter tells him of outlaws living free in the forest. When they meet the outlaws, Robin drops his title and asks to just be called Robin. As he is hooded, they call him Robin of the Hood.

He is thus forced into the life of an outlaw, dwelling in Sherwood Forest with a band of men who right the wrongs committed by the rich and powerful Normans against the poor and defenceless Saxons. He is given the name Robin Hood by the outlaw band's original leader, Will Scatlock, who is fatally wounded in the second episode. Robin Hood's enemy in the series is the Sheriff of Nottingham who, with his cohorts, adherents of the tyrant, Prince John, schemes to capture the outlaw by any means possible. Lady Marian Fitzwalter (Maid Marian), a young noblewoman and Robin Hood's lover, keeps him informed of the Sheriff's whereabouts and intentions. Episodes are punctuated with manly deeds of derring-do, tense escapes and pursuits, princely tournaments, the thundering hoof-beats of powerful steeds, the clattering of flashing swords, and the whizzing of fatally placed arrows.

In "A Year and A Day" (series 2), a refugee peasant explains that, under English law, a peasant who escapes serfdom and lives in a city for "a year and a day" is a free man, provided the man lives openly, not in hiding. When Robin Hood helps the peasant move about the city, the Sheriff invokes "the law of hue-and-cry", explaining that any man within hearing must drop his chores and help apprehend the felon. In "A Christmas Goose" (series 3), a boy's goose nips a lord's horse so the lord is thrown. The lord condemns the goose to death—for his Christmas dinner. But Robin Hood counters that under English common law, an accused animal is entitled to a fair trial, the same as a human. While Robin Hood drags out the trial, Friar Tuck gets the cook drunk and switches geese. When the deception is revealed, the lord relents and pardons the goose. Two episodes, "Brother Battle" (#84) and "To Be a Student" (#90) emphasized the Catholic Church's struggle to educate commoners, and even the children of the Saxon serfs, despite laws forbidding the practice and in the face of opposition from the Norman nobility.

The writers created supporting characters who were likeable and occasionally resourceful. In "The Goldmaker's Return" (series 2), Robin Hood is away in France on a mission. Lady Marian, Little John and the other Merry Men carry the day without the star of the show ever showing his face. Most of the time, however, Robin is required to save the day single-handed, following the usual comment that "sending many men would be noticed, only one man going in alone will be overlooked", etc. Despite the simplistic plotting required by the 26-minute format, the writing was both professional in its handling of situations, and pointed in its dialogue.

Anachronisms abounded: the lipsticked girl with modern hairdo in the "Friar Tuck" episode, for instance; wine cups for each occupant at a table in "Checkmate", when that only became the practice hundreds of years later; the 20th century school implements in "Brother Battle"; the use of Guineas from the 1700s as coinage; written tavern signs when most people were illiterate; and a "bard" in "The Challenge" episode who sings a song to the late 17th-century tune of "Lillibullero" in 12th-century England. All this is typical of every series of historical fiction, but the show's producers pointed with pride to their accuracy, courtesy of hired consultants.

There was an element of self-parody at times, that sat uneasily on the series. For instance, in one episode, "The Challenge", the plot (as such) finished halfway through the show, and the remainder became a comedy as the hapless Richard of the Lea and his wife worried whilst their larder and wine cellar were emptied, during a siege, by Robin, Little John, and Tuck eating and dancing all the day and night.

Episodes
A total of 143 episodes were filmed in four series.

Blacklisted writers
The Adventures of Robin Hood was produced by Hannah Weinstein, who had left-wing political views. The series was explicitly created by Weinstein to enable the commissioning of scripts by blacklisted American writers. Among these were Ring Lardner Jr., Waldo Salt, Robert Lees, and Adrian Scott. Howard Koch, who was also blacklisted, served for a while as the series' script editor. The blacklisted writers were credited under pseudonyms, to avoid the attention of studio executives.

The sponsored prints of the first five episodes of series one, screened by CBS in the US on its first run, had no writer credits on their end title sequences; writers were only credited on sponsored prints from episode 6 onward, only later non-sponsored US re-run prints of series one have writer credits for these episodes, some of which differ from writer credits on UK prints. As an example, Lawrence McClellan is credited as writer of "The Coming of Robin Hood" on US prints, for the UK the pseudonym used is Eric Heath.

After the blacklist collapsed, Lardner said that the series' format allowed him "plenty of opportunities to comment on issues and institutions in Eisenhower-era America"; presumably "A Tuck in Time" was such an episode, in which a twin of Friar Tuck arrives boasting of his willingness to sell a weapon that could destroy the world. In addition to the redistributive themes of a hero who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, many episodes in the programme's first two seasons included the threat that Robin and his band would be betrayed to the authorities by friends or loved ones, much as the blacklisted writers had been. For example, the third season story "The Angry Village" had paranoid villagers turn on each other when they think a traitor is in their midst. But the half-hour length episodes and broad-target market precluded any political criticism that went beyond the generalities of 19th century Robin Hood revival books.

Filming
Whilst interiors were filmed at Nettlefold Studios, location shooting for the series took place on the nearby Wisley Common, Wisley, Surrey, and at the adjoining Foxwarren Park estate, near Cobham, owned by Hannah Weinstein. Horses used for filming were also stabled at Foxwarren House, which had a projection room for viewing daily film rushes and completed films. In 1956 a replica castle exterior, complete with drawbridge, was built in the grounds of the estate for filming of The Adventures of Sir Lancelot series (it features prominently in title sequence for the colour episodes). This was used predominantly for castle scenes in series 3 & 4 of Robin Hood, it first appears as Chateau Marmont in "The Bandit of Brittany" during series 2, in place of the standing castle and village set on the backlot at Nettlefold studios used in series 1 & most of series 2.

As well as this, establishing shots and short film sequences were also shot at various medieval buildings in the UK including: Allington Castle in Kent, this was used to establish Fitzwalter Castle, Marian's home in the series, Painshill Park, near Cobham, Saltwood Castle in Hythe, and Pencoed Castle near Magor in Monmouthshire. Three Northumberland sites were used: Alnwick Castle, Lindisfarne Castle, and Warkworth Castle. Some of the other sites used through the series were Bodiam Castle in East Sussex, Leith Hill near Dorking, Framlingham Castle in Suffolk, Newark Priory near Ripley, Castle Mill in Dorking, and Newark Mill.

Crew

 * Directors of Photography – Gerald Gibbs (series 1), Ken Hodges (series 1–4), Ernest Palmer (series 2), Michael Reed (series 2–3), Ian Craig (series 4)
 * Camera Operators – Noel Rowland (series 1–4), Eric Williams (series 4)
 * Art Directors – Peter Proud (series 1), John Blezard (series 2–4), Peter Mullins (series 2–3)
 * Production Designer – Peter Proud (series 2)
 * Art Supervisor – William Kellner (series 2)
 * Assistant Director – Christopher Noble
 * Sound – H.P. Pearson
 * Film Editors – Bill Lewthwaite, Peter Seabourne, Harry Booth, Inman Hunter, and Thelma Connell (series 1), Joan Warwick (series 2–4), David Hawkins (series 2), Lee Doig (series 3–4), Peter Rolfe Johnson (series 4), Richard Sidwell (series 4)
 * Dubbing Editors – Harry Booth and Michael Deeley (series 1), Freddie Cook (series 2)
 * Supervising Film Editors – Thelma Connell (series 1–2), Maurice Rootes (series 2)
 * Continuity – Joanna Busby/Barbara Thomas (series 1) Olga Marshall (series 2)
 * Make-Up Supervisor – Walter Schneiderman
 * Hairdressers – Eileen Bates (series 1–2), Bill Griffiths (series 1), Betty Sheriff (series 2)
 * Wardrobe Supervisor – Brenda Gardner
 * Script Editors – Albert G. Ruben (series 1–3), Kathryn Dawes (series 2), Peggy Phillips (series 2–3), Raymond Bowers (series 4)
 * Production Supervisor/Manager – George Mills (series 1), Harold Buck (series 1–4)
 * Assistant Producer – John C. George
 * Production Associate – Richard Greene (series 4)
 * Associate Producer – Thelma Connell (series 2–4)
 * Producer – Sidney Cole (series 1–4, credited as Associate Producer on series 1)
 * Executive Producer – Hannah Weinstein

Music
Each episode in the first two series started with a country scene of faux everyday life in Olde England, during which an introductory poem in rhymed cadence was intoned in voice-over, to the tune of the English folksong "Early One Morning", which derives from a much later period than that in which the series is set. Each poem was a humorous summary vignette of what could be expected in the episode. In the first-run CBS-sponsored screenings in the US, an actor portraying the Minstrel would use the same melody before the final fade to black before the end credits, letting viewers know that the sponsor "now begs a word with you".

"Sumer Is Icumen In", an English ballad actually sung in the 12th century, is featured throughout the series. At times it is heard as background music at parties. In "The Betrothal", Sir Richard's son plays it on his flute while his betrothed sings it. In the episode "Carlotta", Little John sings it to his sweetheart. In "The Path of True Love", Marian sings it to stall Sir Charles. In one of its most prominent uses, Robin forces a group of soldiers to sing it. It's worth noting that this melody was whistled by Little John before his first meeting with Robin in the Hollywood feature film The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

The Merry Men perform the soul cake song in "The Thorkil Ghost", with Derwent singing a solo.

"All Around My Hat (song)", a song of nineteenth-century English origin, features very prominently in the plot of the episode "The Prisoner". It is claimed to be a favourite song of the crusading King Richard and is continually sung by the king's courier who has been secretly imprisoned in Prince John's dungeon. The tune is so charismatic that a dungeon jailer sings it while drinking at a tavern and is overheard by Robin Hood, thus alerting Robin to the courier's fate.

The episode "The Haunted Mill" features a song supposedly sung by the Baker's guild.

The episode "The Minstrel" featured two songs, one wishing for the speedy return of King Richard, and one lampooning the sheriff of Nottingham.

Closing theme song
Carl Sigman wrote the words and music for the theme song, which was sung by Dick James. The song is still fondly remembered: Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Riding through the glen

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, With his band of men

Feared by the bad, Loved by the good

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood

He called the greatest archers to a tavern on the green

They vowed to help the people of the king

They handled all the trouble on the English country scene

And still found plenty of time to sing

[Chorus (1st paragraph) repeat]

In 1956 the theme song was released on Parlophone records by Dick James with Stephen James and his chums and Ron Goodwin's Orchestra and reached number 14 in the UK charts (78rpm single:R.4117/45rpm single:MSP6199), and by Pye Records as a 78rpm single by Gary Miller with Tony Osbourne orchestra and the Beryl Stott chorus (PYE N.15020) and reached number 10 on the UK charts. Versions by Frankie Laine (CBS Coronet), Nelson Riddle and his Orchestra (Capitol), Alan Dale (Coral), Joe Reisman's orchestra and chorus (RCA Victor), and Ronnie Ronalde (Colombia) were also issued. These versions had extended lyrics, with five verses and the chorus repeated six times. The sound effect at the start of the theme tune, of an arrow being fired into a tree, was produced by record producer Joe Meek, who was also the recording engineer on the Gary Miller version.

This song was parodied many years later on the 1970s TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus, in their Dennis Moore sketch, which depicted a masked highwayman from the 18th century (intended to mimic in appearance the real life highwayman Dick Turpin) stealing lupins (parodied as "... He steals from the poor, Gives to the rich, Stupid bitch!"). It's also played at every Nottingham Forest home match. The song, the titles, and the whole show were also parodied in the Hancock's Half Hour television episode "Ericson the Viking" in 1958, where Sid James talks Hancock into appearing in an on-the-cheap historical drama, "Ericson, Ericson, Ericson the Good: Ericson, Ericson, nipping through the wood...ole!"

"Robin des Bois" was the theme recorded for the French TV market. Sung in French, it can be heard on the 3rd series episode "Farewell to Tuck" released by Network on DVD. The series was first broadcast in France as "Aventures dans la Foret de Sherwood" in 1965 on ORTF. Other countries to broadcast the series included Canada in 1955–1958 on CBOT, Toronto, and CKCO, Kitchener, Ontario; Australia in 1956–1961 on HSV7 (The Seven Network); Finland in 1964 on NORDEEZE; the Netherlands in 1965/66 on AVRO; and Germany between 1971 and 1974 on ARD.

First series episodes also exist with a variant downbeat instrumental end theme by Edwin Astley, which can be heard on the episode "The Highlander" released by Network DVD.

Artistic details
Art director Peter Proud, an expert at wartime camouflage, hit on the idea of putting many props on wheels to facilitate quick set changes, since one 26-minute episode was shot every four and a half days. The show boasted "140 set pieces (baronial fireplaces, staircases, stone walls, entrance halls, and the like)". There was some outdoor location filming, mainly involving horse-riding doubles and stuntmen, and without dialogue recording. Sets were designed from parchments and sketches from the British Museum, and modelled on the castles of Harlech, Farleigh, and Framlingham. Some of the 100 soldiers who manned the battlements of Nottingham Castle were miniature toy soldiers.

Sponsorship
In the US the original CBS syndication prints had a few variants to the original UK prints. After the brief title sequence the US prints would repeat this sequence but with "Brought to You By" and after the arrow strikes the tree the sponsor's name "Wildroot Cream-Oil" superimposed, "Johnson & Johnson" sponsored episodes had a voice-over over the opening titles "Richard Greene in The Adventures of Robin Hood" and over the repeated sequence "presented by" followed by the names of two Johnson & Johnson products, images of which would appear over the shot of the arrow in the tree. A commercial featuring one of the products would then be shown, the Wildroot Cream-Oil sponsored episodes would then feature an animated commercial showing a Robin Hood–type figure with lank hair and a dinosaur. A Minstrel song would then be sung at the beginning of each episode, over the episode title, providing a playful poetic synopsis in short prose of what could be expected to be seen. After the final fade to black a sequence featuring an actor playing the Minstrel would be shown as he sang these lyrics to the tune of "Early One Morning": "We'll have the merry time again with Robin and his Merry Men and the folk who'll bring him to you then now beg a word with you", followed by a commercial for the next week's sponsor before the end titles would be shown (Wildroot Cream Oil and Johnson & Johnson sponsored alternate episodes), the end credits start with the opening sequence, with Sandy Becker mentioning the sponsor's name again, and the sponsor's product appearing on screen through the end titles which are shown over the shot of the tree. This caption also appeared: "This film was flown to the USA via Pan American World Airways". The opening minstrel tunes were also sung to the tune of 'Early One Morning'. There were two sponsors of the CBS syndicated screenings, Wildroot Cream-Oil (a hair tonic company), and Johnson & Johnson (known in the UK and US for its baby powder). The commercials involved "within" the episodes appeared originally on all three Seasons broadcast at 7.30pm (eastern standard time) /6.30pm (central standard time) Monday nights on CBS (not series 4).

Alternative title captions appear over the opening sequence on some US prints. Instead of "Richard Greene in The Adventures of Robin Hood" they state "Richard Greene plays Robin Hood – Adventures in Sherwood Forest". This practice occurred because of an FCC rule demanding that reruns of a series be retitled for syndication packaging if aired while first-run episodes of the series were still being shown on one of the three major networks.

Alternative US end credit titles crediting the series as "A Hannah Weinstein Production for Sapphire Films Limited" (and for later episodes from 1958 "A Hannah Fisher Production") also exist.

In the UK, at the time, sponsorship of programmes was not allowed and each episode had one commercial break in the middle.

Influence
The series was an immediate hit on both sides of the Atlantic, drawing 32,000,000 viewers per week. Sapphire films were commissioned to make four other series by Lew Grade: The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956/57, broadcast by NBC on Monday nights at 8.00 pm), The Buccaneers (1956/57, broadcast by CBS on Saturday nights at 7.30 pm), Sword of Freedom (1957/58), and The Four Just Men (1958/59). The success of these inspired other historic drama series from ITC like The Adventures of William Tell, Sir Francis Drake, The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel, The Count of Monte Cristo. ITC continued to make and sell TV series to the US until the late 1970s, including The Saint and The Muppet Show.

Products
Many licensed products and knockoffs were sold, including books, jigsaw puzzles, iron-on patches, toy bows and arrows, a series of bubble gum cards, and more. The "Robin Hood" shoe brand sporting Richard Greene's likeness on the interior heel lasted long after the series stopped production. Magazine Enterprises featured Richard Greene photos on three Robin Hood comic books. Robin and Marian made the cover of TV Guide in the Week of 12–18 May 1956.

DVD
In Region 1, Mill Creek Entertainment has released all 4 seasons on DVD. They have also released a complete series set featuring all 143 episodes of the series. Alpha Video has released 22 single volume collections of the series, featuring various episodes.

In Region 2, Network DVD has released all 4 seasons on DVD in the UK. Three DVD boxsets of the series have also been released in Germany by KNM Home Entertainment as "Die Abenteuer Von Robin Hood" with German-language soundtracks in 2009.

Compilation episodes
In the early 1990s, in the wake of the Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, three movie-length compilation features (approx. 90 min. each) were created from the series by producers Philip May & Joseph Shields, through editing and computer-colourizing parts of the various episodes, though not necessarily in chronological order. These were as follows:
 * Robin Hood: The Movie (1991), featuring edited material from episodes: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 27. Notably, Will Scatlock who dies at the end of episode 2 in the series (thereby transferring the outlaw leadership to Robin Hood), is not killed until the end of the 90 min feature.
 * Robin Hood's Greatest Adventures (1991)
 * Robin Hood: Quest for the Crown (1991)

Film
Sidney Cole and Richard Greene produced the feature film Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), for Hammer Film Productions (in association with Yeoman Films), directed by Terence Fisher, written by Alan Hackney, director of photography was Ken Hodges, and the film editor was Lee Doig, all TV series alumni. Richard Greene starred as Robin Hood with Peter Cushing as the Sheriff of Nottingham; blonde-haired Sarah Branch played Maid Marian with Nigel Green as Little John, Jack Gwillim as Archbishop Hubert Walter, and Richard Pasco as Edward, Earl of Newark. Oliver Reed also had a small role. It was filmed in colour and in a widescreen process referred to as "Megascope" on the opening titles. The film itself was a retelling of how Robin first met Marion.