COMICS, OLD-TIME RADIO and OTHER COOL STUFF: Random Thoughts about pre-digital Pop Culture, covering subjects such as pulp fiction, B-movies, comic strips, comic books and old-time radio. WRITTEN BY TIM DEFOREST. EDITED BY MELVIN THE VELOCIRAPTOR. New content published every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday.
A couple of weeks ago, we took a look at a Robert E. Howard story that was unpublished in his lifetime, despite being quite good. Today, we'll look at another one--"The Isle of Pirate's Doom," a novella REH wrote in 1928. It eventually popped up in various paperbacks. Nowadays, we're living in an REH Renaissance, where most if not all of his stuff can be found online or in various reprints.
cover art by Ken Kelly
(This reprinted two Black Vulmea stories along with "The Isle of Pirate's Doom)
The narrator of the story is a shipwrecked sailor named Stephen Harmer. He's been alone on a remote island for a time when a boat full of pirates lands nearby.
One of those pirates is the beautiful Helen Tavrel, who is only 20-years-old, but has already built up quite a reputation as a freebooter.
art by Bill Cavalier
As Harmer hides nearby, he sees that Helen is having a rather violent disagreement with the other pirates. Shenanigans ensue. Several of the pirates end up dead, while Harmer and Helen team up. At first, they don't get along as Harmer seriously disapproves of pirates. Eventually, they begin to warm towards each other.
The story, in the meantime, moves from the island jungle through a swamp into an ancient temple in which legend says a fortune in jewels is hidden. Sword fights, poison snakes and booby traps quickly follow.
It's a fun story that seems to be leading up to a lovey-dovey ending between Harmer and Helen, but REH throws in a bit of a twist, implying he might have instead tossed the two into more pirate adventures rather than a wedding chapel had this first story sold.
Helen isn't quite as epic as Belit, Valeria, or Red Sonya, but she's still pretty cool. "The Isle of Pirate's Doom" is a fun tale. You can find it online HERE.
Soldiers of Fortune (published by the American Comics Group) began its twelve-issue run with the March-April 1951 issue. For most of its run, it featured two modern-day adventurers (Ace Carter and Lance Larsen), as well as a pirate known as Captain Crossbones. By the time it ended its run, the comic had morphed into a war comic--probably in response to the beginning of the Korean War.
It's the first Captain Crossbones story that we'll be looking at today, because... well, because pirates are nearly as cool as dinosaurs and original Star Trek. Not quite--but close.
We don't know who wrote this story, though we do know the art was by Sheldon Moldoff. The tale recounts the origins of Captain Crossbones. He begins life as a young apprentice named Tom Rutherford, who runs away from his cruel master and stows away on a boat.
But his romantic notions of life on sea are soon squashed. Once he's found, the captain puts him to work scrubbing the decks. The other sailors haze him and when he fights back, one of them burns the image of the royal seal onto his arm. The sadistic sailor had no reason for using the royal seal other than it was handy and it was a way to cause Tom pain.
The captain punishes the sailor, but further feuding is put on hold when the ship is attacked by the notorious pirate Red Rover. Tom's ship is captured, but he's spared from walking the plank when the captain runs a bold bluff, telling Red Rover that Tom was a member of the royal family and had a mark on his arm to prove it. Tom, in other words, is worth a fortune in ransom.
The bluff works and Red Rover holds Tom prisoner rather than kill him.
The story is a little weak here. Tom spends several years on the pirate ship, learning the trade and growing an Errol Flynn mustache to remind us that swashbuckling is in his future.
Why Red Rover never sought to ransom him and how Tom was able to avoid committing atrocities along with the rest of the crew is never explained. He's just suddenly an adult with some wicked fencing skills.
Things finally come to a head when the beautiful Lady Nancy is captured by the pirates. Tom kills a pirate to defend her. Tom is tied to the mainmast as punishment, with the intent of eventually whipping him to death.
But a sympathetic pirate named Duke lets Tom free. What follows is a duel to the death with the Red Rover, then Duke using a cannon full of grape shot to subdue the rest of the crew. Tom, taking the name of Captain Crossbones, is now in charge.
Lady Nancy and Tom have, of course, fallen in love. But he's a pirate now whether he wants to be or not, so he sends her away in a boat.
It's a fun story despite some weakness in the middle act. It moves along briskly, gives us heroes to like and villains to hate, and Moldoff's art is strong. We may visit again with Captain Crossbones at some point.
EC's tragically short-lived series titled Piracy wasn't always about traditional pirates and often swerved off into other sorts of sea-going adventures. But that's okay, because (like so many of EC's series from the 1950s) it was packed full of superb stories.
And there were more than enough traditional pirates to satisfy our collective urge to read about them. The first story in the premiere issue (October-November 1954), for instance, is an excellent pirate tale.
The story is titled "The Privateer" and is drawn by the great Reed Crandall. Of course, there is a fine legal distinction between a pirate and a privateer--since the privateer has official permission from a specific government to attack enemy ships and keep a share of any loot captured.
But Captain Ballard, the main character of the story, veers away from legal piracy. He's licenced by the by the English to attack Spanish ships. He's a tad ruthless about it, but more or less sticks to the rules at first.
But, by golly, there's money to be made, isn't there? The narration in the story begins to refer to Ballard's rapid descent into piracy as his education. This is a nice touch, giving both structure and a dry humor to the tale.
When a few weeks go by without sighting a Spanish ship, Ballard attacks a neutral French ship.
Ballard realizes that, as long as he doesn't leave any witnesses, he's free to attack just about any ships he wishes. So his education continues as he captures ships from many nations, including British, and loots a few ports. His wealth continues to grow as he makes plans to hide most of it and tell the British authorities that he actually captured a much smaller amount. Thus he avoid having to pay his agreed upon percentage of all his loot to the British authorities.
But, as the story points out, Ballard's education is completed when he attacks three apparently unarmed merchant ships, only to discover that the ships are actually heavily armed pirates.
So Ballard learns--a little too late--that it doesn't pay to try to out-pirate other pirates.
Crandall's art turning a pretty good script into great story. It was a strong start to what really was a fantastic comic book. That Piracy only ran seven issues really is tragic.
Next week, it's back to visit with Cave Girl again.
Actually, if you are any sort of bad guy, you shouldn't mess with Tarzan. In 1951, writer Dick Van Buren and artist Bob Lubbers (who is excellent and should be better remembered than he is) showed us that this bit of wisdom particularly applies to pirates.
It begins with Tarzan on a small boat, trying to get back to mainland Africa after having an adventure on an island. He sees a ship, which would normally be a good thing. But this particular ship is a pirate vessel, commanded by a sadistic captain named Aved. Aved's second in command is a brutal Englishman called by the unoriginal name of Limey.
The pirates suspect Tarzan of working for a local trader named Philip Toll--someone the pirates have been robbing blind recently. They string the Ape Man up by his thumbs, but Tarzan works loose and we are treated to a very well-choreographed fight scene. Tarzan keeps moving, employing hit-and-run tactics against the pirate crew and pulling off a Douglas Fairbanks inspired rip-down-the-sail-with-his-knife manuever.
Tarzan eventually jumps over the side. He fakes getting hit when shot at and manages to get away, eventually making it to shore. Here, he meets Philip Toll, the trader whose life is being made miserable by the pirates.
So far, its been a fun, fast-paced adventure, highlighted by Lubbers' kinetic and detailed art work, highlighting Tarzan's skill and cleverness when fighting as an individual.
The next sequence, though, is something that makes this particular story arc stand out for me. We are reminded that Tarzan isn't always a lone hero. When the situation calls for it, he is a more-than-capable leader and a brilliant tactician. (Leading the Wazari against slave traders in The Return of Tarzan comes to mind as an excellent example of this from the original novels.)
Tarzan comes up with a plan to equip Toll's ship with a ram. They sail out to fight the pirates, discovering that Aved actually has two ships now. The ram, followed by a boarding party, takes out one ship and removes Limey from consideration. But Aved's ship sails into a cove protected by cannon.
Toll thinks they are stalemated. But Tarzan, of course, has a clever plan. Half the men in Toll's crew can be floated ashore in barrels. Tarzan will lead the others ashore, swimming underwater while using reeds as snorkels. This will get everyone past the cannon and allow for a two-pronged sneak attack.
Though there are a few tense moments when Tarzan's group is outnumbered while waiting for the other group to show up, but in the end the pirates are overwhelmed.
The story arc ends with a Tarzan vs. Aved sword duel, made interesting by the fact that as skilled in hand-to-hand combat as Tarzan is, he's not a trained fencer. Aved is. But Tarzan muscles through the fight and brings Aved's piratical career to an abrupt end.
Tarzan often is a lone hero and that's fine--he's well-qualified for that role. But one of his important character traits is his ability to act as a leader of men and come up with clever, innovative tactics to win a battle. Van Buren and Lubbers were well aware of this when they gave us this particular story arc. Both script and art come together to give us an exciting adventure in which we are reminded that Tarzan can outsmart us all as well as outfight any of us.
Next week, it's back to the Lost Valley for another visit with Turok and Andar.
Captain Trent, who has just been hired to command the space freighter Yarrow, comes from a long line of space captains--and before that sea captains. Swashbuckling seems to be genetically encoded in his family line.
And, by golly, he'll need to buckle quite a few swashes. The Yarrow is going to attempt to reopen trade with a group of planets who have been plagued with space piracy so intense that interplanetary trade has pretty much shut down.
This is the premise of Space Captain, by Murray Leinster. It was first serialized as Killer Ship in the October and December issues of Amazing Stories magazine in 1965, then reprinted as an Ace Double in 1966.
The novel is enormously fun, following along after Captain Trent as he plots for ways to use his unarmed ship to fight armed pirate vessels. The story can be very roughly divided into three acts. Act One has Trent damaging a pirate ship and forcing it to retreat by just ramming it.
Though the Yarrow itself is unarmed, Trent has acquired small arms, explosives and gas bombs for his crew. So Act Two involves luring some pirates aboard a derelict space ship, then ambushing them. The pirate ship itself gets away, but Trent is able to bring a number of prisoners to a nearby planet.
This rare victory against the pirates who have been shutting down the economies of a number of planets brings Trent notoriety. It also generates an attitude that the pirate threat is abating, so a number of merchant ships decide to lift off to sell badly needed goods on other planets at high prices.
No one listens to Trent when he tries to tell them that the danger definitely isn't over. Ships are captured and people (including a young lady Trent had taken a liking to) are taken hostage. The pirates demand a prisoner exchange, threatening to kill ten hostages for any captured pirate who is executed.
That brings us to Act Three. Trent figures out where the pirate base is and takes his ship there. Remember that the Yarrow isn't armed, so a ground assault will be necessary to wipe out the pirates and rescue hostages.
Trent is a great character--a capable man who thinks out problems and comes up with logical plans. He earns his victories, doesn't take any guff from anyone, and is determined to do his job well. When he believes that the pirates have killed someone he felt responsible for, that cold determination is combined with a cold but furious desire for revenge.
Leinster also does a fine job of reminding us of the strangeness and enormity of outer space and gives us a vivid description of the volcano-strewn planet on which the pirates are hiding. This story generates an atmosphere that makes it easy for us to accept that its taking place in deep space and on alien worlds.
There's also a wonderful running gag about a device installed on the Yarrow by its owners--a gadget that is supposed to wreck the engines of nearby pirate ships, but instead keeps blowing up whenever it's switched on. The touchy engineer rebuilds it each time, assuring Trent that this time it'll work for sure. Space Captain is Space Opera done right, with the reader taken to far-away stars to battle and out-smart ruthless villains. It does not break any new ground in the genre--it simply takes that genre and shows us how to do it right.
Last week, we looked at a Western that quite properly ignored history to give us a Pat Garrett/Wyatt Earp/Bat Masterson/Buffalo Bill team-up. This week, we'll examine another movie that quite properly ignores history to give us a Blackbeard/Captain Kidd/Henry Morgan/Ann Bonney/Ben Avery team-up.
This one is a comedy--Double Crossbones (1951) starring Donald O'Connor. I think it's a fun film, though I have discovered that O'Connor thought of it as the worst film he ever did.
So I am disagreeing with the star of the picture when I say its worth watching. O'Connor is an assistant shop keeper named Davy, who is unaware that the owner of the shop is illicitly buying stolen goods from pirates. He is also in love with the governor's ward, though too shy and too conscious of his low social status to follow up on this.
We also get a fun bit of slapstick in which he accidentally annoys a ship captain and has to fight a sword vs. broom handle duel.
But when the owner's illegal activities are brought to light, Davy and an old sailor (Will Geer) are arrested along with him. Accused of crimes they didn't commit, but unable to prove their innocence, they make a break for it. Shenanigans ensue--including (of course) the necessity for Davy to sing and dance for money in an inn. Further shenanigans find Davy and his friend mistaken as bloodthirsty pirates. Soon, they are in Tortuga, attending a meeting of the top pirate captains. This is where we get to meet Blackbeard and the other famous captains from Piracy's Golden Age.
By now, Davy is stuck with the task of both proving the Governor of Charleston is a crook in league with the pirates and prevent his lady love from marrying said Governor. The movie manages to strike a nice balance between a sense of real danger and frequent bits of slapstick. O'Connor is typically likable, the girl (played by Helena Carter) is very pretty and the supporting cast (including Charles McGraw and Lon Chaney Jr.) all seem to be having fun hamming it up.
So, yes, I am disagreeing with the star of the film. Perhaps the humor and/or the story didn't click with O'Connor and--admittedly--his song-and-dance number doesn't come close to the awesomeness he gave us in Singin' in the Rain and his other musicals. But Double Crossbones does what it sets out to do--it allows us to spend 81 minutes laughing along with people we like.
During the 1950s, when comic book readers were in-between super-hero crazes, there was a lot of cool stuff published. Arguably, the coolest stuff was being published by EC Comics, who were not shy about experimenting with comics about a wide variety of subjects. Their war stories, in my opinion, represent their best stories. But they produced a lot of other quality stuff as well.
Piracy first saw print in 1954, running for a mere seven issues. Like most EC books, each issue had four 6- to 8-page stories that often used twist endings and were illustrated by some of the best artists in the business.
Most of the tales were set during the Golden Age of Piracy, though there were quite a few set in other time periods. But even those Golden Age stories were often given unusual slants.
Piracy #4 (April-May 1955) leads off with a 7-pager titled "Pirate Master," with art by Reed
Crandall. Here we are introduced to the ruthless, sadistic and aptly named Captain Satan, who captures a merchant ship and puts the crew to death in various cruel ways. He learns that there are a couple of women on the ship as well, though he hasn't personally seen them yet.
What made Captain Satan such a cruel man? Well, he conveniently starts musing on his life story and provides us with a flashback.
At one point, he had been a blacksmith, working hard to provide for his wife and mother-in-law. Every day, he was confronted by the older woman's constant and unending NAGGING! Never satisfied, never happy,she verbally and ruthlessly stripped her son-in-law of any happiness or chance for contentment.
So, when he's shanghaied aboard a pirate ship, he suddenly realizes that he's better off. He's escaped HER at last. So he happily embraces a life of piracy, demonstrating an unmatched cruelty and eventually becoming captain of his own ship.
And now here he is--master of his own fate--a leader of men--with the power of life and death over the two women captives.
Anyone familiar with EC's twist endings knows that poor Captain Satan was doomed at this point. Of course the women turn out to be his long-abandoned wife and mother-in-law. And Mom is still in good practice as an expert nagger. The mere sight and sound of her causes his backbone to melt away and turn him back into the spineless victim he had once been. He doesn't even try to argue as he rows off with his family, followed by the jeers of the men who had feared and respected him mere moments before.
The ending is, perhaps, predictable, but it is fun nonetheless, with Crandall's strong artwork giving the story a much stiffer backbone than its protagonist had.
Sometimes, a movie's entertainment value increases when the actors in it seem to be having fun with their parts. Of course, I don't know that the cast of Buccaneer's Girl (1950) had fun. Maybe they were all completely miserable. But they give the impression that they're having a ball making the film. I prefer to believe this is the case. It's a fun movie.
Philip Friend plays Captain Kingston, who is tasked with finding the famous pirate Baptiste. But Kingston actually is Baptiste.
The situation is a bit convoluted, but the movie does a good job of explaining it. A ruthless merchant named Narbonne (Robert Douglas) employed a pirate named Baptiste to wipe out the competition and gain control of the shipping business in New Orleans. Captain Kingston catches and kills Baptiste, but doesn't tell anyone. Kingston takes Baptiste's name as a secret identity, then starts looting Narbonne's ships and using the proceeds to fund independent cargo ships and hire sailors who had been put out of work by Narbonne's monopoly.
But Kingston isn't the main character. That honor goes to Deborah McCoy (Yvonne De Carlo), a spunky gal who comes to New Orleans to work as a singer.
She's captured by Kingston/Baptiste when the ship on which she has stowed away is taken. She charms the pirate crew, gets on Kingston's nerves, escapes to New Orleans and meets Kingston again. When she has tumbled to his plan, she keeps quiet about what she knows. To the surprise of absolutely no one watching the movie, the two fall in love.
But in the meantime, Narbonne has also figured out what Kingston is doing. He lays a trap to catch the Robin Hood-eque pirate and see him hang. It's lucky for Kingston that he now has a girl friend who is willing to plan a jail break.
De Carlo is almost painfully pretty in this film and she is completely believable as someone who can make her own way in a strange city AND spring her boyfriend from jail when that becomes necessary. She also gets to belt out a few lively songs.
The supporting cast is great. Elsa Lancaster is hilarious as the owner of a sort of charm school that hires out Deborah and other girls to parties for eye candy and entertainment. (The movie's general air of innocence, by the way, helps to avoid implying that the girls do more than this, thus also avoiding any tasteless overtones.) Norman Lloyd is Narbonne's weaselly henchman and Henry Daniell is the head of the New Orleans police. All bring personality to their small roles.
Buccaneer's Girl is a convivial B-movie, made all the more entertaining by a cast that really does seem to be enjoying themselves. I really hope this is true. They earned their fun.
I wrote an article some years ago about the War-of-1812
cruise of the USSEssex, which sailed around the Horn to the Pacific, where it
raided British shipping until it got captured by a Limey warship. The Essex was commanded by Captain David Porter and future Civil
War-era admiral David Farragut served aboard as a midshipman.
That’s why I have an immediate “Hey, that’s cool” reaction
to Yankee Buccaneer (1952), which is about Porter, Farragut and the Essex. Of
course, the movie has no relation at all to reality. It’s set after the war—no
exact year is given, but the Napoleonic Wars (which ended about the same time
as our war with the British) are said to be over. Porter is still commanding the
Essex (which in real life had ben captured by the British) and is stationed in
the Caribbean. Farragut, now a lieutenant, is
freshly assigned on board and brings secret orders with him.
Those orders are a doozy. The Essex
is to strip itself of anything that identifies it as a naval vessel and pretend
to be a pirate, then seek information on where actual pirates are hanging out.
It’s a fun film with a solid premise. Jeff Chandler plays
Porter as a strict man who follows the book. Chandler was pretty much the go-to
guy for this sort of role in the 1950s and does his typically fine job. Scott
Brady plays Farragut as very independent-minded, a trait that regularly puts
him in hot water with Porter.
Farragut is the younger of the two actors and the one who
was probably supposed to make the ladies in the movie theater swoon, so I
appreciate the fact that the movie obviously (and correctly) puts Porter in the
right for staying within orders and within regulations. Farragut risks the ship
during a storm to save a crewman, but the maneuver he orders causes damage to
the rudder and endangers everyone. This gets him in trouble. Porter, unwilling
to risk men repairing the rudder in the water in shark-infested waters, opts to slowly maneuver the
Essex to an island before making those repairs. Farragut tries to make the repairs on
his own and ends up going mano-a-mano with a shark, beating the shark but
failing to fix the rudder. This gets him in more trouble. There’s also an
identification bracelet Farragut wears with the name of one of his former
vessels on it. He keeps it for sentimental reasons even after Porter tells him
to get rid of it, which comes back to bite him in the butt big time, putting
him and the men he’s with in serious danger.
Later, while ashore on an island overseeing re-provisioning,
Farragut unexpectedly meets a beautiful Portuguese Countess. This is unusual
enough in itself. What’s more unusual is that the Countess has a pistol and
forces Farragut to take her aboard the Essex. This gets the poor lieutenant in
even more trouble with Porter.
The Countess, played by a Hubba-Hubba level actress named Suzan
Ball (Lucille Ball's second
cousin), is involved in political shenanigans regarding
Brazilian independence from Portugal, a treasure fleet taking gold from Rio to
London and a dishonest Spanish nobleman who is in league with both the
Portuguese and the pirates that Porter has been looking for.
This all, in turn, leads to a situation in which Farragut
and some of the Essex crew are prisoners of the Spanish and facing torture. Porter—the
man who prides himself on following orders—must now stretch those orders well
past the breaking point when he brings a landing party onto a technically friendly
nation and try to pull off a daring rescue.
It all really is good fun. Joseph Calleia nicely underplays
the main villain (the dishonest Spaniard), giving him an effectively sinister
air. The rest of the cast (particularly Chandler) is quite good as well. It’s a
little disappointing at the end that the Essex doesn’t deal with the actual
pirate fleet they’ve discovered (they head home to sic the rest of the American
navy on them), which means that several secondary villains we’ve met along the
way abruptly disappear from the story. Also, there’s unnecessary montage that
implies both Porter and Farragut are falling for the Countess, but there’s no
follow-up for that. But that second point is a minor quibble and the absence of
a proper resolution for some of the villains doesn’t spoil the rest of the fun.
Yankee Buccaneer is an entertaining pirate film. And, by golly, it is fun to
watch two real-life people I’ve written about team-up again for one more
adventure.
I wanted to include a clip from the movie, but it's owned by Universal, the studio that shoves you to the ground and takes your lunch money whenever you try to post a clip of one of their movies on YouTube. Sorry about that.
The thing about Peter Blood, the hero of Rafael Sabatini's 1922 novel Captain Blood, is that he really couldn't help himself---he was a hero. No matter that the circumstances of his life had forced him to become a pirate. He would continue to act with honor, to show mercy and--when necessary--rescue damsels.
The original novel covered Blood's career from start to finish, but there was plenty of room for some "untold adventures" that took place during his piratical days. So in 1931, Sabatini published Captain Blood Returns (later titled The Chronicle of Captain Blood), giving us ten more tales of daring-do. He would published another anthology of short stories in 1936.
Now remember that Captain Blood is as quick on his feet as he is with a sword--a savvy and skilled commander who out-thinks as well as out-fights his opponents. But he wasn't perfect. Sabatini knew an identifiable protagonist--no matter how capable--needed to screw up on occasion.
That's what happened in "The Expiation of Madame De-Coulevain," the eighth of the ten stories in Chronicles. While Blood's flagship is being careened, he took three smaller craft and forty men to raid Spanish pearl boats. But they are caught by a warship. Blood is the only survivor of the expedition and finds himself floating at sea, clutching to a piece of wreckage.
He's found by a Spanish ship commanded by the boorish Don Juan de la Fuente. Thinking quickly, Blood claims to be a Dutch national and is taken aboard as Don Juan's guest. So now all Peter has to do is pretend to enjoy Don Juan's crude jokes and ribald songs until they put to shore, then find a way to return to his own ship. That shouldn't be too hard.
But first, Don Juan will stop to raid a French port. Blood knows how brutal Spanish soldiers are when looting a town, but there's nothing he can really do about it except grit his teeth and wait until its over.
When Don Juan returns with a woman prisoner, though, the situation changes. Blood can't stand by and allow a woman to be abused. He's going to have to do something about that...
Of course, if a woman is there by choice and doesn't want to be rescued, then that's another matter, isn't it? It's really too bad Peter Blood didn't know that before cracking open Don Juan's skull.
It's odd to call a story involving several instances of brutal violence "delightful," but I can't help it. That's the feeling Sabatini gives to the story--with Blood doing his best to protect a woman and then having to improvise his way out of his troubles when he discovers the whole purpose of the raid was so Don Juan could run off with another man's wife.
All this leads up to the next story in the collection, when Peter runs into more trouble by simply trying to return the woman to her husband.
All ten stories in The Chronicles of Captain Blood are fun. Peter Blood is one of the most consistently entertaining heroes ever created and hanging out with him is always worthwhile. But "The Expiation of Madame De-Coulevain" is arguably the best of the bunch. Backed by Sabatini's always engaging prose, it has Blood making poor judgement calls without forgetting that he's usually the smartest guy in the room, then has him thinking fast on his feet to get himself out of a difficult situation. It is, as I said, a delightful story.
You can access The Chronicles of Captain Blood online HERE.
Rafael Sabatini's novels always depended on his ability to construct smoothly ornate sentences and cool dialogue. So, though silent film is an art form that is perfect for many types of film, it would superficially seem that Sabatini's novels would lose something vital in the translation to the screen. This would be especially true of a novel such as The Sea Hawk. As I wrote last week, it's a novel that depends largely on perfectly constructed conversations between the characters to generate excitement and suspense.
But a silent film depends on title cards, so dialogue has to be pared down to the essentials. So what happens when you produce a faithful version of The Sea Hawk in terms of story and character arcs, but have to leave out a lot of the awesome wordplay? Can it still be a great movie?
Astonishingly, the answer is "yes." Directer Frank Lloyd and screenwriter J.G. Hawks do a magnificent job turning the novel into a film. They are, of course, helped along by Milton Sills' effective portrayal of the film's protagonist. (Walter Anthony, who wrote the inter-titles, also deserves credit.) Sills is great in the title role; remember that acting in the silents meant walking a fine line between being expressive enough to make up for the lack of spoken dialogue AND being subtle enough to be believable. Sills strikes that balance nicely, helping ground the film in a world in which we can believe.
(Sills, by the way, died in 1930, so never got a chance to show what he might have done in the sound era.)
The dialogue is indeed boiled down the the essentials, but the story is kept remarkably intact. Sir Oliver still covers for his brother Lionel when Lionel kills Peter Godolphin. Lionel still double-crosses his brother and sells him into slavery. Oliver still ends up becoming a Barbary pirate chief. Character interactions and motivations are all made clear to us.
Even the plots and counterplots involving Oliver, Asad-ed-Din and Fenzileh are also still there, though one disappointment for anyone familiar with the novel is Fenzileh's reduced presence in the film. She is awesomely villainous in prose, so its too bad she only gets a minute or two of screen time.
But the story as a whole is unharmed by the transition to a new medium--still exciting; still suspenseful. The Sea Hawk is a true epic of a swashbuckler.
Wallace Beery is the sea captain who is hired to kidnap Sir Oliver and who is later forced by circumstances to work for him. Beery was an enormously entertaining actor and he's obviously having fun in his role--perhaps making his character even more memorable than he was in the book.
Enid Bennett (who played Maid Marian in Fairbanks' Robin Hood two years before) is also very good as Rosamund Godolphin. And, by golly, she is pretty enough to make us believe that at least three different male characters want her. What is it about the 1920s that produced such a unique form of classy female prettiness that seems to have since faded away forever?
The film looks great. I'm all for modern CGI in films like the Avengers, which couldn't exist without CGI. But watching real ships crewed by hundreds of real actors and extras will always have its own unique appeal. In fact, the ship combat scenes were so good that some of the footage was used again in 1935's Captain Blood.
16 years after this film was made, with the silents long gone, Warner Brothers would remake The Sea Hawk with Errol Flynn in the starring role. Well, they would sort of remake it. It would have the same title and still be a swashbuckler set during the Elizabethan era. But otherwise, it would be an original story. All the same, we'll take a look at it next week.
The 1940s were a good year for films based on Rafael Sabatini novels that don't really resemble the original novel. 1940 gave us The Sea Hawk, which was a completely original story with a Sabatini title attached to it. Normally, this would be annoying and disappointing, but the film is so much pure fun it takes away your right to complain.
In 1942, 20th Century Fox gave us The Black Swan, with Tyrone Power buckling his swashes as the protagonist. To be fair, there are a few things drawn from the book still here: A villainous pirate named Leech still sails on a ship called the Black Swan. Events still revolve around former pirate Henry Morgan now being a governor with a commission to stamp out piracy. And the hero at one point is forced to claim he's married to the girl he's protecting and improvise a story when captured by Leech.
But where that last event was what really began the story in the novel, it's used instead to set up a completely different climax at the end of the movie. The hero is now rogue-ish ex-pirate Jamie Waring rather than gentlemanly privateer Charles de Bernis and the bulk of the plot is completely original.
But, as with The Sea Hawk, this is just fine. The Black Swan is a movie made up of 110% pure fun. Henry Morgan--supposedly taken back to England to be hanged--shows up back in the Caribbean with a blanket pardon for any pirate who turns honest. Leech and his crew refuses, but Jamie Waring is drunk enough when the offer is made to accept. Soon after, Morgan must send Jamie out after Leech. Along the way, Jamie has fallen in love with Lady Margaret--who looks just like Maureen
O'Hara, so you really can't blame him.
Of course, Jamie's romantic endeavors might be more successful if Lady Margaret didn't loath him and wasn't already engaged to someone else. Then again, her romantic plans might stand a better chance of leading to happiness if the man she's engaged to wasn't selling secret information to Leech.
It's a fine story, backed up by great effects (the ship miniatures were built on a 1-inch to 1-foot scale, making them large enough to look awesomely realistic on camera) and some Oscar-winning cinematography. The movie is one of those few cases where I agree that color was a better choice than black-and-white.
Topping all this off are the performances. Everyone involved seemed to fully embrace the fact that they were in a pirate movie and all of them chewed the scenery magnificently. Tyrone Power, George Sanders (Leech), and Laird Cregar (Morgan) all seem to be trying to outdo each other in being as hammy as possible--but this is a movie where overacting is exactly what was needed to pull the story together. Any subtlety in their performances would have been out-of-place here. It's particularly fun to see George Sanders--who normally played suave, urbane roles--sport a Beard of Manliness while going to town as the crudely evil Leech.
That concludes our two-part look at the book and the movie version of The Black Swan. I think that at some point in the next few months, I'll do the same thing with The Sea Hawk, because one can never have too much swashbuckling in one's life.
I've written three books and a number of short ebooks about old-time radio, pulp magazines, classic comic strips, and Christian theology. You can find a link to my Amazon author's page below.
Magazine articles I've written cover subjects on military history and the American West. I teach several Bible studies at my church, assist with the children's ministry and have been on short-term mission trips to South Sudan, Haiti, Guatemala, Nepal and Turkey.
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