Treasure Island **** (1950, Bobby Driscoll, Robert Newton, Finlay Currie, Basil Sydney) – Classic Movie Review 2058

Ah, ha, Jim lad! The inimitable, or very imitable, Robert Newton is an absolute knockout in the 1950 adventure film Treasure Island as the best-ever eccentric pirate captain Long John Silver. Go on, Talk Like a Pirate! 

Ah, ha, Jim lad! The inimitable, or very imitable, Robert Newton is an absolute knockout in the 1950 adventure film Treasure Island as the best-ever eccentric pirate captain Long John Silver, hamming it up with the greatest possible style as the roguish buccaneer on his swashbuckling treasure seeking adventures.

Shot in England, Treasure Island is Walt Disney Productions’ first completely live-action film and the first screen version of Treasure Island made in colour. Its success prompted Disney to follow it up in England with three more costume adventure tales, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Sword and the Rose and Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue, all starring Richard Todd.

Following the tale from Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 classic adventure novel, Squire Trelawney, Doctor Livesey and young Jim Hawkins set sail on a chartered ship to a Caribbean island to try to find treasure buried by the buccaneer Captain Flint, after Jim ends up with a treasure map when two pirates visit sickly Captain William Bones, who has been given the map along with a note marked with the black spot. Before the voyage, Trelawney meets dodgy one-legged innkeeper Long John Silver, who agrees to gather a crew, befriends Jim and joins the expedition as the ship’s cook.

As Silver, Newton wins gold, and effortlessly lords it over the rest of the highly capable crew in director Byron Haskin’s plush and enjoyable 1950 Technicolor remake of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic 1883 tale of piracy on the high-seas from Walt Disney Productions. And, though out of place as the only American in the film, young Bobby Driscoll proves ideal as his cabin boy Jim Hawkins aboard Captain Smollett’s good ship Hispaniola.

Among the wonderful, memorable eccentric character actors cast here are Finlay Currie (as Captain Billy Bones), Basil Sydney (Captain Smollett), Walter Fitzgerald (Squire Trelawney), Denis O’Dea (Doctor Livesey), Geoffrey Wilkinson (Ben Gunn), Ralph Truman (George Merry), Geoffrey Keen (Israel Hands), Francis de Wolff (Black Dog), Patrick Troughton (Roach) and John Laurie as Blind Pew.

Also in the cast are David Davies as Mr Arrow, John Gregson as Redruth, Andrew Blackett as Gray, William Devlin as Morgan, Howard Douglas as Williams, Harry Locke as Haggott, Sam Kydd as Cady, Stephen Jack as Job, Harold Jamieson as Scully, and Diarmuid Kelly as Bolen.

This splendidly boisterous adventure movie is otherwise inferior to the classic 1934 MGM version of Treasure Island with Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper, but not by too much. It’s a boys’ own movie with no women at all.

The Disney studio started its first completely live-action movie when postwar UK restrictions stopped them from transferring profits from their cartoons out of Britain. Rather than set up a new animation studio, they used the cartoon profits and existing facilities to produce a conventional movie, filming it entirely in England, and not in the West Indies. It was shot on English locations in Cornwall (River Fal, Falmouth, Carrick Roads, Gull Rock and Helford River), Devon (cliff scenes), Bristol (wharf), and Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, and at Denham Film Studios, Buckinghamshire, for the interiors.

There was drama behind the camera too. American kid Driscoll could get only a three-month work permit in England so all his scenes were filmed first, out of continuity to complete his role in time, with most of the long shots of Jim Hawkins actually Driscoll’s British double. When it was discovered during production that Driscoll did not have a valid British work permit, his family and Walt Disney Productions were fined and Driscoll and his parents were ordered to leave the country, but they were allowed to remain for six weeks to prepare an appeal, giving Haskin time to shoot all Driscoll’s close-ups. Driscoll and his parents left for California and the British double then filmed the missing location scenes.

Sequel: Long John Silver (1954), a non-Disney sequel also with Newton and directed by Haskin, followed by an Australian TV series called The Adventures of Long John Silver of 26 episodes in 1955 with the same stars and cast, made before Australia had TV at Pagewood Studios, Sydney.

Remakes: Treasure Island (1972) with Orson Welles making a 10-course banquet of Long John Silver; and again in 1990 as Treasure Island, with Charlton Heston, Christian Bale and Oliver Reed.

Eddie Izzard plays Long John Silver in the 2012 TV movie Treasure Island and Tim Curry plays him in Muppet Treasure Island (1996).

Newton also plays a pirate in Blackbeard, the Pirate (1952).

The 1954 modern-day American film Return to Treasure Island stars Tab Hunter and Dawn Addams.

The uncut version runs 96 minutes, but Disney Productions cut the film by nine minutes to receive a G rating when they re-released the film to US cinemas in 1975, as Disney had a G-only policy at the time. This made it one of the first films to be re-released in cinemas after being shown on TV.

Treasure Island is directed by Byron Haskin, runs 96 minutes, is made by Walt Disney Productions, is released by RKO Radio Pictures, is written by Lawrence Edward Watkin, based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, is shot by in Technicolor Freddie Young, is produced by Walt Disney and Perce Pearce, is scored by Clifton Parker and is designed by Thomas N Morahan.

Its world premiere was in London on 22 June 1950 and its US release on 29 July 1950.

It was an international hit. Costing $1,800,000, it took $4,100,000 in worldwide cinema rentals.

Newton became the standard for screen portrayals of historical pirates, and his exaggeration of his own English West Country accent made popular the stereotypical pirate accent parodied in the 1950s and 1960s by British comedian Tony Hancock. Newton, renowned for his hard-living lifestyle and cited as a role model by Oliver Reed and Keith Moon, has become the patron saint of the annual International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Cap’n Slappy and Ol’ Chumbucket, founders of Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Talk Like a Pirate Day was created in 1995 by John Baur (Ol’ Chumbucket) and Mark Summers (Cap’n Slappy), of Albany, Oregon, proclaiming September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate, greeting friends with ‘Ahoy, maties!’ or ‘Ahoy, me hearties!’

Treasure Island films: Treasure Island (1918), Treasure Island (1920), Treasure Island (1934), The Secret of Treasure Island (1938), Treasure Island (1950), Long John Silver (1954), Return to Treasure Island (1954), Between God, the Devil and a Winchester (1968 spaghetti western), Franco, Ciccio e il pirata Barbanera (1969), Animal Treasure Island (1971), Treasure Island (1972, live-action), Treasure Island (1973, animated), The Treasure Planet (1982), Treasure Island (1982), Treasure Island (1985), Treasure Island (1987), Treasure Island (1988), Treasure Island (1990), Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Treasure Island (1999), Treasure Planet (2002), Pirates of Treasure Island (2006), Doraemon the Movie: Nobita’s Treasure Island (2018).

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2058

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