The Black Pirate **** (1926, Douglas Fairbanks Sr, Billie Dove, Tempe Pigott, Donald Crisp) – Classic Movie Review 7278

‘THE MOST ROMANTIC ROLE DOUG EVER HAD! A Picture of Extreme Beauty, Full of Action, Thrills and Love’.  In director Albert Parker’s 1926 vintage Douglas Fairbanks Sr silent movie The Black Pirate, the co-writer/ producer /star plays an aristocrat, The Duke of Arnoldo, who joins up with a pirate band as The Black Pirate to avenge the death of his father at the hands of the pirates. They capture a ship but there is a young woman on board.

It is a lovely, lavish, costly production (on an estimated $1,300,000 budget), filmed in glorious two-strip Technicolor, and was the first two-tone Technicolor film to be widely distributed, though co-star Billie Dove had already appeared in a Technicolor film, Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924), impressing Fairbanks, who phoned her and offered her the part. It runs 88 minutes, though the restored version runs 94 minutes.

The primitive double-thick Technicolor prints were two strips of dyed film cemented together and would warp and scratch if screened wrongly, so, because of the cost of printing in Technicolor, the Fairbanks studio also reluctantly issued a black-and-white version.

The famous scene where Fairbanks flies from one ship to another down a silken sail on a rapier blade and captures a ship single-handedly still looks breathtaking today. The incredible stunt is copied in Errol Flynn’s 1952 swashbuckler Against All Flags, but this time it was Flynn’s stuntman who performed the stunt.

Also in the cast are Billie Dove as Princess Isobel, Donald Crisp as MacTavish, Sam de Grasse as Pirate Lieutenant, Anders Randolf as Pirate Captain, Charles Stevens as Powder Man, John Wallace as Peg-Leg Pirate, Fred Becker as Pirate, Charles Belcher as Chief Passenger – Nobleman, E J Ratcliffe as The Governor, Tempe Pigott as Duenna, Barry Norton as Youth and Nino Cochise as Pirate. Nino Cochise was the grandson of the Apache chief Cochise and had appeared in Fairbanks’s Robin Hood (1922).

Mary Pickford makes an uncredited cameo appearance as Princess Isobel in Final Embrace.

Between 1920 and 1929 Douglas Fairbanks Sr embarked on an ambitious series of classic silent costume dramas that made him not just America’s number one star, but the world’s favourite actor.

The Black Pirate is directed by Albert Parker, runs 88 minutes, is made by Elton Corporation, is released by United Artists, is written by Douglas Fairbanks Sr (story) [as Elton Thomas] and Jack Cunningham (adapted by), is shot by Henry Sharp (photographed by), Roy Musgrave (cinematographer: Technicolor) and Ray Rennahan (cinematographer: Technicolor), is produced by Douglas Fairbanks Sr, is scored by Mortimer Wilson, and is designed by Carl Oscar Borg (supervising art director), Edward M Langley and Dwight Franklin (consultant).

Original director Donald Crisp fell out with Fairbanks and was replaced by Parker after a few days’ filming.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7278

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