Timbers Unshivered
As a kid I had no idea that pirates, as understood in the shiver-me-timbers / jolly roger sense, were confined to the Caribbean. For some reason I thought they just roamed all over the place, needing no more than water beneath them and wind above. A ship could be sailing along in the middle of the Atlantic, and suddenly, there would be pirates on the horizon. The only pirate we knew was Bluebeard, or Blackbeard, depending on whether you had a color set or not, and the reasons and geopolitical disputes that characterized the golden age of shouting ARR and stabbing people were rather mysterious. All was made clear by Stephen Talty’s “Empire of Blue Waters,” a wonderful account of the life of Henry Morgan. But it had the effect of making you realize that most pirate movies are nonsense.
If you hadn’t suspected that before, that is.
Well: It’s rare I do entries on color movies, unless they’re old childhood sci-fi films for which I have the usual nostalgia-addled regard, but this one is different. It has Laird Cregar as Henry Morgan, which combines two things about which I attained an interest last year. Also, it’s in super-extra-ultracolor. From the before-and-after restoration examples shown in the “Special Features,” it looks like they actually had to desaturate the movie to make it watchable. When it first came out in 1942, people must have felt their eyeballs flatten and their brains smoke from the effort of processing ALL THAT COLOR.
And the film is:
It has virtually nothing to do with the book, from what I understand. But the name “Raphael Sabatini” held rakish & romantic promise for audiences back then, thanks to a fictional creation made famous by Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Yes, Sabatini wrote “Scaramouche.”
Fun fact: Sabatini was born two years after the death of Napoleon III, and died four years after the birth of Freddy Mercury. Yes. 1875-1950. So he saw this movie; wonder what he thought. Here are the less-saturated credits from the trailer:
The heroes – and to imagine the full effect, consider seeing this projected on an enormous screen. They’re almost inhumanly human. These two:
Here’s a shot that shows what I meant about super-extra-ultra color, and remember, this was projected on giant screens:
It gets better:
AAHHHH! Audiences must have leaned back instinctively.
Our hero has a sidekick, whose stout good cheer and slightly comical antics were mirrored in a “Pirates of the Caribbean” character. You know, that one. Can you name him?
I can’t either, but it’s Uncle Billy, the stupid IDIOT who nearly gets George Bailey thrown in jail because he misplaces some money at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
The heroine, who is a Spitfire and a bit of a Hellcat despite her Noble Upbringing, which means she spends the first half of the movie trying to claw Tyrone’s eyes out, and the last fifteen seconds clawing his back:
Of course it’s the Technicolor, and the lighting, but this doesn’t seem to take place on the Planet Earth. More like a Star Trek set. At some point movies trained people to stop accepting this unreal perception of the world; pity.
Then there’s Laird Cregar, whose career I’ve been talking about here once a week. He plays Henry Morgan.
Certainly more true to form than the fellow on the rum bottle.
He’s good – it’s all good, but the whole gallant-pirate routine is a bit old, especially when it begins with what appears to be a nigh-rape of milady. A real pirate movie, without all the supernatural hoo-hah of the silly Disney movies (loved the first, felt immeasurably old and tired after 2nd and 3rd) would be a cracking yarn, but I wonder how well it would do. We need our pirates to have hearts of gold and a code of honor and a Dashing Attitude. I’ll admit they did have a code; the better pirates had laws that specified how much extra pay you’d get if you lost a limb or digit or eyeball in the course of your duties, but these weren’t fun-loving cheerful yo-ho-hearties out for a lark on the bounding seas. These were guys whose main skills included “Stabbing” and “Burning Townspeople with Hot Irons in the Tender Bits” so they could get enough money to keep themselves drunk and whore-happy for a month or two.
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Tyrone has more eye makeup than Mrs. O’Hara!
But Mrs. O’Hara – My birthday is St. Patrick’s Day, so I’ve long held an affinity for the Irish (or phonetically the oy’rish). The Quiet Man with John Wayne being a favorite. Even my 7 and 4 year old girls enjoy it.
Laird Creger – great – loved him in “This Gun For Hire” and especially in “I wake up Screaming”. Always looks creepy, but also as if haunted with a secret sorrow (as I suppose he was – another fat man in the bathtub with the blues).
First picture overlaps right-hand column info by about an inch in Windows Firefox.
Off Topic, but it’s Day One, so…
The Screedblog has the same problem that Bleat 2.0 had. 2 column-miles of whitespace between the banner and the 40-point Arial with the descenders and ascenders in obscene concupiscence… Cool!
Say, when did the Bleat become a real weblog?
Cool digs, but the chasms to either side of the page seems excessive, also, I nearly have to active the vision impaired accessories on the computer to read the page. I might suggest widening the basic columns and making the default font bigger. Otherwise, it looks great!
“so they could get enough money to keep themselves drunk and whore-happy for a month or two.”
Isn’t that every man’s ideal life????
Pirates actually were “all over the place.” The Caribbean was a special hotbed, it’s true, due to the wealth of the Spanish colonies and the Indies trade, but Madagascar was also a major pirate hangout, catering to the needs and comforts of the guys who infested the East Indies trade routes. And there were numerous ethnic pirate operations among the North Africans and the Southeast Asians (and probably others I don’t recall off the top of my head).
All Buzzoids and Bleatards should read “Empire of Blue Water”. I read it on Lileks’ recommendation, and it is a real eye-opener. You’ll never look at Captain Morgan rum (or any pirate movie) the same way again. I “read” it as an audiobook from Audible.com.
HTML critics:
Give it up. Let Lileks obsess over it (once he has time). As he is the “Monk” of bloggers, no imperfections will escape his notice.
Oh, and for “Bleatards” in my previous comment, read “Bleatniks” (much more positive).
Pirate movies (other than Disney fodder) have not done too well during the four decade period of 1960-2000. The best of the lot is “Swashbuckler” (1976) with a hoot of a cast (if a little too smugly aware aware of itself).
When I first scanned past the Laird Cregar pics before reading, I thought, “Ron Jeremy was in a pirate movie?”
Lileks is bigger movie buff than me, but I’ve always viewed color movies in an unusual way.
Let me explain. I’m an old newspaper hand and when I first went to work in the business, we were just beginning to use computers. This allowed us to paginate pages using justified type, which was very difficult on old lithograph machines. However, we could also, easily, use what we is called “ragged right.”
We were the “white space” generation and we loved using ragged right to create new and exciting layouts.
However, our publisher, who had just spent thousands of dollars buying computers to make layout and composition easier — including justified type, which couldn’t be done easily before — hated that we didn’t use the justified type in our columns. So, he sent down an edict that we had to use justified type unless we had his permission.
It’s a bit contradictory, but I tell you this story to tell you this: I’ve always viewed early color movies in the same sense. If you have the ability to use color, then, by God, use it. I think the producers in movies saw the opportunity to use color no matter what, no matter how garish, because it was expensive and it must be used.
To me, that explains “Robin Hood,” with Errol Flynn, in a nutshell.
That’s a great analogy, Keith. And I’ve always been a ragged-right man myself.
Can’t read the rest of the post until I stop and say: A Pogo reference! Which I recognized before reading the explanation! (Also a classic: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”)
What can I say; my dad was a fan. I wonder where his Pogo books are now?
Oh. Duh. Made the comment on the wrong post. Well, I’m still getting used to the new format.
That sidekick/Uncle Billy actor is the great Thomas Mitchell – he won a supporting Oscar for “Stagecoach.” He’s a favorite of mine, particularly good in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “Only Angels Have Wings.” (I love Laird Cregar, too – especially in “Heaven Can Wait.”)
Another book recommendation: “Pirate Freedom” by Gene Wolfe. A totally realistic novel in all its pirate, sailing and societal details, with a Wolfean twist of fantasy – a (very unusual) modern protagonist as the hero. Don’t worry, he just fits right in and never once even *thinks* anachronistically – which is very strange but somehow works. Lots of good plotting too.
Henry Morgan deserves a much more authentic movie to be made of his life. The late George MacDonald Fraser’s “The Hollywood History of the World” comments on Morgan’s remarkable achievement in organizing the largest mercenary fleet in history and basically holding the Spanish at bay in the Caribbean long enough to give England a chance to expand her North American holdings (Morgan, surprisingly, retired fat and happy and very wealthy at the end of a long career of plunder, certainly not the norm in these cases). Fraser also notes that no matter how outrageous a pirate movie might seem, the truth is they just aren’t outrageous ENOUGH to depict the reality!
I love Thomas Mitchell as well. In 1939 alone he appeared in “Stagecoach”, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, “Only Angels Have Wings” AND “Gone With the Wind”. Top that, modern character actors!
As for Maureen O’Hara (*sigh*), I wish the Academy would give her an honorary Oscar while she’s still ambulatory.
Maureen O’Hara is so pretty, but looks, well, odd without red hair. This was very early for her and with all that color bounding around her, I’m surprised she’s the least colorful thing.
As was previously noted, pirates ranged far from the Caribbean.
Blackbeard was among the more (in)famous and he (Edward Teach, a.k.a. Thatch) haunted the waters off the Carolinas. In fact, the island called Topsail Island is named that because the scoundrels could hide their smaller, faster ships behind the island and see the topsails of the fat merchant vessels they preyed on as they passed, “outside”.
Friends of mine have worked on the dive that is recovering the wreckage of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, one of the vessels mentioned here. So there! :]
Pogo hasn’t been *completely* forgotten yet.
Our three kids are fans of the strip; possibly because there were more books than TV around them as they were growing up.
Confuses their friends, sometimes, when they burst into choruses of “Deck Us All Bowwows of Folly” and the like.
Maureen O’Hara is awesome! The Oscars are mostly a Hollywood mutual admiration society, but I too would like to see her honored in some way. BTW, Uncle Billy looks like a Monty Python Gumby. Tyrone Power. Can you say, “Unibrow?”
I guess I’m feeling a little snarky today.
Dang I’m going to have avoid reading the comments if people are going to be recommending books. I have enough on my ‘to read’ list already!