One of the greatest pirate stories of all time – “Treasure Island” – was transformed into a live-action, full-color film in 1950, more than 70 years ago now. The movie was released by Walt Disney Productions. (It was the studio’s first venture outside its specialty area of animation.)
The film was based on the book written by the Robert Lewis Stevenson of Edinburgh, Scotland. To promote the movie, Disney’s publicist hyped “musket-roaring action” and the “skullduggery of the wily, one-legged pirate Long John Silver.”
Trina S. Rhodes of North Aurora, Ill., a professional pirate reenactor, storyteller, author and consultant to the entertainment industry on “pirate heritage and culture,” said that “Treasure Island” is the “most famous pirate story every written, and the most famous pirate in it, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is Long John Silver.”
Many agree that actor Robert Guy Newton’s performance as Long John Silver, who hobbled on a single crutch with his parrot Capt. Flint perched on his shoulder, is a cinema classic.
Kat Eschner of Smithsonian.com said Newton created “the way that many film and TV pirates would speak (with a distinctive accent).
Michael Almereyda of The New York Times wrote that Newton had a huge screen presence, and “as Long John Silver, he seemed convincingly possessed of a lifetime’s worth of rum-soaked, roguish scheming.”
Robert Newton was born in 1905, in Shaftesbury, Dorset, England, a place that was the origin of many real pirates. He became a stage actor at age 16.
During World War II, Newton served with the Royal Navy (while in his mid-30s), aboard a minesweeper that provided escort service for several Russian convoys.
In the post-war era,
Newton moved on to motion pictures. After “Treasure Island,” Newton was cast in
the starring role in the 1952 release of “Blackbeard the Pirate,” which movie
critic Sam Moffitt described as a “real pirate movie.”
“Here in ‘Blackbeard the Pirate,’ we get Newton at full strength, walking on both legs with his bizarre mannerisms at full throttle,” Moffitt said. “There is a phrase used to describe over-the-top acting – ‘chewing the scenery.’ Newton not only chewed up the scenery; he digested it….”
Newton did not invent the pirate word “arrrr” (also pronounced as “yarrrr” and “arrrrg”), but he did perfect it, according to The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (Ind.). The expression was used by pirates when responding in the affirmative or when expressing excitement.
The North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, N.C., is a good source for more information about Newton and other “Golden Pirates of the Silver Screen.” Newton’s acting career was cut short by chronic alcoholism, which led to his death from a heart attack in Beverly Hills, Calif., in 1956 at age 50.
Newton has been memorialized as the “patron saint” by The Pirate Guys, LLC, of Albany, Ore., who created “Talk Like a Pirate Day.” When in character, Mark Summers goes by “Cap’n Slappy,” and his pal John Baur is known as “Ol’ Chumbucket.”
They came up with their whimsical idea in 1995 and selected Sept. 19 for the annual observance. Now, “Talk Like a Pirate Day” is celebrated internationally, thanks to residual publicity generated by an endorsement from syndicated columnist Dave Berry in 2002.
Get in touch with The Pirate Guys through (Mrs. Chumbucket) Tori Baur, a.k.a. “Mad Sally,” at talklikeapirate.com.
Here's a file photo from the Beaufort Pirate Invasion archives:
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