My Romance with Movies: From the 1950s: Treasure Island

1950 Adventure

From Disney

Directed by Byron Haskin

Starring

Bobby Driscoll

Robert Newton

Basil Sydney

Walter Fitzgerald

Denis O'Dea

Ralph Truman

Geoffrey Keen

Geoffrey Wilkinson

John Laurie

Finlay Currie

Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 coming-of-age adventure tale of a young cabin boy, buccaneers and buried gold became Walt Disney's first fully live-action movie.

Young Jim Hawkins (Driscoll) lives and works in his mother's small country inn on the west coast of England. A sickly lodger, Captain Billy Bones (Currie), fearful of dying, shows Jim a map of a site where there is buried gold. They are overheard by a pirate. The captain asks Jim to get a doctor but before the boy runs off to do so, Bones gives him the map.

Jim returns with Dr. Livesy (O'Dea) and Squire Trelawney (Fitzgerald) only to find Captain Bones has died. Jim shows the map to Trelawney who recognizes it as belonging to the late buccaneer, Captain Flint. The squire bankrolls a voyage to Treasure Island to recover the gold. Trelawney hires Captain Smollett (Sydney) and his ship and includes Livesy as the ship's doctor and young Jim as the cabin boy.

A crew is needed and as luck would have it, Trelawney is hoodwinked by one-legged innkeeper Long John Silver (Newton) who agrees to hire a crew and come aboard himself as the ship's cook.

The audience, of course, is aware of the treachery of Silver and his pirate crew but those on the ship are not until Jim overhears the plot to mutiny. Jim reveals the plan to the captain who asks Jim to remain friends with Long John so they can learn more.

Once there in the bay Long John offers to take two rowboats and Jim and some of the crew to tow the ship to safer waters. While doing so, the crew left on board attempts an overthrow but Smollett and a few loyals imprison them. When Long John realizes what has happened, he cuts the lines to the ship, takes Jim prisoner and hightails it to the island.

Once on the island, Jim escapes and meets up with Ben Gunn (Wilkinson) who has been marooned on the island for five years, knows where the treasure is and has built a small boat. He shows Jim a stockade where Smollett and others are located, armed and ready. The fear is that with morning tide Long John could move the ship and its big cannon into firing range and level the stockade.

Jim takes Gunn's small craft out to the ship and cuts the anchor rope but a pirate left on the ship spots Jim and chases him up the rigging. The pirate stabs Jim's arm and Jim shoots him with a small gun Long John had given him earlier.

Jim returns to the stockade but when he finds his friends gone and Long John and some of his men in attendance, he faints. Long John discovers the treasure map inside Jim's shirt.

When they go to the location where the treasure is buried, they discover it empty. Unbeknownst to them, Gunn has moved it to a cave. There is a ruckus and the pirates are killed, some by Long John himself.

The doctor mends Jim and Smollett intends to take Long John back to England to stand trial for mutiny. Jim, Trelawney and a couple of others take the pirate aboard a rowboat with some of the treasure on their way to the ship but Long John takes Jim's small gun and forces all but Jim to get off the boat.

Jim steers the boat onto a sandbar and Long John threatens to shoot him if he doesn't push him away. As Long John prepares to shoot Jim, he drops the gun in the water. Long John then attempts to push the boat off the sandbar but is unable to do it. Jim decides to help him (we know each was always a little captivated by the other) and Long John and some of the treasure rows away.

Aye, matey, the world seemed to be captivated by both of the leading actors as well. No one in the film, convincing as they all were, held a candle to the superior acting of Robert Newton and Bobby Driscoll. There was such anticipation of Disney's first all live-action movie and let me count the times a youngster somewhere in the world picked up a copy of Treasure Island. Seeing the classic story brought to life was a thrill that likely started many youngsters seeing live-action movies.

Word-of-mouth on a number of things kept ticket sales high but nothing more so than these two leads. Kids and adults liked Bobby Driscoll. He was a cute little tyke with just about the most expressive face I've ever seen on a kid. It was a privilege to watch his films. He was the first actor to ever sign on with the company's animation department and certainly one of Disney's first child stars.

For them Driscoll made Song of the South (1946) and So Dear to My Heart (1948) and then elsewhere to make (arguably, perhaps) his best known film, the child-in-peril drama The Window (1949) and back to Disney for this one.

It certainly is Newton who gets the crown for delivering a vivid, eye-popping, brow-raising, ill-kempt, devious, dodgy, exaggeratedly spoken, aggressive performance which seemed to become the template for all future movie pirates. He had already been one of Britain's premier character actors. Few actors inhabited their roles with the cunning of Newton. I'm not sure how he fell into the pirate business, but his creations are simply indelible. He would go on to play Long John Silver twice more. No big surprise. And neither is his turn in the title role of 1952's Blackbeard the Pirate. While perhaps at this point he was pirating with a little wink, it's a performance that's difficult to forget.

American director Byron Haskin loved filming actors in action shots. He certainly had those opportunities here and a whole lot more. Despite the fact that England stood in for the West Indies, it all looked convincing to me.

Speaking of being an American, young Driscoll was the only one in the cast. It didn't sit well with some. But it went further and it caused Walt Disney some angst and he didn't like having angst.

Disney and Newton

When it was discovered that the young actor didn't have a valid British work permit, his family and Walt Disney Productions were fined. The Driscolls were ordered to leave the country but then were allowed to stay six weeks to prepare an appeal. Haskin and his crew had to rearrange their shooting schedule (and to say so long to any continuity) to get all of Driscoll's scenes out of the way.

A young boy isn't going to be reading this but if you know of one and he hasn't seen this flick, he really might enjoy it. Maybe go to a dollar store and get him a feathered pirate hat and perhaps a sword. Come on, let's do this.

Here's a trailer: