pirate
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
-
war film
War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about naval, air, or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war fi ...
made by
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...
starring
Yul Brynner
Yuliy Borisovich Briner (russian: link=no, Юлий Борисович Бринер; July 11, 1920 – October 10, 1985), known professionally as Yul Brynner, was a Russian-born actor. He was best known for his portrayal of King Mongkut in the ...
as
Jean Lafitte
Jean Lafitte ( – ) was a French pirate and privateer who operated in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century. He and his older brother Pierre spelled their last name Laffite, but English language documents of the time used "Lafitte". Th ...
,
Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer (; 28 August 1899 – 26 August 1978) was a French-American actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found his success in American fi ...
and
Claire Bloom
Patricia Claire Bloom (born 15 February 1931) is an English actress. She is known for leading roles in plays such as ''A Streetcar Named Desire,'' ''A Doll's House'', and '' Long Day's Journey into Night'', and has starred in nearly sixty film ...
.
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923April 5, 2008) was an American actor and political activist.
As a Hollywood star, he appeared in almost 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film ''The Ten C ...
played a supporting role as
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...
, the second time that Heston played Jackson, having portrayed him earlier in the 1953 film ''
The President's Lady
''The President's Lady'' is a 1951 novel of the life of American president Andrew Jackson and his marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards, written by Irving Stone. A biographical film was made in 1953 by 20th Century Fox, directed by Henry Levin and ...
''. The film was shot in
Technicolor
Technicolor is a series of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades.
Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films ...
and
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35 mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954.
Paramount never used anamorphic processes such as 2.55: 1, CinemaScope but refi ...
, the story takes place during the
War of 1812
The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...
, telling a heavily fictionalized version of how the
privateer
A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...
Lafitte helped in the
Battle of New Orleans
The Battle of New Orleans was fought on January 8, 1815 between the British Army under Major General Sir Edward Pakenham and the United States Army under Brevet Major General Andrew Jackson, roughly 5 miles (8 km) southeast of the French ...
and how he had to choose between fighting for America or for the side most likely to win, the United Kingdom.
The movie's supporting cast featured
Inger Stevens
Inger Stevens (born Ingrid Stensland; October 18, 1934 – April 30, 1970) was a Swedish-American film, stage and Golden Globe-winning television actress.
Early life
Inger Stevens was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the eldest child of Per ...
,
Henry Hull
Henry Watterson Hull (October 3, 1890 – March 8, 1977) was an American character actor perhaps best known for playing the lead in Universal Pictures's '' Werewolf of London'' (1935). For most of his career, he was a lead actor on stage and a c ...
,
E. G. Marshall
E. G. Marshall (born Everett Eugene Grunz;Everett Eugene Grunz in Minnesota, U.S., Birth Index, 1900-1934, Ancestry.comEverett Eugene Grunz in the U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007, accessed via Ancestry.com June 18, ...
,
Lorne Greene
Lorne Hyman Greene (born Lyon Himan Green; 12 February 1915 – 11 September 1987) was a Canadian actor, musician, singer and radio personality. His notable television roles include Ben Cartwright on the Western ''Bonanza'' and Commander Ad ...
Douglass Dumbrille
Douglass Rupert Dumbrille (October 13, 1889 – April 2, 1974) was a Canadian actor who appeared regularly in films from the early 1930s.
Life and career
Douglass Dumbrille ( ) was born in Hamilton, Ontario. As a young man, he was employed ...
Ty Hardin
Ty Hardin (born Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr.; January 1, 1930August 3, 2017) was an American actor best known as the star of the 1958 to 1962 ABC/ Warner Bros. Western television series ''Bronco''.
Early life
Hardin was born in New York City ...
was
uncredited
In general, the term credit in the artistic or intellectual sense refers to an acknowledgment of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense.
Credit in the arts
In the creative arts, credits are an acknowledg ...
).
Anthony Quinn
Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (April 21, 1915 – June 3, 2001), known professionally as Anthony Quinn, was a Mexican-American actor. He was known for his portrayal of earthy, passionate characters "marked by a brutal and elemental v ...
directed the film.
Possibly as a film
tie-in
A tie-in work is a work of fiction or other product based on a media property such as a film, video game, television series, board game, web site, role-playing game or literary property. Tie-ins are authorized by the owners of the original prope ...
, Johnny Horton had a big success at the time with his version of the song ''
The Battle of New Orleans
"The Battle of New Orleans" is a song written by Jimmy Driftwood. The song describes the Battle of New Orleans from the perspective of an American soldier; the song tells the tale of the battle with a light tone and provides a rather comical ver ...
''.
Cast
*
Yul Brynner
Yuliy Borisovich Briner (russian: link=no, Юлий Борисович Бринер; July 11, 1920 – October 10, 1985), known professionally as Yul Brynner, was a Russian-born actor. He was best known for his portrayal of King Mongkut in the ...
as
Jean Lafitte
Jean Lafitte ( – ) was a French pirate and privateer who operated in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century. He and his older brother Pierre spelled their last name Laffite, but English language documents of the time used "Lafitte". Th ...
*
Claire Bloom
Patricia Claire Bloom (born 15 February 1931) is an English actress. She is known for leading roles in plays such as ''A Streetcar Named Desire,'' ''A Doll's House'', and '' Long Day's Journey into Night'', and has starred in nearly sixty film ...
as Bonnie Brown
*
Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer (; 28 August 1899 – 26 August 1978) was a French-American actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found his success in American fi ...
as
Dominique You
Dominique You or Youx (born Frederic You or Youx, c. 1775 – November 15, 1830) was a privateer, soldier, and politician.
Biography
According to information he provided to his masonic lodge in New Orleans, he was born in Cette (now spelled S ...
*
Inger Stevens
Inger Stevens (born Ingrid Stensland; October 18, 1934 – April 30, 1970) was a Swedish-American film, stage and Golden Globe-winning television actress.
Early life
Inger Stevens was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the eldest child of Per ...
as Annette Claiborne
*
Henry Hull
Henry Watterson Hull (October 3, 1890 – March 8, 1977) was an American character actor perhaps best known for playing the lead in Universal Pictures's '' Werewolf of London'' (1935). For most of his career, he was a lead actor on stage and a c ...
as Ezra Peavey
*
E. G. Marshall
E. G. Marshall (born Everett Eugene Grunz;Everett Eugene Grunz in Minnesota, U.S., Birth Index, 1900-1934, Ancestry.comEverett Eugene Grunz in the U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007, accessed via Ancestry.com June 18, ...
as Gov.
William C. C. Claiborne
William Charles Cole Claiborne ( 1773–1775 – November 23, 1817) was an American politician, best known as the first non-colonial governor of Louisiana. He also has the distinction of possibly being the youngest member of the United State ...
*
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923April 5, 2008) was an American actor and political activist.
As a Hollywood star, he appeared in almost 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film ''The Ten C ...
as Gen.
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...
*
Lorne Greene
Lorne Hyman Greene (born Lyon Himan Green; 12 February 1915 – 11 September 1987) was a Canadian actor, musician, singer and radio personality. His notable television roles include Ben Cartwright on the Western ''Bonanza'' and Commander Ad ...
Douglass Dumbrille
Douglass Rupert Dumbrille (October 13, 1889 – April 2, 1974) was a Canadian actor who appeared regularly in films from the early 1930s.
Life and career
Douglass Dumbrille ( ) was born in Hamilton, Ontario. As a young man, he was employed ...
as Collector of the Port
*
Sir Lancelot
Lancelot du Lac (French for Lancelot of the Lake), also written as Launcelot and other variants (such as early German ''Lanzelet'', early French ''Lanselos'', early Welsh ''Lanslod Lak'', Italian ''Lancillotto'', Spanish ''Lanzarote del Lago' ...
Paul Newlan
Paul Emory Newlan (June 29, 1903 – November 23, 1973) was an American film and TV character actor from Plattsmouth, Nebraska. He was best known for his role as Captain Grey on the NBC police series ''M Squad'' and for his roles in films incl ...
as Capt. Flint
*
Norma Varden
Norma Varden Shackleton (20 January 1898 – 19 January 1989), known professionally as Norma Varden, was an English-American actress with a long film career.
Life and career Early life
Born in London, the daughter of a retired sea captain ...
as Madame Hilaire
*
Onslow Stevens
Onslow Stevens (born Onslow Ford Stevenson; March 29, 1902 – January 5, 1977) was an American stage, television and film actor.
Early years
Born in Los Angeles, California, Stevens was the son of British-born character actor Houseley St ...
as Phipps
*
James Seay
James Seay (September 9, 1914 – October 10, 1992) was an American character actor who often played minor supporting roles as government officials.
Early years
Seay demonstrated an interest in acting at an early age, as he and his mothe ...
as Creole Militia Officer
* Henry Brandon as British Major
*
Mike Mazurki
Mike Mazurki (December 25, 1907 – December 9, 1990) was a Ukrainian-American actor and professional wrestler who appeared in more than 142 films. His 6 ft 5 in (196 cm) presence and face had him typecast as often brainless athletes ...
as Tarsus
*
Madame Sul-Te-Wan
Madame Sul-Te-Wan (born Nellie Crawford; March 7, 1873 – February 1, 1959) was the first black actress to sign a film contract and be a featured performer.Lowe, Denise. ''An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films'', Hawo ...
as Vendor
*
Ken Terrell
Kenneth Jones Terrell (April 29, 1904 – March 8, 1966) was an American western and action film actor and stuntman best known for playing Joe Marcelli in the 1956 film ''Indestructible Man
''Indestructible Man'' is a 1956 American cri ...
Ty Hardin
Ty Hardin (born Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr.; January 1, 1930August 3, 2017) was an American actor best known as the star of the 1958 to 1962 ABC/ Warner Bros. Western television series ''Bronco''.
Early life
Hardin was born in New York City ...
as Soldier (
Uncredited
In general, the term credit in the artistic or intellectual sense refers to an acknowledgment of those who contributed to a work, whether through ideas or in a more direct sense.
Credit in the arts
In the creative arts, credits are an acknowledg ...
)
*
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille (; August 12, 1881January 21, 1959) was an American film director, producer and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of the American cine ...
as Himself (uncredited)
Production
''The Buccaneer''s budget was $6 million. $1.2 million was given for the promotion of the picture. Quinn was given five stars, fifty-five featured actors, 100 bit actors, 12,000 extras, 60,000 props, $100,000 worth of
antique furniture
A piece of antique furniture is a collectible interior furnishing of considerable age. Often the age, rarity, condition, utility, or other unique features make a piece of furniture desirable as a collectors' item, and thus termed an antique. ...
,
Spanish moss
Spanish moss (''Tillandsia usneoides'') is an epiphytic flowering plant that often grows upon large trees in tropical and subtropical climates. It is native to much of Mexico, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Central America, South America, the Southern Un ...
, and
cypress tree
Cypress is a common name for various coniferous trees or shrubs of northern temperate regions that belong to the family Cupressaceae. The word ''cypress'' is derived from Old French ''cipres'', which was imported from Latin ''cypressus'', the la ...
s.
Historical accuracy
Claiborne's only surviving daughter, Sophronie (or Sophronia) Louise Claiborne, was only two years old at the time of the battle. The romance with Lafitte is complete fiction.
The interactions between Jackson and Lafitte, including the seemingly dramatized but actually accurate depiction of Lafitte sneaking into Andrew Jackson's window, Lafitte and the British Royal Navy officers, as well as between Jackson and the "leading citizens" of New Orleans, are accurate. About those scenes, screenwriter
Jesse L. Lasky Jr.
Jesse Louis Lasky Jr. (September 19, 1910 – April 11, 1988) was an American screenwriter, novelist, playwright and poet.
Early life
He was the son of film producer Jesse Lasky Sr. and his wife, Bessie Ida Ginsberg. Lasky was born on Broadway ...
said that "the actual historic events in question are themselves so over the top that all I really had to do was line up the dialogue, and even then only some of it." He added, "The only real job was shoe-horning a romance into it."
1938 film
The film is a
remake
A remake is a film, television series, video game, song or similar form of entertainment that is based upon and retells the story of an earlier production in the same medium—e.g., a "new version of an existing film". A remake tells the same ...
Fredric March
Fredric March (born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel; August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was an American actor, regarded as one of Hollywood's most celebrated, versatile stars of the 1930s and 1940s.Obituary ''Variety'', April 16, 1975, p ...
and
Akim Tamiroff
Akim Mikhailovich Tamiroff, russian: Аким Михайлович Тамиров (born Hovakim Tamiryants; October 29, 1899 – September 17, 1972) was an Armenian-American actor of film, stage, and television. One of the premier character act ...
(Boyer played Tamiroff's role in the remake). The earlier version was produced and directed by
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille (; August 12, 1881January 21, 1959) was an American film director, producer and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of the American cine ...
, but he was seriously ill by the time the 1958 version was made, so he was only the executive producer of the remake, leaving his then son-in-law,
Anthony Quinn
Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (April 21, 1915 – June 3, 2001), known professionally as Anthony Quinn, was a Mexican-American actor. He was known for his portrayal of earthy, passionate characters "marked by a brutal and elemental v ...
, to direct. It was the only film that Quinn ever directed.
Henry Wilcoxon
Harry Frederick Wilcoxon (8 September 1905 – 6 March 1984), known as Henry Wilcoxon, was an actor born in Roseau, Dominica, British West Indies, and who was a leading man in many of Cecil B. DeMille's films, also serving as DeMille's associ ...
, DeMille's longtime friend, who made frequent appearances in his films, was the actual producer, and DeMille received screen credit as "supervised by Cecil B. Demille", though students of his films would probably find that his touch is obvious throughout the film.
Reception
Critical response
Staff writers for ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' wrote in their review: "Continuity-wise, ''Buccaneer'' is a scrambled affair in the early reels. Open to question, also, are the story angles in the screenplay which derives from a previous ''Buccaneer'' scenario put out by DeMille in 1938 and, in turn, from an adaptation of the original book, ''Lafitte the Pirate'', by Lyle Saxon." In his book, ''Success in the Cinema Money Making Movies'', John Howard Reid, states most reviews of the film left out the director's name, Quinn, like ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' and ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
''. The ''Time'' review states: "What (Henry) Wilcoxon and Quinn have produced is just a half-deflated imitation of the old man at his overblown best." The ''Newsweek'' review stated without criticizing anyone: "two hours of the most pretentious nonsense to lay claim to a moviegoer's spending money."
Release
''The Buccaneer'' was released in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
theatres during
Christmas
Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...
week of 1958. The film was released on
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...