Long John Silver (Treasure Island Pictures; D.C.A.). "Sealed in blood!" croaks Long John Silver to his sidekick, Jim Hawkins, as they skulk in the corner of a dingy pothouse and plot their return to Treasure Island. Old Cap'n Flint, it seems, left many more doubloons in the dunes than he ever told Robert Louis Stevenson about. There are £900,000 of them, to be exact, and that explains (though it hardly justifies) all this supererogatory yo-ho-ho on a dead man's chest.
However, Author Stevenson would probably not complain about a sequel, and children under ten, for whom this picture is presumably intended, most assuredly will not.
Made in Australia for a mere $1,000,000, Long John Silver is a pretty crude imitation, as economy cruises are apt to be, of the de luxe $1,650,000 made-in-England original, Walt Disney's Treasure Island (TIME, July 24, 1950). On deck once again is the cutthroat pirate crew, the boy in the apple barrel (Kit Taylor this time), the mutiny, the mad castaway, the attack on the fort—even the same rented parrot, or its Aunt Polly. Luckily, there is also the same actor to play Long John Silver: Robert Newton.
Actor Newton dares to play the lovable old rascal as no one since Wallace Beery would: that is to say, he blatheringly overplays him with the ear-flapping, eye-woggling, nose-swallowing abandon of a man who is trying, with both hands tied behind his back, to get a particularly persistent fly off his face. "Milk!" Newton splutters, staggering back, clutching wildly at his throat and shuddering like the plague. "I be pizened!" The way he walks, anybody would think he had at least twelve peg legs instead of one, and the way he talks, "Jim Oarkins" and "Trays-sher Eye-lund" sound like scrumptiously pleasurable belches.
But the best line of all falls to Pirate No. 2 .(Lloyd Berrell), a Spaniard who twirls his gleaming black mustachios and promises Pirate No. 1: "I weel peel you like a mango!"
Marty (Hecht and Lancaster; United Artists). "Marty," says Mrs. Pilletti to her 34-year-old son, as he moves in on the evening plate of spaghetti after a hard day in Mr. Otari's butcher shop, "why don't you go to the Stardust Ballroom [tonight]?" Marty (Ernest Borgnine) tries to look unconcerned. "Ma, when you gonna give up? You got a bachelor on your hands. I ain't never gonna get married." But his mother (Esther Minciotti) can't let well enough alone, and finally Marty bursts out bitterly, "Whatever it is that women like, I ain't got it . . . I'm a fat little man, a fat ugly man . . . All that ever happened to me . . . was girls made me feel like I was a bug . . . I got feelings . . . I had enough pain. No thanks, Ma . . . You know what I'm gonna get for my trouble? . . . A big night of heartache!"
And yet, even heartache is easier to take than a Saturday night at home in The Bronx. After a while, Marty and his pal Angie (Joe Mantell) ankle over to the Stardust Ballroom to see what's around. "Hey, there's a nice-lookin' short one f'ya," Angie says. Marty asks her for a dance. She says she doesn't feel like it just now, thank you. Marty turns away pale: that's enough of that for one night.