Will Bradley-The Legend-Slayer Rises Like Phoenix From The Ashes To Again Bring A Fake Legend Low-And Then Some-Errol Flynn’s “Captain Blood” (1935)-A Film Review-Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Will Bradley     

Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Basil Rathbone at the start of his career as the master criminal plaguing London during his reign of terror under the cover profession and name of private detective Sherlock Holmes, 1935

I expected once I started on this campaign to defrock various undeserved legends, hell, maybe legends in general and let people deal with sordid reality straight up to get some push-back from various special interest groups who have some reason, usually known only to them, to keep their particular legends alive and well. Certainly today we can add, starting in the White House, those who have a stake in “alternate facts,” formerly known as lies, that increasing mass who believe in angels, fairies (not gays), and the like.

I would have expected plenty of push-back from those myriad Robin Hood devotees who still believe the old wives’ tale about “giving to the poor” while Hood amassed a fortune in land and metals in his time what today would be the envy of any billionaire. Some poor soul tried, unsuccessfully and by himself since nobody joined him, to claim the estate records had been “doctored” by who he did not say but I believe that he is now under sedation and therefore not a threat to those who have come to realize we need no armed robbery bandits from Hood to Pretty Boy Floyd to Pretty James Preston to grab what is rightfully ours. The legend of the so-called great Spanish lover, one Don Juan, real name Jose Romero, having been created in the fevered imagination of some convent-bound young matron which spread like wild fire among the virginal set in the long chain of convents which that benighted, still benighted, country has in excess found no modern champion to dispute the facts. The hard Inquisition facts paid in torture and blood by those who ran afoul of the bastards but who kept very good records of their evil doings. Ditto one Casanova who was merely a figment of the distorted imagination of one Georgios Casanova, a second-rate painter who lost his grip on reality, which set off another set of young ladies, supposedly Enlightenment-bred young ladies, to run the rumor mill night and day. Damn puberty.              

A couple of more up to date legends proved thornier to prove but also were left hanging when no knight in armor came to defend their so-called exploits. Sadly one, a guy named Jose Rios, who claimed to be Zorro, the people’s defender was nothing but the figment of the crazed imaginations of a fistful of starving, ill-treated peasants out California way in the days before the Republic, did have a defender right in this publication. Old-timer Si Lannon got all weepy about his hidden past, or rather his mother’s as a Latina and not an Italian the way she was passed off by his father and family. Si is now writing feverish positive film reviews about the latest round of Marvel/DC comics super-heroes. Enough said.

Of course the hardest debunking, the legend that made me a legend-slayer of the first order was when I tangled with fellow writer here Seth Garth over one Sherlock Holmes, aka Lawrence Livermore. Yes, that Seth Garth who between this publication and American Film Gazette won many awards for his insightful pieces on everything from the Summer of Love in 1967 to his masterful tribute to his fallen hometown friend Pete Markin. On that one though we were tangling through different views of the fraudulent legend not trying to resuscitate some eclipsed reputation. Seth went off the beam with his silly assertions that Holmes and his boyfriend, a guy named Nigel Bruce, obviously an alias were doing their nefarious deeds as agents of some international Homintern. After a mammoth struggle my view, backed-up by Scotland Yard arrests proved that the central truth was that Larry and Nigel were running every sordid scheme from drugs to women to heists in greater London to amass their own fortunes. Even a group of devotees, acolytes, aficionados named implausibly the Baker Street Irregulars after an initial tepid defense collapsed as the indictments of Larry and Nigel came cascading in. Elementary, indeed.

Which brings me to the Johnny Cielo case in which his lingering devotees have raised a major counter-offensive defending that fraud’s so-called reputation as a key player in the development of aviation, of Icarus’ dreams. They have gracelessly conceded that Johnny was not at Kitty Hawk with Orville and Wilbur since he was not born until 1909 but have made some lame argument that he had been there in spirit. They also with a bit more grace conceded that he was not the founder of Trans-World Airline (now long- gone TWA of Howard Hughes fame) and had been something less that the leading “barnstormer” getting the mail through in various perilous countries like Barranca down in treacherous Central America where mountains grow big and the passageways narrow.    

What they have remained adamant about center on two fatal to his legend points. One that Johnny lured drop-dead beautiful Rita Hayworth, my grandfather’s and apparently every other military man’s favorite pin-up during World War II, down to Barranca to share his fate and forgo her budding film career. The other that he died heroically supplying Fidel, Fidel Castro, and his band of brothers, down in Cuba with guns and supplies after crashing in the Caribbean on his last flight. Some things diehard but I have plenty of proof that Johnny never brought Rita down south but rather a hooker, a whore, he met in Key West who looked a lot like her but whose grasp of proper English was wanting. Moreover, this Rita-look alike ran out on him with some cargo pilot once his money ran out. I might add the time frame was all wrong for Johnny’s fraudulent claim since Ms. Hayworth was then being courted by none other the Aga Khan. As for that heroic Fidel business that was easily disposed of since we have the flight manifest. Johnny did go to sleep with the fishes as they say but in the Gulf of Mexico when he stupidly ran out of fuel on his normal Key West to Naples tourist passenger run. I know this will not hold Johnny’s diehard devotees but those are the facts, Jack.

Now finally to the current legend to be slain, that of one Peter Blood, aka, Doctor Blood, Captain Blood, Peter X, Pirate Jenny, Johnny Blade and who knows a half dozen other names. His claim to fame, if you forget that bogus doctoring stuff, where he caused the death of more than one man who actually believed that an itinerant Irishman navvy could cure anything more than ingrown toenail or that he escaped from indentured servitude to lead his fellow prisoners out of servitude and into the high society life of piracy and brigandage, was that he saved Jamaica for one William of Orange, aka William I who along with his wife Mary ruled England after they got rid of King James who was a closet Catholic and general bastard and sent him into French exile.        

The real story? Well this is the hardest one of all since pirates, you heard me, pirates while stocking up with ill-gotten treasure did not leave many records around. (The so-called covenant Blood and his fellow brigands, if that is what they were, agreed to had been a mishmash of unpublishable John Locke writings with maybe a little Thomas Hobbes for good measure hardly worthy of the word covenant).  All we know is that he was a key leader of Monmouth’s rebellion in Coventry, got caught, finked on his fellow conspirators in the hope of getting in King James good graces and obtain a pardon and nevertheless was scheduled to hang since the king was in ill-humor that day. (By the way that Monmouth alliance was paved with pure gold, plenty of it, which we shall see is the nexus for everything this bum Blood did, including with his women.) Somebody got the bright idea to send the lot to Jamaica to sweat and die in the sugar cane fields for the mercenary landowners who plagued that isle. The King was in good-humor that day so off the lot went.     

This is where the Peter X part comes in since we know from the manifest of HMS Anne that he was aboard when the ship docked in Port Royal. He wound up according to the bill of sale being sold to some young female member of one of the leading landowner’s entourage, one Aria Bishop, something like that to serve her in whatever way she wanted, probably in some bed or other. The X part came in because he refused to give his last name and because he could not write so Peter X it was. (That last piece of information should clue us in that he was no doctor even though in those days you did not need to go to Harvard Medical School to practice and that covenant was another one of those so-called democratic examples that have made his fans, hopefully after this expose dwindling clot of fans, made of pure clothe and which those same fans have touted as Blood being a direct precursor of the American revolutionaries in 1776-bullshit)              

After Aria used Mr. X up, moved on to some other felon since she seemed to have a predilection for the type, especially pirates, he started plotting his escape, his exile he called it. This part is true enough and commendable except the price of his freedom was the betrayal of his fellow slaves, let’s call them what they really were, to one Colonel Bishop, Aria’s protector since it was him or them. All the noise about band of brothers was so much hot air with that crowd, it was later when he would foist that democratic stuff when he got to the Tortugas and picked up a mixed crew of ruffians and kill-crazy maniacs. This motley crew, this turn to sweet piracy is when we first hear him referred to as Captain Blood, and not always with honor since he was final court of judgement among that crew he gathered to rape and pillage whatever was not tied down, and even some stuff that was.      

The Captain Blood legend has it that he went to sea many times and grabbed whatever he fancied from whatever flag a ship was flying and that eventually when William with that Mary hanging onto him for dear life kicked King James’ ass out of England he was to become the big cheese in the Caribbean and maybe further afield. Like some wily and wary Dutchman was going to let a fugitive, a slave, a pirate run the colonial operations of the Empire. Jesus some people really are gullible and get what they deserve.  

The real deal is that Peter, let’s call him that rather than that bogus Captain thing he ran around with for a while never ran out to sea, got according to the slim colonial medical records seasick every time (apparently the passage over from England when he got his reprieve was a nightmare for his fellows). He had a guy, a Frenchman met in the Tortugas, named Basil Rathbone, something like that run the sea-borne operations while he sat in the Black Swan Tavern and drank his rum and had his way with whatever women he desired. Some poor Cambridge graduate looking for adventure ran into him down there and bought his whole line of baloney, brought it back to London and that was the start of a now four centuries old lie. Yeah, another legend bites the dust.