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The Spanish Main

by Glenn Erickson Feb 01, 2025

The Warner Archive Collection comes through with a splendid restoration of this great pirate picture. Paul Henreid is a superb Dutch colonial-turned buccaneer, Maureen O’Hara devastating in Technicolor, and Walter Slezak a marvelous villain, given dialogue by Herman J. Mankiewicz. Errol Flynn may still be king but he’s also not missed; every frame of this dynamic winner pops in digitally-restored color. It’s great fun, well-directed by Frank Borzage, with Binnie Barnes, John Emery, Nancy Gates and Mike Mazurki.


The Spanish Main
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1945 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 100 min. / Street Date December 31, 2024 / Available at MovieZyng / 21.99
Starring: Maureen O’Hara, Paul Henreid, Walter Slezak, Binnie Barnes, John Emery, Barton MacLane, Fritz Leiber, Nancy Gates, Jack La Rue, Mike Mazurki, Curt Bois, Antonio Moreno, Victor Kilian, Dan Seymour.
Cinematography: George Barnes
Visual effects: Vernon Walker
Art Directors: Albert S.D’Agostino
Gowns: Edward Stevenson
Film Editor: Ralph Dawson
Original Music: Hans Eisler
Screenplay by George Worthing Yates, Herman J. Mankiewicz, story by Aeneas MacKenzie
Produced by Robert Fellows
Directed by
Frank Borzage

Who knew that there was a truly excellent Hollywood pirate picture outside the three Errol Flynn classics?  We know of good swashbuckling to be had in the silent  The Black Pirate, but most of the later pirate pix are too cheap, or too comic, or both. I did my best to sit through Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, but gave up a few minutes in. RKO’s 1945  The Spanish Main was a really welcome surprise. It’s well produced, has a good script and fun portrayals, and it takes itself just seriously enough to bring back the escapist thrills of childhood.

The Spanish Main was RKO’s first full Technicolor production, after their release of the independently produced  Becky Sharp a full ten years before. Ignoring Warners’ status as the home of the big swashbuckling Michael Curtiz epics, producer Robert Fellows overcame the drawbacks of a conventional storyline loaded with familiar content. Writer Herman J. Mankiewicz polished the dialogue and veteran director Frank Borzage staged scenes with great precision. The movie is an energetic, funny crowd-pleaser, and became a major hit for the studio.

(Note: the graphics seen here do not reflect the brilliant image quality of the WAC’s Blu-ray.)

The Dutch sea captain Laurent Van Horn (Paul Henreid) loses his ship on the rocks off Cartagena, only to find his surviving colonists enslaved and himself thrown in prison by the despotic governor Don Juan Alvarado (Walter Slezak). Laurent escapes, along with his friends Erik Swaine and Paree (Mike Mazurki & Curt Bois). Years later he is a sailor on board a Spanish galleon bringing Don Alvarado’s arranged-marriage prometida from Spain, Contessa Francesca (Maureen O’Hara). But Laurent is actually ‘The Barracuda,’ a Member in Good Standing of a pirate confederation based on Tortuga. Laurent is personally fixated on exacting revenge from Don Alvarado. His ship Barracuda takes the galleon, and he claims Francesca as his bride. A bishop on board, Father Obispo (Fritz Leiber) performs the ceremony with Francesca half-willing: Laurent fascinates her, even as she swears she’ll have him hanged.

 

Francesca gets all worked up when Laurent demands that she undress for her wedding night, but pirate politics on Tortuga spoil the pair’s immediate romantic plans. Laurent’s cutthroat colleagues don’t understand why he isn’t ransoming the Contessa. Laurent’s previous squeeze Anne Bonney (Binnie Barnes) tries her best to maneuver the stubborn Francesca into an unfair pistol duel. Worse, the scurvy pirate captain Benjamin Black (Barton MacLane) is jealous of Laurent’s success and would like to eliminate him entirely. But leading the mutiny against Laurent / The Barracuda is his own second-in-command, Captain Mario Du Billar (John Emery). Seeing a chance to take over, the charming but sneaky Du Billar strands Laurent in Tortuga; he and Anne Bonney forcibly take Francesca to her betrothed in Cartagena to collect a ransom. The only problem is, the slimy Don Alvarado is a far worse double-crosser than any pirate.

We readily admit that The Spanish Main isn’t very original. A wronged idealist becomes a noble pirate. He adopts a fanciful nom de plunder for his new line of work, attacking Spanish treasure ships. He’s a ruthless brigand, but also a romantic gentleman. The haughty Francesca initially has Laurent whipped just for daring to touch her. We have to assume that the whipping flayed off only a little of Laurent’s back, for he’s soon having a grand time sweeping his ‘new property’ off her feet. He puts her through the tease of a forced strip show, and then doesn’t follow through with his promise to claim her in bed. Yet the script and the players overcome clichés by sheer talent and personality. Powered by some very clever dialogue, the pirate flirtation, the pirate seduction and various and sundry double-crosses work like inspired originals.

 

The key is of course the pairing of the top-billed Maureeen O’Hara and the genteel Paul Henreid. The Warners escapee reportedly lobbied for this movie and took a leading role in its planning. Ms. O’Hara is no more Spanish than a shamrock, but she’s great at playing dignfied confusion and sexual curiosity. Henried may not be Errol Flynn’s equal in the action scenes, but he’s a genuine charmer, always with an amusing smirk or a dewey-eyed claim of sincerity.

The picture’s romantic and piratical complications engage us via a total engagement on the part of the cast — nobody plays as if the material were below them. It may not be Oscar material, but the performers are engaged and it doesn’t take much effort to share in their enthusiasm. That Contessa really wants her wedding night!

 

Walter Slezak specialized in shifty villains, knaves so amused by their threats they think their victims should be amused as well. His Don Alvarado gets some of the picture’s best dialogue. Alvarado has a ‘commandante’ to order about and abuse, played by none other than the great Antonio Moreno ( The Searchers). A slimy subordinate torturer is played by none other than Jack La Rue, of pre-Code shocker fame in  The Story of Temple Drake.

We know John Emery from later genre potboilers like  Kronos; here he’s perfectly cast as a slick opportunist, who sincerely regrets his mutinous behavior. When caught flat-footed in outright treachery. Du Billar generates some really persuasive lies. By contrast, Barton MacLane’s scar-faced Captain Black is just a thug, easily neutralized by Laurent’s able pals Swaine and Paree. Mike Mazurki and Curt Bois make a fine buddy combo, a shrimp and giant always in support of their boss.

The Contessa’s young companion is a special treat — none other than the lovely Nancy Gates, of the later  Some Came Running,  World Without End and  Comanche Station. Here she’s all of 19, and just looks sensational.

 

Of special mention is an energetic peformance from Binnie Barnes, as the ‘lusty wench’ Anne Bonney. Barnes’ Bonney takes an active dislike to the pampered Contessa, and their rivalry almost ends in a catfight. She’s given a nice character arc.  *  We have to think that the legendary director Frank Borzage ( Bad Girl,  Man’s CastleA Farewell to Arms,  History is Made at Night) inspired the cast to such good performances. Everybody gets a few privileged moments, in ‘glorious Technicolor.’

The show is indeed glorious; The Warner Archive’s digitally reconstituted Technicolor reveals The Spanish Main to be blessed with excellent art direction and classy costumes. Few pirate movies can match the epic scope of the Errol Flynn pictures, but none of his classics were in color. The settings here are impressively lavish, as if the clever RKO staff was given extra resources to work with. Smart planning and efficient angles give us all the required big-scale action, with several battles well-choreographed by B. Reeves Eason.

The model work in giant water tanks duplicates the seagoing action seen in the Warners classics, perhaps at a slightly smaller scale. The results are impressive and fanciful — the enemy galleons have bright sails, while Laurents’ The Barracuda is an ugly black. RKO’s miniature tank uses giant painted backdrops, some of which are as wrinkled as Warners’ cycloramas. There may be only one or two painted ‘puffy cloud’ backings; reverse angles sometimes display identical patterns of clouds. At any rate, Vernon Walker’s visual effects cameramen keep it all in focus and brightly lit — the effects cut in extremely well.

 

I hope I’m not overselling Spanish Main — for me it pushed all the right buttons. Some New York reviewers turned their nose up at The Spanish Main but 1945 audiences apparently loved it, and it became a big success. It’s not just another pirate picture — Henreid, O’Hara, Slezak, Barnes & John Emery bring it to life.

We kept looking at those Spanish galleons, to see if we recognized any that became a stock shot for  The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, where Sinbad’s ship changes almost every time we see it. No, I don’t think there’s a match.

On the other hand, the presence of Walter Slezak and the subject of Caribbean piracy makes us wonder to what degree Vincente Minnelli’s fancy musical  The Pirate was influenced by The Spanish Main, or used it for a sounding board. MGM’s art direction is fancier but RKO’s Technicolor is just as vivid. Slezak’s Don Alvarado here is shown no mercy, but in the musical his ‘Don Pedro Vargas’ is given a clown’s exit. The stars of The Pirate play in full spoof mode, ad-libbing as if they were superior to the material. After suffering the comic lampoons of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, Slezak’s Vargas ends up earning a kind of backhanded sympathy. Kelly’s entertainer ‘Serafin’ is only pretending to be the feared pirate called ‘The Black Macoco’ — and Slezak turns out to be the real deal.

 


The Blu-ray of The Spanish Main is yet another minor-miracle restoration from the Warner Archive Collection. Old TV broadcasts used 16mm composite Eastman prints; only by going to repertory theaters could we catch a vintage show like this in its original Technicolor. Now that it is economically feasible to digitally recomposite 3-strip Tech movies, the Warner Archive has been issuing terrific restorations that bring these shows back to their original luster:  The Pirate,  Northwest Passage,  The Boy with Green Hair.

The Spanish Main uses its Technicolor palette unusually well. The overall designs of sets and costumes are stunning; when Laurent teases the Contessa, he notes that some of her fine clothing is lacework from Holland. The stylized sea battles are a real treat for the eyes. ( Again note that the images seen here in no way reflect the dazzling color on the disc; we don’t do frame grabs from WAC discs but use whatever shows up on the web. )

With this being RKO’s first Technicolor film, we see the studio logo rendered in somewhat weird colors. A few later Technicolor RKOs would carry logos in stubborn Black & White. The Spanish Main has one of the better Hollywood music scores by Hanns Eisler, a German expatriate known for working with Bertholt Brecht; just before the Nazis took over he composed the music for the left-wing  Kuhle Wampe: or Who Owns the World?. Fleeing to the U.S., Eisler wrote music scores for  Joseph Losey,  Fritz Lang and  Clifford Odets. He was among the first batch of European émigrés singled out and deported as Communist activists.

The WAC’s disc producers have reached into their animation bag for pirate cartoons and come up with two Bugs Bunny entries, both co-starring Yosemite Sam as a pirate with a sagebrush voice. They appear to be Mel Blanc shows all the way — he performs the voices for both characters.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson


The Spanish Main
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Remastered short subject Movieland Magic
Remastered Friz Freleng cartoons Buccaneer Bunny (1948) and Captain Hareblower (1954)
Original Theatrical Trailer.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)

Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed:
January 27, 2025
(7268span)

*  ‘At home with the Frankoviches’:  It was great watching Binnie Barnes get a chance to chew scenery for a personal reason. Back in 1975 I projected 35mm movies at her house in the Hollywood Hills. She was married to producer Mike Frankovich, and they had guests over most Saturdays for a fancy screening of whatever was new — one time it was Dino De Laurentiis. Binnie herself showed me the house and the projection booth. Although I had only heard the name Binnie Barnes and had never seen one of her movies, I will now claim the right to say I was a close associate of a movie star, and connected to vital Hollywood history!  (cough.)
CINESAVANT

Final product for this review was provided free by The Warner Archive Collection.

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Text © Copyright 2025 Glenn Erickson

About Glenn Erickson

Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 6.51.08 PM

Glenn Erickson left a small town for UCLA film school, where his spooky student movie about a haunted window landed him a job on the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS effects crew. He’s a writer and a film editor experienced in features, TV commercials, Cannon movie trailers, special montages and disc docus. But he’s most proud of finding the lost ending for a famous film noir, that few people knew was missing. Glenn is grateful for Trailers From Hell’s generous offer of a guest reviewing haven for CineSavant.

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Dennis Fischer

When you are mentioning pirate movies, I think you overlook Tyrone Power’s The Black Swan, another great Technicolor effort. I am still eager to see Captain Blood on Bluray. As far as Mel Blanc goes, he always did the voices of Bugs and Yosemite Sam, it was Elmer Fudd that was voiced uncredited by Arthur Q. Bryan for years until Mel replaced him.

Joe Dante

Nice review, but I think you’re a little hard on A&C Meet Captain Kidd, which may be a better picture than Rowland V Lee’s original Captain Kidd.

Jenny Agutter fan

I see that it co-stars Barton MacLane. If you don’t recognize the name, he played Gen. Peterson on I Dream of Jeannie.

I always saw that character – a doughy-faced, irascible member of the MIC – as the embodiment of everything that the younger generation hated about previous generations, and so it made sense for an attractive, vivacious, dulciloquent young woman to come in and upset the established order.

Brendan Carroll

I got this as one of my Christmas presents to myself, having endured awful TV prints for many years. It was indeed a revelation and was like watching the film for the first time. I am sure the later musical The Pirate was inspired by this film. The superb Mr Slezak basically reprises his turn in the later film and is actually the main reason I love watching both – he is such a marvellous villain and so delectable delivering all those witty lines. I am glad you mention Hanns Eisler but in spite of his fame, he receives no screen credit for his score, which is very odd indeed. Of course the exquisite restoration reveals just how skilfully Henried was doubled in the sword fights here; not quite as extensively as poor Henry Daniell was in SEA HAWK, but pretty close. All in all, this was one of my favourite discs of 2024.

david smith

No one could smash buckle like Michael Curtis. It’s a shame never did one in Technicolor.

John Hall

Thanks to the Warner Archive for THE SPANISH MAIN, a long time favorite.

I’ve always hoped Paul Henreid’s 4 film venture into Sam Katzman territory would receive at least a DVD release. All four in beautiful Technicolor with SIREN OF BAGDAD (1953) as the highlight. An out and out comedy with Hans Conried as co-star. The others are fine lower budget Saturday afternoon action films: LAST OF THE BUCCANEERS (1950) with Jack Oakie, THIEF OF DAMASCUS (1952) with Robert Clary as Aladdin and Lon Chaney as Sinbad and PIRATES OF TRIPOLI (1955).

Ross Woodbury

What is the third Errol Flynn B&W pirate yarn you refer to? CAPTAIN BLOOD and SEA HAWK are assuredly the first two, but Flynn’s only decent pirate film later on was AGAINST ALL FLAGS and it was in color. Am I missing something?

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