Early Technicolor films are fascinating because when we think of movies before 1939, images of black and white flood our minds. Only a handful of three-strip Technicolor features from before 1939 can be considered “great,” like The Adventures of Robin Hood, Nothing Sacred, and the original A Star Is Born. But none of these can hold the “first” of anything titles. The first full-length, live-action three-strip Technoclor was actually Rouben Mamoulian’s Becky Sharp (1935), a costume drama starring Miriam Hopkins that’s loosely based on William Makepeace Thackery’s Vanity Fair. It was produced by Pioneer Pictures, a short-lived company set up by an investor who wanted to make live-action three-strip Technicolor movies when the major Hollywood studios didn’t want to. While Becky Sharp was a critical and commercial hit, Pioneer’s second movie, Dancing Pirate (1936) was not. Billed as the “first dancing musical in 100% Technicolor,” Dancing Pirate is the subject of The Film Detective‘s latest Blu-ray Special Edition, sourced from a 35mm source and a new 4K scan.
Charles Collins stars in Dancing Pirate as Jonathan Pride, an early 1800s Boston dance instructor who gets kidnapped by pirates who keep him aboard until they stop in Southern California. Once they get to a small Spanish town, Jonathan escapes, only to find the residents – led by the bumbling Mayor Don Emilio Perena (Frank Morgan) – are ready to hang him because they think he’s really a pirate. He uses his dancing skills to prove otherwise and falls in love with the mayor’s daughter, Serafina (Steffi Duna). A group of soldiers comes to bleed the town dry, but Jonathan proves they are corrupt and saves the town from further harm. And all that happens in 80 minutes!
If Pioneer had wanted to make a color musical as good as Becky Sharp was a good drama, Dancing Pirate is a complete failure. Unlike its predecessor, Dancing Pirate features no major stars. Collins was successful on Broadway in the 1930s and 1940s, but his incredible dancing skills were not enough to overcome his lack of charisma and his awkward line deliveries. Duna was a Hungarian-born actress whose performance here shows why she struggled to break out of supporting roles in major movies. The most recognizable face in the whole movie is Frank Morgan, whose character provides some much-needed humor and life into the movie. Rita Hayworth can be spotted as a dancer in one of the numbers, but you have to really know where to look to see her.
A musical could actually overcome its actors’ shortcomings if the music is good, but that’s not the case here. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart provided two totally forgettable songs. Plus the dance numbers are so few and far between that it makes the action between them interminable. When Collins does dance, the screen is alight with activity. When he’s not, the movie is just crawling along and jumping through romance cliches. Director Lloyd Corrigan, who took until 1939 to realize he was a better character actor than director, has no flair for creating interesting images between the film’s dance numbers.
Dancing Pirate, which must be the inspiration for Singin’ In The Rain‘s parody movie The Dancing Cavalier, is really only worth revisiting today for its historical significance. Even The Film Detective’s own special features admit so! In all my years of buying physical media, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie with a video essay that literally calls the film “mediocrity.” Michael Schlesinger narrated the 10-minute featurette “Ambushed by Mediocrity: Remembering The Dancing Pirate,” in which he breaks down why this film couldn’t be as good as Becky Sharp. The Film Detective has also included David Pierce’s “Glorious Pioneers: The Birth of Technicolor,” which is a good 10-minute crash course on the Technicolor company. Lastly, author Jennifer Churchill recorded a commentary track and wrote the included essay, which covers Collins’ career.
Despite Dancing Pirate‘s lack of entertainment value, it does remain an interesting historical footnote. The Film Detective gave the movie a better treatment than it really deserves, and they should be applauded for that. Considering Dancing Pirate is available in shoddy editions due to its public domain status (for example, here’s a really awful black and white version), they really went above and beyond.
Movie Mania Madness 