Il pirata ballerino

Boston dance teacher Charles Collins is shangaied by pirates. He escapes from them in Spanish California, where he is about to be hanged by Alcalde Frank Morgan (!). Morgan's daughter, Steffi Duna saves him on condition he will teach her the waltz. While this is going on, renegade captain Victor Varconi marches in with his troops. He plans to marry Miss Duna, receiving a dowry of hundreds of thousands of acres and tens of thousands of cattle.

Although I looked at a black&white copy, this was the third feature shot in 3-strip Technicolor, and the costuming betokens this. The story is silly and conventional for the era, and there are plenty of skilled farceurs in the cast, including Luis Alberni, with one immense production number feature Eduardo Cansino -- Rita Hayworth's father -- and his dance troupe. As an actor, Collins is a good dancer. He was born in 1904, and married dance partner Dorothy Stone, with whom he appeared in several Broadway musicals through 1945. His movie career was limited. Another film lead was his in 1944, but he appeared in a total of a dozen shorts and features from 1932 through being part of the chorus in THE WIZ. He died in 1999.

I saw this movie when I was five years old and never heard of it again. All I could remember was the fellow dancing with a noose around his neck. Looked for it for years, then saw it, just in the past year, in a bin as a Rita Hayworth movie. Thanks to the generic title I recognized it right away. There won't be many comments on this one, as it's virtually unknown, but I've looked at it twice and it brings back a memory of a movie I loved so much as a child, though nothing came back to me except the mentioned dancing scene. It's offbeat, in terrific color and I think enjoyable . Did anybody ever hear of the dancer who played the title role again?

The Dancing Pirate is worth watching for a several reasons: the over-the-top early Technicolor hues, the spectacular finale featuring the Royal Cansino Dancers (including a young Rita Hayworth) and a very small appearance at the beginning of the movie by Pat Ryan, later to be Pat Nixon. But more than these things, I like The Dancing Pirate as a forgotten movie about Los Angeles. The movie depicts a Boston dance teacher kidnapped by pirates who escapes into the sleepy Alta California village of La Paloma.

This is an obvious adaptation of the real-life story of Joseph Chapman. Chapman, originally from Boston, deserted Hippolyte de Bouchard's piratical coastal raiding party to become the first yanqui resident of Los Angeles in 1818. Chapman, like the character in the movie, became a solid citizen of the little pueblo. Unlike the character in the movie, there's no historical evidence that Chapman could dance, however.

The Dancing Pirate which was released by RKO in 1936 was one of the last films done with an original score by Rodgers&Hart. They would be moving back to Broadway and had a string of hit musicals only interrupted by Larry Hart's death in 1943.

As this was an RKO film watching it now it was fairly obvious that this film was created with Fred Astaire in mind for the lead. Had Astaire done it The Dancing Pirate might be better remembered. Certainly the two songs done by Dick and Larry aren't among the most memorable. In fact the best number in the film is a dance by lead Charles Collins to Yankee Doodle Dandy that had Astaire written all over it.

In fact the main weakness of the film is Collins. A good dancer, Collins had a screen presence that was colorless, odorless, and tasteless. He plays a Boston dancing teacher who gets shanghaied by pirates and escapes the first chance he can when they put in to California for provisions.

Still ruled by Spain, the local Alcalde is Frank Morgan at his decisiveless best. Morgan on loan from MGM is the best thing about The Dancing Pirate.

Collins is sad to say guilty by association and the men want to hang him, but the women want to learn to dance so he's in legal limbo of sorts.

He also has competition for the hand of Morgan's daughter Steffi Duna in the person of Captain Victor Varconi from Monterey at the head of a platoon of dragoons ostensibly there to protect the village from pirates. But Varconi has his own plans, Snidely Whiplash type plans.

The Dancing Pirate won an Oscar nomination for the now defunct category of dance direction. I long for the day when musicals of all kinds were being churned out and a category like dance direction was warranted. Speaking of dancing Rita Hayworth is in this film as part of her family troupe of Spanish dancers, The Dancing Cansinos.

The Dancing Pirate is an amusing enough film, but it really needed Fred Astaire to put it over.

I found this movie in a dollar bin. That should have been my first warning. The movie has been "digitally remastered", leading to the technicolor being remastered right out of it. The box also claims that Frank Morgan is "of Mash TV series fame", in spite of the fact that he died decades before the TV series came out.

I suppose seeing the dancing instructor dance in a noose is worth the price of admission, though. (That's not a spoiler-it's on the menu screen.) And I probably would have liked it when I was a kid, and could handle nonsensical situations leading to improbable tap dancing scenes. :)