Treasure Island

Treasure Island (1934)

Sail the high seas of adventure again!

In this early film adaptation of the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, young Jim Hawkins is caught up with the pirate Long John Silver in search of buccaneer Captain Flint's buried treasure.

Date of release
1934-08-17
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (81)
Runtime
1h 43m
Genres
Adventure, Family
Director
Victor Fleming

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Budget: $825K
  • Based on: Treasure Island

Treasure Island is a 1934 American adventure film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, and Nigel Bruce. It is an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous 1883 novel of the same name. Jim Hawkins discovers a treasure map and travels on a sailing ship to a remote island, but pirates led by Long John Silver threaten to take away the honest seafarers’ riches and lives.

Production notes

In 1920, Paramount replaced Wallace Beery with Joseph Singleton as Israel Hands in Maurice Tourneur's silent lost film Treasure Island. Beery worked with Tourneur that same year in his silent masterpiece The Last of the Mohicans.

After the massive success of The Champ (1931), Beery and Jackie Cooper were paired again in O'Shaughnessy's Boy and The Bowery. Treasure Island was the last time they filmed together. While rehearsing with a pistol on the set, Cooper shot Beery in the foot with flash powder. Beery's yowls of pain were met with delight by the crew, who despised him.

Cooper later realized he was too young to play Jim Hawkins, especially when Louis B. Mayer insisted on wedging in a trademark crying scene for Cooper. Beery was so resentful of having to reshoot the ending that his misbehavior stretched the daylong shoot into nearly a week of work.

Cooper cited Victor Fleming, along with King Vidor, as one of the directors he respected the most, "When I was a kid, directors were always offering me bicycles whenever they wanted me to play a difficult scene...By the time I was ten, I had eight or nine bikes in the garage. Fleming would speak to me like an adult. He would talk to me about the scene. I felt he respected me. As a result, I would break my neck to please him."

The pirate ship Hispaniola was impersonated by Nanuk, which had been converted from a schooner to a full-rigged ship. The ship was moored in Catalina's Emerald Bay for the three-month shoot. Victor Fleming wanted to film in color in the South Seas. When MGM refused, he threatened to quit.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended