August 17, 1934: “Treasure Island” Premieres

Wallace Beery (left) and Jackie Cooper

August 17, 1934: The film Treasure Island premieres, based on the 1883 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. It stars Jackie Cooper (then 11 years old, a child star long before he was Perry White in the Chris Reeve Superman movies or a M*A*S*H director), Lionel Barrymore, and Wallace Beery as Long John Silver.

The story is set in the mid-18th Century. Jim Hawkins (Cooper) and his mother (Dorothy Peterson) run the Admiral Benbow, a tavern near Bristol, in the West Country of England. One dark and stormy night, during a birthday celebration, the mysterious Billy Bones (Barrymore) arrives, and drunkenly talks about treasure. Soon after, Bones is visited by Black Dog (Charles McNaughton), then Pew (William V. Mong), and drops dead, leaving a chest, which he bragged contained gold and jewels.

Instead of money, Jim finds a map that his friend Dr. Livesey (Otto Kruger) realizes will lead them to the famous Flint treasure. Squire Trelawney (Nigel Bruce, later to play Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes films) raises money for a voyage to the treasure island, and they set sail on the Hispaniola, commanded by Captain Alexander Smollett (Lewis Stone). Also on board is the one-legged Long John Silver (Wallace Beery) and his cronies. Even though Bones had warned Jim about a sailor with one leg, he and Silver become friends.

During the voyage, several fatal "accidents" happen to sailors who disapprove of Silver and his cohorts. Then, the night before landing on the island, Jim overhears Silver plotting to take the treasure and kill Smollett's men. Jim goes ashore with the men, and encounters an old hermit named Ben Gunn (Chic Sale), who tells him that he has found Flint's treasure.

Smollett and his loyal men flee to Flint's stockade on the island for safety. Silver's men then attack the stockade when Smollett refuses to give them the treasure map. While the situation looks hopeless, Jim secretly goes back to the Hispaniola at night, sails it to a safe location and shoots one of the pirates in self-defense. When he returns to the stockade, Silver's men are there, and Silver tells them that a treaty has been signed. The pirates want to kill Jim, but Silver protects him. Dr. Livesey comes for Jim, but the boy refuses to break his word to Silver not to run away.

The next day, the pirates search for the treasure hold, but, when they find it, it is empty. When some of the pirates mutiny against Silver, Livesey and Gunn join him in the fight. Smollett then sails home with the treasure, which Gunn had hidden in his cave, and with Silver as his prisoner. Silver tells Jim a horror story of a slow death by hanging due to his one leg, causing Jim to be unable to stand by and let his friend be hanged, and he frees Silver. As he sails away, Silver promises to hunt treasure with Jim again some day, as "Honest John" Silver.

So many of the clichés we developed about pirates come from this film: The big hat, the peg leg, the parrot on the shoulder, the exclamation "Arrrrgh!" and the calling of friends "Matey," the burying of treasure in chests on deserted desert islands, usually in the South Pacific, and the marking of the locations of such treasures on a map with an X. However, the pirate exclamation "Shiver me timbers!" meaning, "May my ship's timbers break," appeared in the original novel, and maybe have been around long before that.

A lot of our pop-culture clichés came from the films of the early Thirties, which is why people were shocked when later Tarzans had better vocabularies than Johnny Weissmuller's, and when Gary Oldman didn't look like Bela Lugosi's take on the vampire Count in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Treasure Island would be remade in color in 1950, with Robert Newton as Long John Silver. He popularized the pirate exclamation "Blow me down!" meaning, "May the wind blow me down." As a native of Shaftesbury, in Dorset, his West Country accent became the familiar "pirate accent," although the most famous real-life pirate, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, was also from the West Country, which Newton, who played him in a movie, likely knew.

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August 17, 1934 was a Friday. Ron Henry, the left back on Tottenham Hotspur's "Double"-winning side of 1961, was born. And these baseball games were played:

* A doubleheader was split at Yankee Stadium. The New York Yankees beat the Detroit Tigers, 5-0 in the opener. Lefty Gomez pitched an 8-hit shutout. Tony Lazzeri hit a home run. The Tigers won the nightcap, 2-0. Lynwood "Schoolboy" Rowe pitched a 3-hit shutout, striking out 11, outpitching Jimmie DeShong. Over the 2 games, Babe Ruth went 1-for-5, Lou Gehrig went 1-for-7 with an RBI, Hank Greenberg went 1-for-8, and Marv Owen went 4-for-7.

* The New York Giants swept a doubleheader from the Pittsburgh Pirates, 7-3 and 8-3 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Carl Hubbell went the distance in the 2nd game. Over the 2 games, Giants player-manager Bill Terry went 6-for-10 with an RBI, Mel Ott went 6-for-9 with a home run in each game, a walk and 6 RBIs, Paul Waner went 2-for-8, and Lloyd Waner went 2-for-6 with 2 walks and 2 RBIs.

* A doubleheader was split at Fenway Park in Boston. The Boston Red Sox won the 1st game, 6-0. Wes Ferrell pitched a 2-hit shutout, outpitching Bobo Newsom. The St. Louis Browns won the 2nd game, 5-2.

* A doubleheader was split at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox in the 1st game, 9-8. This was a wild game: Each team scored 2 runs in the 7th inning, 2 in the 8th, and 1 in the 9th. Ed Coleman hit 3 home runs and had 5 RBIs. Edwin "Dib" Williams doubled Bill Dietrich home with the winning run in the bottom of the 10th. Dietrich was also the winning pitcher, in relief of Al Benton. George Earnshaw went the distance for the A's. 

The White Sox won the 2nd game, 3-2. Ted Lyons went the distance for the win. Over the 2 games, Jimmie Foxx went 1-for-7 with a home run, a walk and an RBI. For the White Sox, former A's star Al Simmons went 4-for-9 with 5 RBIs, and Luke Appling went 2-for-8.

* The Washington Senators swept a doubleheader from the Cleveland Indians, 4-3 and 1-0 at Griffith Stadium in Washington. In the 1st game, the Indians scored a run in the top of the 9th, but the Senators tied it with 2 in the bottom of the 9, and won it in the 10th with Cliff Bolton singling Cecil Travis home. In the 2nd game, Bobby Burke pitched a 3-hit shutout, outpitching future Yankee Monte Pearson. The only run came in the bottom of the 2nd, when Pearson threw a wild pitch to Dave Harris, allowing Buddy Myer to score.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Cincinnati Reds, 12-4 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Sam Leslie and Tony Cuccinello each went 3-for-5 with 3 RBIs.

* The Boston Braves beat the Chicago Cubs, 5-2 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* And the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 12-2 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. James "Ripper" Collins went 4-for-4 with a home run, a walk and 3 RBIs.