Treasure Island

I lucked out in high school. I had a good streak of English teachers. While other classes were reading "The Great Gatsby," "The Pigman," and "Hamlet," I was entrenched in "Frankenstein," "In Cold Blood," and "Macbeth." Another classic I got to avoid was "Treasure Island." After watching the 1934 film version, I kind of get the feeling Robert Louis Stevenson's book was better.

Jim Hawkins (Jackie Cooper) and his mother (Dorothy Peterson) run a small inn in England. One night a creepy paranoid drunk named Billy Bones (Lionel Barrymore) checks in, demanding Jim watch out for a one-legged man who wants to get Billy and the secret he carries in his ship's chest. Billy does call attention to himself, and drinks himself into an early grave, jus...

An engaging effort from Jackie Cooper as the fledgling "Jim Hawkins" works well here with a charismatic one from Wallace Beery as the duplicitous "Long John Silver" as Victor Fleming takes us on an exciting adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's seafaring adventure. It's "Jim" who finds himself embroiled in some piratical vengeance at his mother's tavern when "Billy Bones" (Lionel Barrymore) leaves him a map to an enormous fortune hidden on a desert island. Lucky to escape with his life, he enlists the help of the doctor (Otto Kruger) and the blabbermouth squire (Nigel Bruce) to employ "Capt. Smollett" (Lewis Stone) and off they sail. Of course, the crew of the ship have not been selected by the captain, but by the one-legged "Silver" who s...