Princess and the Pirate The (1944) – full review!

When producer Samuel Goldwyn lent Gary Cooper & Billy Wilder to Paramount he got to use comedian Bob Hope for two films (this was the second one). To capitalize on the success of the Hope-Bing Crosby “road” pictures he hired Don Hartman (Road to Morocco (1942)) among others to write the screenplay. The result was this affable comedy pirate adventure pairing Hope with the comely Virginia Mayo for the first and only time. It’s laced with amusing Hope one-liners which are more modern than the film’s setting. Crosby appears too but only briefly in an uncredited cameo at the very end (those familiar with the road films can probably figure out Bing’s role). The movie earned Academy Award nominations for its Art Direction-Interior Decoration & Score. It was directed by David Butler and also features the Goldwyn Girls in lavish Technicolor. The cast also includes Walter Brennan Walter Slezak and Victor McLaglen (among others).

Set in swashbuckling days Hope plays Sylvester the Great a bad ham actor who’s also a “master of disguise” and rather cowardly. Mayo plays Princess Margaret who’s traveling incognito away from her father because he won’t let her marry a commoner. Naturally these two find themselves on the same ship which is then attacked by the notorious pirate Captain Barrett (McLaglen) aka The Hook and his ship. One of Barrett’s crew is Featherhead (Brennan) who looks a lot like Elmer Fudd and is thought to be a fool. However Featherhead rescues Sylvester so that the actor can smuggle the treasure map off the ship and take it to the fool’s brother on the island of Casarouge. Sylvester in turn rescues Margaret who he doesn’t know is a princess from The Hook and his advances endearing him to her.

When Sylvester and Margaret get to Casarouge they find that it’s a lawless place inhabited by pirates and other thugs. They also learn that Featherhead’s brother is gone for a couple of weeks so Sylvester strikes a deal with a local café owner (Hugo Haas) to perform for money in order to pay their landlady (Maude Eburne). During his act Sylvester is ruthlessly heckled by patrons who killed the last performer until Margaret appears on stage and sings. The motley crew audience then throw gold coins onto the stage which Sylvester hungrily gathers up in his cap. The island’s governor La Roche (Slezak) enters the café during the performance and recognizes the princess. So he has her kidnapped and taken to his palace secured by his many guards (but filled with Goldwyn girls). Sylvester follows and is (wrongly) thought by La Roche to be the commoner the princess wants to marry. Though he is treated well Sylvester too is a prisoner forbidden from seeing Margaret.

Eventually Captain Barrett arrives at the island and it is learned that La Roche and the pirate are co-conspirators. Naturally they do not trust one another. After all there is still the issue of the missing treasure map. When Sylvester learns what the two are after that they’ll kill for it and that he has it (he didn’t know that the map was what Featherhead had sewn into his shirt) he starts to destroy it until Featherhead appears from under his bed in the room. The fool is also a tattoo artist so he renders Sylvester unconscious in order to pen the map on the actor’s chest! This and the fact that Sylvester later impersonates The Hook himself leads to several funny (if too often repeated) sequences. Marc Lawrence plays Captain Barrett’s right hand man Tom Kennedy and Mike Mazurki (uncredited as is Al Bridge) play other pirates. Robert Warwick plays The King who ends up rescuing his daughter in the end (surprise surprise) and decides to let Margaret marry her commoner. Hope thinks he’s the one but it’s really Crosby who gets the girl as always.

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