Young Jim Hawkins (Jackie Cooper) and his mother (Dorothy Peterson) run the Admiral Benbow, a tavern near Bristol, England. One dark and stormy night, during a birthday celebration, the mysterious Billy Bones (Lionel 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) raises money for a voyage to the treasure island and they set sail on Captain Alexander Smollett's (Lewis Stone) ship Hispaniola. 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, they 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. Meanwhile, 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 and when they find it, it is empty. When some of the pirates mutiny against Silver, Livesey and Gunn join him in the fight. Smollett 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. Unable to stand by and let his friend be hanged, Jim frees Silver. As he sails away, Silver promises to hunt treasure with Jim again some day, as Honest John Silver.
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.[2]
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.[2] Beery was so resentful of having to reshoot the ending that his misbehavior stretched the daylong shoot into nearly a week of work.[3]
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."[4]
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.[5]Victor Fleming wanted to film in color in the South Seas.[2] When MGM refused, he threatened to quit.[6]:211
The screenplay began with the burying of Captain Flint's treasure and showed Long John Silver losing his leg. Fleming felt the movie should begin at Benbow Inn and cut the pages. The screenplay also included the scene where Silver's men give him the Black Spot, but during a test screening, Fleming noticed the audience was restless. He knew they were more interested in Jim and his friends, and the scene was removed.[7] Fleming designed the production to emulate N.C. Wyeth's illustrations for the 1911 edition.[6]:213
Reception
Treasure Island recouped its cost, quickly earning $525,000 over its $825,000 budget.[6]:218 It was MGM's third biggest film of the season with domestic rentals of $1,164,000 and foreign rentals of $1,100,000. Its 1937–38 reissue earned an additional $144,000.[1]Treasure Island's success was instrumental in vaulting Victor Fleming to the top of his profession. Producers felt safe entrusting big pictures with Fleming, and he would finish the decade with two of the industry's biggest: The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.[6]:218
Hollywood was undergoing a tonal shift, partially due to the federal government's intervention via the National Recovery Administration.[8] The NRA seal is displayed prominently at the start of the film, and faintly over the closing title card.[9] Films got less sensational that year, in particular at MGM. The New York Times felt Treasure Island failed to strike the same balance between sophistication and simplicity that other MGM titles did, such as The Thin Man and Viva Villa![10]
In The New Republic, Otis Ferguson derided the sentimental ending but raved Treasure Island demonstrated "what fresh possibilities in the way of beauty and free movement lie in this new art of the screen. The frank swagger of the story was caught from the first, and somewhere near the first there was a fine sequence of the ship getting under weigh, one of the most lovely I have seen."[11]
Writing for The Spectator in 1936, Graham Greene favorably compared the film to Midshipman Easy, describing Treasure Island as having "a deeper, a more poetic value", with characters and events providing rich symbolism and a palpable sense of good and evil.[12]
In Maurice Tourneur's Treasure Island from 14 years earlier, Jim Hawkins is played by a 19-year old girl: Shirley Mason. Critics howled at the effeminate portrayal of a classic boy adventurer. Fleming did not revise the character much, showing Cooper blubbering so often that he comes across as a "simpering mama's boy".[13]
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