The Pirate (1948) on Netflix
Approved19481h 42mAdventureComedyMusical
Manuela Alva dreams of the pirate Macoco while her aunt Inez arranges her marriage to the older mayor Don Pedro Vargas. A traveling performer, Serafin, poses as Macoco to win her.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb6.8/106,122 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes78%
Trailer
Plot summary
Manuela Alva lives in Calvados, a Caribbean village, in the 1830s. She longs for the legendary pirate Macoco, known as Mack the Black, to carry her off. Her strict aunt Inez has chosen the town's older, dull new mayor, Don Pedro Vargas, as her husband. Manuela, an orphan without a dowry, agrees because the relatives who raised her are short of money. She wants romance, so she talks Inez into a trip to Port Sebastian before the wedding. There a traveling performer named Serafin spots her and becomes smitten. She tells him she is engaged and rebuffs him, but he invites her to his show. She cannot sleep and slips out to watch it.
Cast
- Mary Jo Ellisas Lizarda
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Pirate (1948)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- MGM executives found the choreography of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly's filmed "Voodoo" number too openly sexual for the day's audiences and ordered it removed; when studio chief Louis B. Mayer saw the footage he was so outraged he had the negatives burned.
- Judy Garland was absent for 99 of the 135 days of rehearsals and shooting on The Pirate, missing the bulk of the schedule.
- After five months' work, Anita Loos and Joseph Than read a script that reversed S. N. Behrman's premise, turning the leading man from an actor impersonating a seaman into a dancing pirate pretending to be an entertainer; Arthur Freed replaced them with Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich.
- The Nicholas Brothers joined Gene Kelly for the first rendition of "Be a Clown", but theater owners in the South removed the number from their prints, fearing white audiences would not accept two Black dancers performing with a white dancer as equals.
- Arthur Freed ordered the opening number "Mack the Black" re-recorded because he disliked Kay Thompson's cacophonous arrangement; Judy Garland called Thompson's treatment of the song "insanity" and Cole Porter said the number "has me in a dither."
- Cole Porter's "Be a Clown" has been suggested as plagiarized by Arthur Freed for "Make 'em Laugh" in Singin' in the Rain; screenwriter Betty Comden called the resemblance still a mystery and said they never brought it up with Freed.
- Gene Kelly, an aspiring film director, worked closely with Vincente Minnelli during the shoot to learn filmmaking behind the camera; their collaboration reached its peak a few years later on their most successful film together, An American in Paris.
