THE SPANISH MAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 358, 3 May 1946, Page 29

THE SPANISH MAIN

(RKO Radio)

BEING still only a small boy at heart, I think I got my money’s worth from all the blood-letting, double-dealing, and swordfighting in The Spanish

Main (though I wish Hollywood pirates would learn not to use their delicate rapiers as if they were sabres or cutlasses). Perhaps for the same reason I also got my money’s worth from the sight of Miss Maureen O’Hara, who remains determinedly décolletée and immaculately beautiful throughout a series of rude encounters with coarse buccaneers, thanks to her having had the forethought to kring along her trousseau and a plentiful supply of the new Tortuga shade in lipstick, not to mention several pots of Caribbean facecream. Miss O’Hara, who is supposedly a Mexican heiress abducted by a bloody bold pirate when on her way to wed the Governor of Cartagena, isn’t really

anybody’s conventional idea of a proud Spanish beauty. But who cares about that? And you have to admit that she does look decorative when posed in a nightie of rare Brussels lace, with her golden hair all unbound, against a hecticoloured sunrise. And Paul Henried, as that handsome devil The Barracuda, the Scourge of the Spanish Main, is any abducted heiress’s idea of what a pirate should be, with his crisp curls, his manly chest, and his fascinating accent. As the Spanish Governor, Walter Slezak is as oily and villainous as you could wish, while Binnie Barnes demonstrates what the well-dressed female pirate will wear this season. All the same, I apparently wasn’t such a small boy at heart as the everage member of the audience, judging by the reception given to the film’s peak sequence. This occurs when the piratical heroy having captured the heroine in a sea fight and forced her to marry him, gives her five minutes to don the B,ussels lace nightie from her trousseau end prepare for bed. While she tremblingiy obeys, he obligingly turns his back and cleans his nails with his dagger; then picks her up, dumps her in the bunk, pulls the bedclothes up round her, kisses her lightly on the brow-and departs. This behaviour apparently cate as a complete surprise to most metnbers of the audience, who either laughed out loud or sighed almost as audibly with relief. But shiver my timbers, hadn’t they ever read any stories by Sabatini? Didn’t they know this is the way all well-bred pirates behave?