This Week's Poll: Who is Your Favorite Movie Pirate?

Aargh, maties! This week’s poll focuses on those rascally rogues who were bold enough to fly the jolly roger aboard their plundering ships as they sailed across the silver screen. As always, it was tough to get the list of nominees down to a manageable size. As a result, privateers got the boot (sorry, fans of The Sea Hawk) and, of course, there’s no Johnny Depp because Pirates of the Caribbean isn’t a film classic (time will tell!). It was also with reluctance that I omitted such famous movie pirates as Long John Silver (Robert Newton in Treasure Island), Captain Kidd (Charles Laughton played him twice), and Blackbeard (Peter Ustinov played his ghost). With that said, here are your nominees:

Captain Vallo (Burt Lancaster, The Crimson Pirate) – Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat (Burt’s former acrobat partner) play the world’s most athletic pirates in this lighthearted action flick from Robert Siodmak. It’s lively and fun and a little hectic at times. It’s amazing that Burt made this in 1952 and then From Here to Eternity the next year.

Captain Peter Blood (Errol Flynn, Captain Blood) – Flynn vaulted to stardom as a wrongly convicted physician who is sold into slavery and escapes to become a famous pirate. It was the first pairing of Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, who would become a classic screen couple. Based on the bestselling novel by Rafael Sabatini.

Jamie Waring (Tyrone Powers, The Black Swan) – Powers portrays a roguish pirate who reluctantly reforms…only to return to his swashbuckling ways as one of the good guys. Maureen O’Hara, who would later play a pirate herself, is Jamie’s eventual love interest. George Sanders co-stars a baddie called Redbeard. Also based on a Sabatini novel.

Serafin (Gene Kelly, The Pirate) – Okay, Kelly isn’t really a pirate in this movie…he plays a circus troupe performer who poses as the notorious “Mack the Black” to win the love of Judy Garland. But he still spends much of the film acting like a pirate…plus he sings and dances “Be a Clown”—so he’s get included in this poll!

Prudence “Spitfire” Stevens (Maureen O’Hara, Against All Flags) – Ms. O’Hara proves that female pirates can hold their own against the guys in this entertaining swashbuckler. She plays a Madagascar-based buccaneer whose suspects Errol Flynn of being a spy among her fellow mates (she’s right!).

Captain Hook (Hans Conried, Peter Pan) – Conreid provided the voice for the animated Captain Hook in Disney’s 1953 colorful Peter Pan. But for those of us who grew up watching the TV adaptation of the Peter Pan Broadway musical, the definitive Hook was Cyril Ritchard. For this poll, though we’ll stick with Disney’s Hook since more people may be familiar with him.

The Black Pirate (Douglas Fairbanks) –Fairbanks stars as a young nobleman who becomes a buccaneer to avenge his father whose untimely death was caused by…pirates! This classic silent adventures was originally shot in early two-strip Technicolor, though most prints today are black-and-white.

As always, any comments about omissions are welcomed. In the meantime, please cast your vote in the green sidebar on the right.