Treasure Island is the most famous pirate story
every written, and the most famous pirate in it, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is
Long John Silver. And the most famous Long John Silver was the actor Robert
Newton. Robert Newton gave us pirates.
Long John Silver came from the mind of Robert Lewis Stevenson,
and is said to have been inspired by a friend of Stevenson’s, W E Henley.
Henley was a poet and journalist, and the author of the poem “Invictus,” the
last stanza of which is:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the
scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Henley spoke of his punishments and torment out of
experience. One of his legs had been amputated for “tuberculosis of the knee,”
and he later spent nearly two years in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary having his
remaining leg saved by the great surgeon Joseph Lister, at the expense of
immense personal suffering.
His wooden leg and expansive personality made a great
impression on Stevenson, who wrote to him: “I will now make a confession. It
was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot Long John
Silver.”
Robert Newton was born on June 1, 1905, in Shaftsberry, Dorset.
Newton grew up in what is called the West Country of England, a place which was
the origin of many real pirates. The son of landscape painter Algernon Newton,
he started his career as an actor on the stage at age 16, in the Birmingham
Reparatory Theater. He was soon working in London, and did well in a variety of
plays, including Horatio in Lawrence Olivier’s 1939 production of Hamlet. During WWII Newton served in the
Royal Navy, and, strangely enough, continued acting in films, including a
version of Oliver Twist in which he played a truly chilling Bill Sikes.
We don’t think of Britain producing movies while they were
fighting the Nazis, but folks at home needed to have some entertainment. During
the war, Disney studios had released several of their movies in Britain, and
had made quite a bit of money. After the war, they were faced with a problem.
