It's been a long time since I've read The Sea Hawk, but I think I'll pull it out and read it again. The Errol Flynn movie of The Sea Hawk was a fun romp, but it didn't seem to bear any relationship with Sabatini's novel.

I think it's sort of a tribute to Sabatini that he created a fictional character in Captain Blood that lots of people believe was a real person. Right. The movie was a pretty good adaptation of the book.

I would heap blessings upon anyone who would make a sincere effort to do a good adaptation of Scaramouche and actually came close. It's such a great story.

And if they would do the fencing scenes with real fencers, with no swinging from chandeliers, leaping over the furniture, and running up and down stairs. I was in San Francisco in 1950, taking fencing lessons from Hans Halberstadt while they were doing location filming of parts of the Stewart Granger version. The two brief duel scenes in the Bois de Boulogne were actually shot in Golden Gate Park and coached by Halberstadt. Two of Halberstadt's better students did the fencing. It was shot in the early morning fog and at a distance. Woolfred Wooten, who looked a bit like Granger, stood in for him, and Gordon Scheiley (sp?), wearing slightly different clothes for each duel, "died" twice on the morning they filmed the scenes. In the salle d'armes, I fenced with both of these guys. That final idiotic dragged-out "duel" scene in the theater was filmed somewhere else. Typical Hollywood flummery!

And Zorro! Another boyhood hero of mine. Thanks for the heads-up, Amos   I'll have to get the book!

The 1940s The Mark of Zorro had one of the best duel scenes ever filmed. Both Tyrone Power and Basil Rathbone were good fencers, and Fred Cavins, the fight director for that film, just turned the two of them loose to do their own thing. Apart from the fact that it was completely anachronistic—they used a style of saber-fencing that came into existence many decades after the period being portrayed, and both of them were using modern, light-weight competition sabers (I have two just like them)—the actual swordplay was excellent (give or take slipping on a carpet now and then). Which shows they can do it!

Fun!!

Don Firth