Award Snub: The Academy Awards that year allowed write-in votes. Based on write-ins alone, Michael Curtiz would have won the Oscar for best director, but on the night he lost to John Ford for his work on The Informer. Erich Wolfgang Korngold and writer Casey Robinson also failed to be properly nominated, though they both received large numbers of postal votes for their work. Errol Flynn also failed to get a Best Actor nomination.
The movie alone is homoerotic. The book, on the other hand...
"It is time fully to disclose the fact that the survival of the story of Captain Blood's exploits is due entirely to the industry of Jeremy Pitt, the Somersetshire shipmaster. In addition to his ability as a navigator, this amiable young man appears to have wielded an indefatigable pen, and to have been inspired to indulge its fluency by the affection he very obviously bore to Peter Blood."
Levasseur, are you proposing marriage or a criminal partnership there? Every scene they share is basically dripping with homoeroticism. The swordfight makes you wonder whether they couldn't have solved their differences in a more... sensual manner.
Inferred Holocaust: The film ends with Captain Blood appointed the new governor of the English colony on Jamaica, based out Port Royal, by the new king, William III. The revolution that brought William to the throne took place in 1688. Port Royal was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1692.
Narm Charm: One must have a very hard heart not to smile at the film's Silent Era-style supertitles, including "Carving a Crimson Career"; "He began with nothing but a Ship, a Handful of Men — and a Brain"; and "Blood!" "Blood!" "BLOOD!" in successively larger letters.
in 1692.