"Death Valley Days" deserves note for devoting several episodes to early California history when the area was under Spanish control. "Yankee Pirate" opens in 1820 when a raid by pirates on the California coast meets with resistance when the local landowners band together and drive them off. They capture one of the pirates, an American, who would have been immediately killed but for the intervention of Lupe (Pamela Duncan), daughter of Don Jose Ortega (Edward Colmans). Lupe is startled when the American speaks to her. "You speak our language," she tells him, indicating that even though the actors are speaking English we're to assume that only Spanish is being spoken. We thus learn that the American speaks Spanish. His name, we eventually learn, is Joe Chapman (Ken Clark), from Boston, and he was shanghaied and taken aboard a ship traveling to the Pacific. He fell in with the pirates because it was the only way he could get back to America. He is assigned as a bondservant to the household of Don Antonio Lugo (Gabriel Curtiz), a neighboring landowner, and, through hard work, an extraordinary skill set, and exemplary behavior, he earns the respect and friendship of Don Antonio. When he learns that Don Antonio has asked for the hand of Lupe in marriage, Joe asks to be transferred to work at the mission, which is many miles away. It has become obvious that he loves Lupe also, but feels he cannot speak up as long as he's not a free man. While there are detours on the road to true love, the path is never quite blocked.
It's a fascinating slice of history from a period that is not widely covered in westerns. (See also my review of a later episode of "Death Valley Days" entitled "The Firebrand.") It's nice to see an American who becomes part of the fabric of Spanish society in America and is treated as an important member of the community. We see no other Americans in the film except for some of the multiracial members of the briefly seen pirate crew. (A black crewman is also captured and he's immediately assigned by the Spaniards to slave labor and is never seen or heard from again. It would have been interesting to see an episode devoted to his story.) Ken Clark, who plays Joe, had a marginal career in Hollywood in the 1950s, appearing in TV shows and the occasional film, before heading out, like so many of his contemporaries, to Italy, where he appeared in Hercules movies, westerns, war movies and spy movies throughout the 1960s. He's quite good here and it's too bad he didn't get a starring role in a long-running western series that would have insured some form of stardom here and maybe gotten him the kind of career he deserved.
I saw this episode when it ran on the Encore Western cable channel as part of its regular weekday afternoon schedule of classic TV westerns.
It's a fascinating slice of history from a period that is not widely covered in westerns. (See also my review of a later episode of "Death Valley Days" entitled "The Firebrand.") It's nice to see an American who becomes part of the fabric of Spanish society in America and is treated as an important member of the community. We see no other Americans in the film except for some of the multiracial members of the briefly seen pirate crew. (A black crewman is also captured and he's immediately assigned by the Spaniards to slave labor and is never seen or heard from again. It would have been interesting to see an episode devoted to his story.) Ken Clark, who plays Joe, had a marginal career in Hollywood in the 1950s, appearing in TV shows and the occasional film, before heading out, like so many of his contemporaries, to Italy, where he appeared in Hercules movies, westerns, war movies and spy movies throughout the 1960s. He's quite good here and it's too bad he didn't get a starring role in a long-running western series that would have insured some form of stardom here and maybe gotten him the kind of career he deserved.
I saw this episode when it ran on the Encore Western cable channel as part of its regular weekday afternoon schedule of classic TV westerns.
