Swashbuckling.

If ever there was a word to define an era (or a movie role), it’s that one.  We don’t have real life swashbucklers anymore, and the last one seen in the movies was a departure from the macho swashbuckler of yore, Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow.

There have been plenty of actors (and actresses!) who played swashbucklers, but in our view, the definitive swashbuckler was Errol Flynn who in real life actually introduced a breed to the United States (which breed? Find out here). From Antonio Banderas, Orlando Bloom and Sean Connery to Burt Lancaster and Geoffrey Rush, each put their own brand on flamboyant swordplay and romance.

Another actor to have played a “gentleman swashbuckler” was Stewart Granger. In the 1955 movie, “Moonfleet,” the popular British film actor played Jeremy Fox, an elegant but morally ambiguous character “up to his eyeballs” with smugglers. Naturally, there are several love interests in the plot, and one of them is Lady Ashwood played by Joan Greenwood.

Greenwood, another Brit, spent four months on a part that lasted about five minutes on the screen, but her role in the movie is our segue to a breed, the Japanese Chin.  Lady Ashford is married to a gem of a man willing to offer up his wife to Fox (she’s not entirely resistant) to get in on a lucrative deal with the Steward Granger character. In the film, she is usually carrying or seen with her dogs, Japanese Chins.

Behind the scenes on the movie set, two of the movie’s child actors, Jon Whiteley and Donna Corcoran, would play with the dogs:

 

You can watch Moonfleet on TCM or Direct TV.

Image:  Japanese Chin by James Willie, 2009