The Buccaneers, Robin Hood, and Hannah Weinstein...it's not what you think.

There are so many interesting stories embedded in TheArchive’s deep archive. With a vast library of content and a rich history, we continue to distribute surprises every day. 

For example, streaming on TheArchive now are all 39 episodes of 1956’s The Buccaneers starring the inimitable Robert Shaw, possibly best known for his iconic performance as Quint the shark hunter in Jaws, but an Oscar-nominee and Hollywood stalwart nonetheless, and a damn solid Buccaneer as well. 

Talk about difficult schedules. 39 episodes shot over a single season, nearly a record, and only one number shy of Tom Brady’s record last year of passing touchdowns in a single season. That’s a reach in comparable statistics, but we are talking about the Buccaneers. 

If you watch the series, one can see how amazingly, nearly 65 years later, art and life do continue to imitate one another. The plot centers around Captain Dan Tempest who as an ex-pirate, received a pardon from the King and turned privateer after his stronghold was taken over by the Crown’s soldiers. Alongside his motley crew of ravage sailors, Tempest must maintain stability in the region by sticking up for what's good and right. The series finale is ironic and also timely. Tempest sees a newspaper shut down for spreading stories of government corruption and he thinks there may be some truth behind the stories and decides to make a stand. Timely for obvious reasons, and ironic given this was its final episode ever. 

Sometimes irony and a timeless issue make for evergreen stories.

 

But there’s more….in doing some digging on our library of content and its historical context, we came to discover that The Buccaneers series was produced by Hannah Weinstein, an American journalist and left-wing political activist turned television producer who carried many of her points-of-view to her career as a television writer in the 1950s. Her story is quite remarkable. In the early 1950’s, she left America to flee the anticommunism wave, and founded a film company in England funded by the American Communist Party.  

Prior to The Buccaneers, Weinstein created and EP’d The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Richard Greene. She was also involved in the early days of syndication with this series as it was sold, ironically, back to the US market. 

Weinstein's creation of the Robin Hood series is a bit of a Sherwood Forest story itself. Her intention was to help other blacklisted American writers, all of whom adopted pseudonyms to write for her. At least 22 American blacklisted writers wrote on the four year run of Robin Hood which coincided with her 1956 greenlight on The Buccaneers. Weinstein was marked a "concealed Communist” by the FBI who discovered her "influence by the communists" but no action was ever taken. Weinstein did eventually return to the United States where she continued her social activism and raised money to support Senators opposed to the war in Vietnam. 

Sometimes it takes current events like the Buccaneers' “SuperbOwl” victory (and Reddit's) and the “Robinhood Tendies” to help TheArchive feature our evergreen movies and series that sometimes have more connection to history and our culture than we, or their creators, could have imagined. 

Watch The Buccaneers and The Adventures of Robin Hood now.

   

           

     

TheArchive channel is dedicated to aficionados and lovers of story, craft, and silver screen fun – streaming rare, retro, and 4K restored films and classic TV. From indies and series, to Oscar winning documentaries, unearthed MOWs, and a killer horror library, TheArchive delivers forgotten, never-before-seen gems for free. Marilyn, Karloff, and Orson Welles stream alongside Reese, Keanu, and Samuel L. Jackson. Find true stories of Queen, Hendrix, and Sinatra, an LGBTQ library, MLK bios, and world history docs. TheArchive has the movies and shows you either saw, should’ve seen, or should be watching now!