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Surprisingly, the English Civil War has inspired only a handful of films and
a small number of television productions, the latter most often versions of
Captain Frederick Marryat's children's classic The Children of the New Forest
(BBC, 1955; 1964; 1977). Rather annoyingly, both big and small screen forms tend
to portray the conflict from a Royalist perspective.
While the 1950s television costume adventure series abounded with pirates,
knights and assorted period freedom-fighters, the figure of the colourful,
folkloric highwayman was sorely missed - although a British pilot episode
attempt was made with The Highwayman, starring Louis Hayward (ITV (London), tx.
14/6/1958).
In late 1956, veteran film director-producer George King, remembered now
chiefly for his vigorous melodramas with Tod Slaughter (e.g. Sweeney Todd the
Demon Barber of Fleet Street, 1935; Crimes at the Dark House, 1940), noted the
increasing popularity of the swashbuckler trend and entered television
production with the Civil War-era escapades of the Gay Cavalier.
The series' hero, Captain Claude Duval, was based on a real-life highwayman
(1643-1670) whose exploits, embellished in contemporary popular literature, made
him second only to Dick Turpin in the public's imagination. In 1953 the British
comic paper Comet reintroduced the character, now as a gallant Frenchman who had
become a Royalist captain during the war and afterwards served as an agent
working for the exiled Charles II.
So popular was Duval as a comic strip hero (the serial strips ran until 1959)
that astute producer King quickly began adapting the stories into a TV series.
He cast French actor Christian Marquand as the dashing Duval, and Ivan Craig as
his sinister Roundhead adversary Major Mould, chief of Cromwell's intelligence
service (the latter character also a cross-over from the pictorial strip).
While little seems to be known about this apparently 'lost' series - with no
record or trace of existing prints (so far) - available information suggests
that its horse-and-rapier, chase-and-rescue format differed little from
contemporary swashbucklers.
Terence Fisher, no stranger to small-screen swordplay with his body of work
for Sapphire's The Adventures of Robin Hood (ITV, 1955-59), and Lance Comfort, who previously toiled on The Count of Monte Cristo series (ITV, 1956), were the
alternating directors of this yet-to-be-proved intriguing swashbuckler.
Tise Vahimagi
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