Then, when the Black Pirate is caught trying to release the woman, the Pirate Lieutenant exposes him as a traitor and the pirates force him to walk the plank. At noon the next day, with the ransom ship having failed to show, the Pirate Lieutenant goes to the woman to claim his prize. But just then, the Black Pirate, who with the help of the sympathetic one-armed pirate MacTavish, had survived being sent overboard, returns leading troops to stop the pirates. After a long fight, the pirates are routed. In the end, the Black Pirate is revealed to be a Duke, and the "Princess" he loves a noble Lady. Even MacTavish is moved to tears of joy by the happy ending. Cast Production notes Donald Crisp (MacTavish) had directed Fairbanks' Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925) in addition to playing the villain in that film. Crisp, who had been in films for over a decade at this point, was also a major director of silent films. He continued as a character actor for another forty years, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1942 (How Green Was My Valley). The script was adapted by Jack Cunningham from a story by Fairbanks, who used his middle names "Elton Thomas" as a pseudonym. The film was directed by Albert Parker. Fairbanks had conceived of the film as early as 1920 or 1921, after finishing The Mark of Zorro. He was allegedly inspired to produce the film after a conversation with Jackie Coogan. Off-hand, Coogan had mentioned how much he loved the Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle. Fairbanks and his art director, Carl Oscar Borg, sought to replicate Pyle's evocative illustrations in the film. Fairbanks' wife Mary Pickford doubled for Dove for the kiss between the Princess and Black Pirate at the end of the film. Technicolor The Black Pirate was the third feature to be filmed in an early two-tone Technicolor process that had been first introduced in the 1922 feature The Toll of the Sea. This reproduces a limited but pleasing range of colors. Ben-Hur — filmed around the same time — contains two-tone sequences but is shot primarily in black-and-white with tinting and toning in many scenes. Fairbanks spent considerable money on color tests before making Pirate. Two-tone Technicolor at that time required two strips of 35mm film to be fused together back-to-back to create the two-tone