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Dressed in flowing robes and a colourful turban, chiselled features combined with dark rugged looks, Khalifa Shaheen looks very much the part of a scheming Pirate Captain in Walt Disney’s featurette, Hamad and the Pirates.
Released in 1971, as a film in the series, The Wonderful World of Disney, Hamad and the Pirates is a tale of a young orphan boy, Hamad who goes to sea with a group of pearl divers and falls overboard during a storm.
He is rescued by none other than a pirate dhow roaming the waters of Bahrain with priceless treasures and antiquities stolen from the island.
The adventure begins as Hamad escapes the pirate dhow and travels across Dubai and the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia to reach Manama where he helps the authorities to catch the pirates and recover the stolen treasure.
Khalifa Shaheen plays the part of a swarthy, swashbuckling pirate captain and is the perfect combination of a devious rouge and an exotic Arabian bandit in the film.
In fact, Khalifa was picked as the pirate captain over Hollywood heavyweights Omar Sharif and Charles Bronson.
“I was the Production Manager and Assistant Director and the role of the pirate captain came out of the blue. Walt Disney wanted an older and famous Hollywood actor to star as the pirate captain but the director, Richard Lyford suggested that because I knew the language, local culture and nuances I would be perfect for the role.
“Roy Disney, nephew of Walt Disney, approved the screen test and I was cast as the pirate captain. They also saved thousands of dollars by casting me as I did not demand a high fee for my acting role!” chuckles Khalifa Shaheen, who was aged 30 at the time of filming Hamad and the Pirates.
Since childhood, stories of Peter Pan and Captain Hook, Captain Pugwash and his adventures, Blackbeard and Treasure Island have captured the imagination of young minds.
Audiences have always been fascinated by a storyline involving pirates, treasures, damsels in distress and mysterious faraway lands and are fed with a steady stream of pirate movies involving romance, action and adventure.
So the pirate theme has been constant fodder for the audiences, be it a 1926 silent movie, The Black Pirate starring Douglas Fairbanks Sr. that features one of the most famous swordfight scenes ever filmed and made Fairbanks a swashbuckling legend of his time … to the 2007 multi-billion dollar blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
“Pirates existed in every culture and age and so it is a universal theme. Pirate stories and films are magical and packed with adventure.
“They appeal to the imagination and this is the formula that keeps the audiences coming back for more.
“Although pirates were real-life people because their existence at sea was full of daring exploits they became mysterious and legendary figures, hence the bad boy image they projected was damning yet awe inspiring,” says Khalifa who in the film sits at the helm of the pirate ship and steers the wooden pirate dhow effortlessly.
There is a clip in the movie where the crew lowers the double sails while he lifts a wooden cover at the controls and exposes two Rolls Royce engines fitted in the dhow and zooms the vessel forward out of the police patrol boat’s reach.
“Roy Disney loved the idea of a high speed pirate boat disguised as a coastal trading dhow whizzing away,” he remembers.
Hamad and the Pirates may appear dated now on viewing today but back in the 70s it unquestionably put the tiny island of Bahrain on the map.
“When it was first released on March 7, 1971, it aired on Sunday night 7pm prime time in America when entire families sat down to watch television,” says Khalifa.
The film to this day remains a noteworthy record of the island’s past as it was 37 years ago with its wooden dhows and pearl divers, camel trains, the bustling souq of Bab Al Bahrain and the narrow streets of Manama.
The film was shown across Bahrain’s schools as an educational insight into the island’s culture and way of life of the local community.
Khalifa became a local celebrity and received many letters especially from children of Awali School who were asked by their teachers to write to the pirate captain telling him about their favourite part in the movie. To this day Khalifa has a record of the fan mail as a memento of his swashbuckling role.
Khalifa Shaheen has spent a lifetime behind a camera lens. He joined Bapco’s film unit in 1958 and was the first Gulf pro to work with 35mm professional camera.
In 1959, Bapco’s public relations department was the only source of film footage on the island where the organisation’s film crew made documentary films about Bapco and newsreel covering main events on the island.
“Since professional filming crews were so few in this part of the world I was regularly ‘loaned’ to other organisations to film projects for them. It was during one of my secondments to Aramco in the late 60s that I met Richard Lyford who was in Saudi Arabia at the time making a film about the House of Saud,” he recounts.
For the Hollywood director a local cameraman with the professional know how was a rare find and he started talking to him about the Walt Disney television film about Bahrain in the pipeline.
Initially titled as ‘The boy from Bahrain’, the film was supposed to run for an hour but later the decision was taken to rename the production and expand it.
Khalifa helped Richard research the project, pinpoint filming locations and help with technical know-how.
“The experience of filming was hard as almost 90 per cent of the movie was shot in water. And since nature is not constant there were times when we had to wait for days to get the same sea state as in an earlier shot.
“Also, we were aiming to get a clear horizon for the filming. Some shots were in the sea while the others were in a pool that was made to look like the sea.
“These days with video and computer graphics, digital images and other high-tech gadgetry and tricks it is much more sophisticated and easier to make a movie of this sort,” he says while comparing the technology of yesteryears to modern day state-of-the-art knowledge.
Nowadays, Khalifa is a director of the successful KSDi photographic company based in Budaiya.
Talk of a sequel was rife after the success of Hamad and the Pirates. Khalifa had the storyline and plans ready for the next pirate adventure named ‘The Purple Falcon’.
Unfortunately due to lack of funds at the time the script never saw the light of a production studio. But the pirate captain hasn’t given up hope and still dreams of directing and producing the ‘Purple Falcon’ for the silver screen one day.
EXCLUSIVE
By Asma Salman
asma.salman@gulfweekly.com
