Robert Louis Stevenson

TREASURE ISLAND

Adapted by Ralph rose

Produced by les mitchel

Chorus under the direction of Richard davis

The Cast

Narrator and John Silver. BASIL RATHBONE

Jim Hawkins.................-...dix davis

Billy Bones.................. ken Christy...................

Squire Trelawney......raymond lawrence

Captain Smollett...........richard aherne

Pirate......................Joseph granby

Ben Gunn.....................harry lang

COLUMBIA MASTERWORKS

Set M-MM 553

Robert Louis Stevenson was thirty-one

years old when he started to write Treasure

Island. The original title was The Sea Cook,

and the idea for the story was suggested by

a large, brightly colored map that he once

made to entertain a small schoolboy who lived

near his home and whose friendship Steven-

son had cultivated.

Stevenson was quite modest about the origi-

nality of Treasure Island, and admitted that

there were elements in the plot that were pos-

sibly contained in other stories. In his own

foreword to Treasure Island he says: No

doubt the parrot once belonged to Robinson

Crusoe, and other elements of the story can

be found in Edgar Allan Poe. Once I chanced

to pick up Tales of a Traveler and was sur-

prised to find in that book Captain Billy

Bones, his chest, and a good deal of material

Basil Rathbone

detail of my first chapters. In fact, the whole

inner spirit appeared to be the property of

Washington Irving.”

Stevenson’s concept of the originality of

some of the material proved to be of little

importance to his readers, however, for Treas-

ure Island became one of the most successful

— if not the best known — of all his books,

and remains, as always, a glorious adventure

to all not acquainted with the story, and a

thesaurus of continuing thrills and interest to

those who have read it again and again.

Through the medium of phonograph rec-

ords, Treasure Island literally comes to life.

The stormy oaths of Long John Silver are no

longer mere written bellowings on the printed

page to be punctuated with an exclamation

point. His rough and raucous voice is there

to be heard, as is the chattering of the parrot,

the dying groans of Billy Bones, and the bat-

tle between the ship’s officers and the mutin-

ous pirates in all its exciting detail.

In this album Basil Rathbone, star of stage,

screen, and radio, adds another brilliant per-

formance to his long list of superb character-

izations on Columbia Records, which include

Scrooge in Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and the

Narrator in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf,

not to forget his reading of Edna St. Vincent

Millay’s The Murder of Lidice. Best known

perhaps for his interpretation of Sherlock

Holmes, Mr. Rathbone in Treasure Island

demonstrates his unlimited versatility by his

performance as both Long John Silver and

the Story Teller.