The Child Performance Dossier: "A High Wind in Jamaica": blank looks and missing voices

In Alexander Mackendrick's 1965 film adaptation of Richard Hughes's novel, "A High Wind in Jamaica" (1929), there is a key sequence in which Anthony Quinn - playing the irascible pirate captain, Chavez - is tussling with a ten-year-old girl, Emily, played by the child actor Deborah Baxter.1 As this troublingly mismatched couple scramble about on the ship's deck, there is a sudden pause, a silence in which the two characters, face to face and on top of one another, appear to share a moment of recognition and seem apparently alarmed, excited and confused. While others envisioned a "buddy movie" between Chavez and Zac, what they got was a 'love story' between Emily and Chavez. This seems extraordinary from the perspective of today's contemporary sensitivity to 'intergenerational' encounters, but while provocative it is less unusual than is perhaps remembered.