Although Warner Brothers studio had assumed that the many costumed films that studios such as MGM had earlier produced would never succeed during the years of the American Great Depression, they nonetheless took a chance by producing "Captain Blood" (also 1935). The film is a swashbuckler action drama based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini and directed by Michael Curtiz. "Captain Blood" starred a then little-known contract bit-part actor and former extra, Errol Flynn, alongside the little-known de Havilland. According to film historian Tony Thomas, both actors had "classic good looks, cultured speaking voices, and a sense of distant aristocracy about them". Filmed between August 5 and October 29, 1935, "Captain Blood" gave deHavilland the opportunity to appear in her first costumed historical romance and adventure epic, a genre to which she was well suited, given her beauty and elegance. In the film, she played Arabella Bishop, the niece of a Jamaica plantation owner, who purchases at auction an Irish physician wrongly condemned to servitude. The on-screen chemistry between deHavilland and Flynn was evident from their first scenes together, where clashes between her character's spirited hauteur and his character's playful braggadocio did not mask their mutual attraction to each other. Arabella is a feisty young woman who knows what she wants and is willing to fight for it. The bantering tone of their exchanges in the filmthe healthy give-and-take and mutual respectbecame the basis for their on-screen relationship in subsequent films. "Captain Blood" was released on December 28, 1935, and received good reviews and wide public appeal. DeHavilland's performance was singled out in "The New York Times" and "Variety". The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The popular success of the film, as well as the critical response to the on-screen couple, led to seven additional collaborations.