Though Rafael Sabatini’s popularity may have faded somewhat over the decades, in his day the Italian-English writer might have been regarded as the heir apparent to Alexandre Dumas. His bestselling novels are full of romance and derring-do. However, unlike Dumas, I’m not sure if any of his books have really endured in the consciousness of the wider public.

His memory is kept alive principally through film adaptations of his works. And why not? His incident-filled pages seem tailor-made for the silver screen. Film adaptations of “Scaramouche,” “The Sea Hawk” and “Captain Blood” were all made during the silent era. A long-lost John Gilbert classic adapted from Sabatini’s “Bardelys the Magnificent” has only recently been rediscovered. Several of these, of course, were remade, more or less, to even greater success during the era of talking pictures.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hear Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s music for the Errol Flynn classics “Captain Blood” (1935) and “The Sea Hawk” (1940). The former provided Flynn with his breakout role; the latter actually has nothing at all to do with Sabatini’s original plot, despite the writer’s prominent onscreen credit.

We’ll also enjoy Alfred Newman’s rollicking main title music for the pirate opus “The Black Swan” (1942), which starred Tyrone Power, and one of Victor Young’s most rousing and melodically inventive scores, for “Scaramouche” (1952), which featured Stewart Granger in probably the best swashbuckler of the 1950s.

Polish up those seven-league boots and don your gaudiest plumage. We’ll set sail with movies inspired by the novels of Rafael Sabatini on “Picture Perfect,” this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org!