Dan Pritchard (Leslie Howard), the son in Pritchard and Pritchard, shipping magnates of San Francisco, has been engaged to Maisie Morrison (Karen Morley) for years but she shows no sign of setting a date, or even of becoming passionate—a friend comments that "her mother raised her in an ice box." An old sea captain arrives at the docks infected with leprosy and asks Dan to become guardian to his daughter Tamea (Conchita Montenegro), born of a Polynesian woman and raised on the islands. To the eyes of a city dweller, she's lovely but primitive, and the captain wants her educated and civilized. As the captain leaves, Dan mutters to him, "I suppose you’ll be … going away," and, accompanied by the mournful singing of his crew, the captain jumps into the ocean, presumably to die. The childlike Tamea (referred to once as a "delightful little savage") is quite a handful for Dan. As he and Maisie attend to her socialization, Tamea is at first playful but quickly becomes knowingly flirtatious—she wants Dan to watch her as she tries on dresses, and then forces him to kiss her to do his bidding. He seems both amused and titillated by her behavior, and his friend Mark warns Maisie that she needs to step in to stop Dan from catching "tropical fever." But by then, it's too late: Dan's father sends Tamea back to the islands, but Dan follows and soon he and Tamea are living together. He is warned by Porter, a dissolute islander, that he'll come to no good, and indeed, their idyll is brief; Tamea begins keeping company with her former island boyfriend Tolongo, and Dan seems resigned to sharing her. Eventually, Maisie shows up, hoping to being Dan back home, but can she overcome his case of tropical fever?
This kind of exotic hothouse melodrama was common in the 1930s and this is among the better ones. Being pre-Code, it doesn't have to pussyfoot around the fact that Dan and Tamea have a sexual relationship (unlike later films like WHITE CARGO in which marriage has to happen first). The dispassionate Leslie Howard is a surprising choice for this role, but he does play lust-addled better than you might expect. His decline is charted partly by his wardrobe, which goes from crisp and clean in the States to grungy and sweaty on the island. Montenegro is fine, though she left Hollywood behind fairly quickly and made a career in Spanish-language movies. Morley does well in a hard role—she has to be unlikable (we understand Dan's frustration with her coldness) but sympathetic (we have to be on her side when she tries to save him). I must admit that, despite Dan's supposed ruin as he becomes the weak third point of a tropical triangle, I was sort of rooting for him to stay on the island. Also with Hale Hamilton who seems to be doing a Robert Benchley imitation as Mark, and C. Aubrey Smith as Dan's father. Bob Gilbert, in his only film role, makes a sexy Tolongo (pictured at right). The things that made this risque in 1931 (premarital sex, interracial romance, a menage-a-trois situation) no longer resonate so much, so fans of the era and the genre will like this, but others may have little patience. Pictured at top are Howard and Montenegro. [TCM]
Dan Pritchard (Leslie Howard), the son in Pritchard and Pritchard, shipping magnates of San Francisco, has been engaged to Maisie Morrison (Karen Morley) for years but she shows no sign of setting a date, or even of becoming passionate—a friend comments that "her mother raised her in an ice box." An old sea captain arrives at the docks infected with leprosy and asks Dan to become guardian to his daughter Tamea (Conchita Montenegro), born of a Polynesian woman and raised on the islands. To the eyes of a city dweller, she's lovely but primitive, and the captain wants her educated and civilized. As the captain leaves, Dan mutters to him, "I suppose you’ll be … going away," and, accompanied by the mournful singing of his crew, the captain jumps into the ocean, presumably to die. The childlike Tamea (referred to once as a "delightful little savage") is quite a handful for Dan. As he and Maisie attend to her socialization, Tamea is at first playful but quickly becomes knowingly flirtatious—she wants Dan to watch her as she tries on dresses, and then forces him to kiss her to do his bidding. He seems both amused and titillated by her behavior, and his friend Mark warns Maisie that she needs to step in to stop Dan from catching "tropical fever." But by then, it's too late: Dan's father sends Tamea back to the islands, but Dan follows and soon he and Tamea are living together. He is warned by Porter, a dissolute islander, that he'll come to no good, and indeed, their idyll is brief; Tamea begins keeping company with her former island boyfriend Tolongo, and Dan seems resigned to sharing her. Eventually, Maisie shows up, hoping to being Dan back home, but can she overcome his case of tropical fever?
This kind of exotic hothouse melodrama was common in the 1930s and this is among the better ones. Being pre-Code, it doesn't have to pussyfoot around the fact that Dan and Tamea have a sexual relationship (unlike later films like WHITE CARGO in which marriage has to happen first). The dispassionate Leslie Howard is a surprising choice for this role, but he does play lust-addled better than you might expect. His decline is charted partly by his wardrobe, which goes from crisp and clean in the States to grungy and sweaty on the island. Montenegro is fine, though she left Hollywood behind fairly quickly and made a career in Spanish-language movies. Morley does well in a hard role—she has to be unlikable (we understand Dan's frustration with her coldness) but sympathetic (we have to be on her side when she tries to save him). I must admit that, despite Dan's supposed ruin as he becomes the weak third point of a tropical triangle, I was sort of rooting for him to stay on the island. Also with Hale Hamilton who seems to be doing a Robert Benchley imitation as Mark, and C. Aubrey Smith as Dan's father. Bob Gilbert, in his only film role, makes a sexy Tolongo (pictured at right). The things that made this risque in 1931 (premarital sex, interracial romance, a menage-a-trois situation) no longer resonate so much, so fans of the era and the genre will like this, but others may have little patience. Pictured at top are Howard and Montenegro. [TCM]
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