PANAMA LADY (1938)

This is a classic-era B-movie exotic melodrama, so we know right off the bat that the Lady of the title is going to be a lady of the evening, in Production Code disguise as a down-on-her-luck chorus girl stranded in the Tropics somewhere. Sure enough chorus girl Lucy (Lucille Ball) is working in a dive in Panama when her boss Lenore has to let all the girls go. She pushes for marriage to her no-good boyfriend Roy but says he's too busy right now, and immediately takes off in his plane for business. She stows away and finds out he's actually involved in a smuggling ring, and he has her sent back to the city. Lenore gives Lucy a job as a hostess and when a charming roughneck oilman named McTeague refuses to pay his tab, Lucy and Lenore get him drunk and steal a wad of cash from him. When he's sobered up, he blames Lucy for his loss and takes her away to South America to be his housekeeper (or under the Production Code layer, mistress). She leaves a note for Roy to come and get her, but soon she develops some feelings for McTeague, although she has to deal with the jealousy of his other housekeeper (mistress) Cheema. Soon Roy arrives, assuming that Lucy ratted out his smuggling business and wanting revenge against her, but he also decides he might be able to steal McTeague's claim on some oil land, and the tensions between Lucy, McTeague, Roy and Cheema come to a boil. This is a B-movie remake of an early 30s B-movie, PANAMA FLO and it follows that film's plot slavishly. This is an improvement only in the casting. Lucille Ball does a nice job of fleshing out the main character, making her a little more lively than Helen Twelvetrees does in the original. We know Allan Lane (McTeague) will ultimately be a good guy, but he is good at keeping us a little off-balance about his intentions. I like Lane in his B-leads (see NIGHT SPOT made the year before and one of fourteen movies he made in 1938 and 1939) and he went on to achieve some fame in westerns under the name Rocky Lane. An actor named Donald Briggs, with whom I am not familiar, is fine as Roy. Steffi Duna is a little stiff as Cheema. I'd say this is mostly for fans of exotic melodrama (me) or fans of Lucille Ball. Pictured are Ball and Lane [TCM]