South Sea Woman

source: South Sea Woman

Trailer—South Sea Woman

South Sea Woman

The title of this movie shouldn't be about a woman but a marine. Actually Burt Lancaster is the big star and Virginia Mayo has a supporting role. My does he look good in that uniform. It reminds me of his role as the sergeant in "From Here to Eternity". He plays the same character in both! This film has a something for everyone, action, adventure, drama, comedy, and romance. Lancaster and Chuck Conners take on the Japanese invasion fleet and spoil their Guadalcanal landings. Far fetched, I'd say so, but entertaining. The comedy was spotty and corny like the conflict between the Navy and the Marine Corps, the hula dancing in shoes, and Lancaster-Conners interaction. The serious punishment for desertion that awaits Lancaster is waived, and he emerges unscathed as top kick once again. I like Burt Lancaster anytime and in this he doesn't disappoint. You can't spoil a movie with him in it no matter how ho hum it is.

I don't know if the term war oater exixts but I don't care, I have no other word to describe this film, very watchable but worth only for movie buffs like me, from time to time nostalgic of the Hollywood golden years, the last ones, the fifties. Arthur Lubin was guilty of this comedy, after all comedy was his domain, with the exception of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA of course, his best movie. Not the Francis talking mule movie nor Abott and Costello's series. Exotic cinema charm lovers won't be deceived.

Not very funny for a movie labeled as a comedy. Sergeant Major O'Hearn is being court martialed for desertion. After all he was AWOL for nine months.Chuck Connors plays a PFC hero. He has the Silver Star and the Navy Cross before the film even starts. He dies when he climbs a Jap ship's stack and throws some TNT down it. This blows up the ship and Connors. Burt Lancaster is O'Hearn. He refuses to testify until the he must to clear the record about Connors being a deserter. Then everything comes out in the open. It is still not very funny. Virginia Mayo is the love interest, first of Connors and then of Lancaster. Her testimony starts things in motion which leads to O'Hearns deciding to testify. This movie is well acted and well written but it is not comedy by any stretch of the imagination.

The Marines have landed! "Rhubarb" director Arthur Lubin's wartime comic escapade "South Sea Woman" with Burt Lancaster and Chuck Connors unfolds ostensibly as a military court-martial melodrama interspersed with flashbacks as two agile Jarheads vye for the affections of beautiful Virginia Mayo. This 1953, black & white, 99-minute, Warner Brothers' theatrical release teems with action galore in those flashback sequences as our heroes tangle with the Japanese Navy during the Guadalcanal campaign in the South Pacific. Lubin doesn't waste a second of those 99-minutes and "Stalag 17" scenarist Edwin Blum doesn't like the exposition get in the way of the action in Earl Baldwin and Stanley Shapiro's adaptation of William Rankin's stage play. Actually, it appears as if this patriotic World War II actioneer was lensed by three-time Oscar nominee Ted McCord of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" fame.