White Woman

...from Paramount Pictures and director Stuart Walker. Carole Lombard stars as Judith Denning, a nightclub singer with a sordid past stuck in a Third World country where the white governors don't want her around. She reluctantly agrees to marry Horace Prin (Charles Laughton), a rich but repellent owner of a Malaysian rubber plantation. Known as the "King of the River" , Prin runs things with an iron fist and a maniacal twinkle in his eye. It doesn't take long for Judith to regret her decision, what with the horrid weather and seething natives. She's also being chased by a pair of her husband's employees: handsome Army deserter David (Kent Taylor) and swaggering new overseer Ballister (Charles Bickford). This plays like a mash-up of A Lady to Love and Island of Lost Souls. The filmmakers re-used the sets from the latter film, and Laughton gets to ham it up in a delightful way, with an exaggerated accent, peculiar manners, and silly haircut and mustache. Lombard looks terrific, but she doesn't have much to do other than excite the guys in the cast while looking sad. Bickford doesn't show up until later in the movie, but he's worth it with his macho, no BS characterization clashing wonderfully with Laughton's sadistic weirdo. Like most exotic locale movies of the era, this one is more than a little racist, and the bungled depiction of the natives adds to the movie's bizarre "charm".

I love pre-code Hollywood and Carole Lombard is a stunningly wonderful actress. Charles Laughton is seriously overacting this part even for a "B" movie melodrama of this era although he did make this villain thoroughly unlikable. I really wanted to care, but just didn't find it anywhere in this film. It's important to note that there was something about the play upon which this film is based (and re-made over and over again), "The Hangman's Whip" 1933 which played for one month in New York at the St James Theatre, that seemed to entrance Paramount, maybe because they got it real cheap. To see a story like this done properly, Marlene Dietrich directed by Tay Garnett and with a young and handsome John Wayne in Seven Sinners (1940) is the height of this genre.

When I saw the title "White Woman," negative thoughts came to my head. I pictured a racially white woman among a sea of non-white people and she is the most beautiful, kindest, smartest person while all of the darker people pale in comparison to her. I wasn't too far off the mark. The white woman in this case was Judith Denning (Carole Lombard), and she was the ONLY white woman. She was akin to Joan Crawford in "Rain," Dorothy Mackaill in "Safe in Hell," Marlene Dietrich in "Shanghai Express," or Kay Francis in "Mandalay." Judith was in an Asian country where rubber was manufactured under the brutal dictates of Europeans. Of course, we didn't see THAT side of the story. We just saw "natives" singing and dancing as though they enjoyed planting, harvesting, collecting, and processing rubber for the rest of the world. Judith hooked up with an unsightly and crass fellow named Horace Prin (Charles Laughton), the self proclaimed king of the river. Judith married Horace out of necessity. She was being forced out of her current location and needed a place to go. They went up river to an area of jungle that "belonged to" Prin. We got an unabashed look at the mindset of Europeans who carved up and claimed land that didn't belong to them. Prin operated in the anonymous jungle like a dictator. He cheated the indigenous people when he traded with them, he ordered people killed, and he sat around being served by the subjugated indigenous people. He was an ugly character; a type of character Charles Laughton was familiar with playing (see "Devil and the Deep" and "Island of Lost Souls"). Judith was naturally going to be the object of desire for the white men working for Prin. The eventual love interest, David von Elst (Kent Taylor), commented that Judith was the first white woman he'd seen in ten years. It was only a matter of time before things like forbidden desire, jealousy, and other nasty traits were going to rear their heads. I was looking right past the obvious plot for things more hidden. I don't care to see the trials of white people on foreign soil. It's like a slap in the face. "Hey, let's put some nice white people on foreign land and show how barbaric the natives are." It's reprehensible. And even though Prin was by far the most barbaric person in the entire jungle, for sure there were some good white folks there just to maintain the status quo. Free on Odnoklassniki.

Sensibilities have changed in 90 years that it's difficult to get into the swim with "White Woman", a well-shot and acted Paramount feature rooted in Colonialism but saved by the usual tour de force performance by Charles Laughton. It's hard to imagine another actor in his role. Opening reel seems to be a familiar tale of prejudice and ostracism: star Carole Lombard looking fabulous and even singing (direct sound) a couple of torch songs as a cafe singer down on her luck in some Far East British colony (likely set in Straits Settlements). Her husband committed suicide, and folks look down on her working in a cafe frequented by locals. But soon she's married Laughton, self-proclaimed King of the RIver, who from humble beginnings has bought up most of the island. With a unique walrus moustache, he's a very odd fellow, full of sarcasm and even some self-deprecatory humor as he lords it over all and sundry. A couple fo studs understandably lust after Lombard, with the sjurprise of Charles Bickford, young and overconfident, even taking a shower and having an unlikely beefcake role. When Laughton literally spits in the faces of a couple of higher-rank natives, things look glum for the white folks, as a rebellion begins. Chuck has a couple of impressive machine guns with plenty of ammo for just such an occasion, but he's thwarted byt the white guys he keeps under his thumb working for him, leading to a truly memorable climax, in which violence is tastefully delivered off-screen.

After the suicide of her husband, down on her luck "Denning" (Carole Lombard) finds herself reduced to singing in a remote club where she espies a chance to escape the drudgery by marrying the "King of the River" - "Prin" (Charles Laughton). He's an outwardly charming fellow, but when she gets to his converted boat many days into the Malay jungle, she discovers he's a bit of a sadistic brute who rules his lucrative rubber planation ruthlessly. Her arrival sets the cat amongst the pigeons and sows a bit of dissent amongst his team causing temperatures to rise and tempers to flare - and that's before the arrival of the plain-speaking "Ballister" (Charles Bickford) who decides that this reign of terror must be stopped. How, though? "Prim" is well prepared and the natives are either terrified or armed only with spears against his guns. I'm an huge fan of Laughton but his role here seems a little too faux-cockney, vaudevillian and reminiscent of his performance from "The Private Lives of Henry VIII" also made in 1933 - especially when he is chewing to camera! Lombard is also out of sorts, a bit - her character has a stiltedness that even the romantic tryst scenario can't really enliven. It had potential, the story is good and the cast were all there - but Stuart Walker can't quite get this adventure firing on all cylinders.

A very flamboyant performance by Charles Laughton asks the question, is he being feminine or foppish? At times, he seems to be flitting around his own ship, and it certainly is eye raising. He's escorting Carole Lombard out of the tropical community where the uptight white people who have taken over are appalled by her performing in a native cabaret. Lombard falls in love with deserter Kent Taylor, but his sudden departure leaves her open to the strong armed advances by over-seer Charles Bickford who has the power to save Taylor when he's in trouble, but is stopped by his obvious lust for Lombard. This exotic adventure is escapist fare at its campiest, not quite the classic of Laughton's "Island of Lost Souls" or the bad taste of Lombard's "Supernatural", both released around the same time as this by Paramount. Lombard seems to be sleepwalking through this, obviously bored by contractual obligations and a wretched screenplay that has the characters who barely know each other talking like they've known each other for years. Beckford is commanding, but brutish, while the future Pa Kettle, is touching as a crew member who has a chimpanzee as a pal. Stereotypical portrayals of unseen natives pepper the script with clichés. It's impossible to totally hate it, but there are some truly tacky moments that really emphasize why the production code was enforced the following year.

Set in British colonial Malaysia. Judith Denning (Carole Lombard) is a widow who sings for natives in a bar to make ends meet. Her husband killed himself maybe because of her infidelities. Horace Prin (Charles Laughton) is an uncouth rubber plantation owner, the self styled 'King of the River' who is smitten by Denning's beauty. He offers to marry her, for Denning it is a way out of her fallen status. Prin's jungle plantation has non native workers who all have something to hide. Prin shows himself to be cruel and callous. Denning falls for the plantation overseer which makes her new husband jealous. Another worker also takes a shine to her. Lombard might look beautiful but her acting is flat and anodyne. Laughton hams it up royally, he even shoots a cheeky chimpanzee in one scene. As for the natives, Hollywood seemed to have rounded up all sorts to play them as cliches. There is a murderous bunch who turn up at the end looking for the scriptwriter. The story is dumb, thankfully the film is short.

It just gets better and better and better as it goes on. It's as close to perfection as I've ever seen: emotional engaging, thoroughly entertaining, exciting and shocking but with a huge massive streak of black humour peppered throughout. It's one of those films about attitudes, old sexist attitudes which make you go grrrr. You're drawn into the story straight away. Within the first five minutes, the scene is set: the stuffy governor and his wife, who are more than happy to befriend a lascivious old lech, genuinely find it totally abhorrent and disgusting that sultry and sophisticated Carole Lombard is allowed to live on the same island now that her husband killed himself leaving her unmarried - a beautiful unmarried woman, how disgraceful! So you think you're going to get a good pulling-at-your-heartstrings Carole Lombard film.......think again because in comes Charles Laughton like a hurricane in what I think is his most hilarious role ever. He's fantastic: he's Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd blended into one. There's some outrageous gay cockney humour which I imagine would have had English audiences wetting themselves whereas confused 1930s Americans wouldn't have a clue what he was doing. Escaping that horrible prejudiced judgmental society, Miss Lombard "marries" Charles Laughton's old lech and off she goes to his "Colonel Kurtz-like domaine. As in SAFE IN HELL or RAIN, isolated from the real world in a virtual fantasy kingdom, logic and reason and acceptable behaviour are tossed out of the window. Here the rules of normal life don't exist, here normal life don't exist. The King of this kingdom is Horace Prim played with fabulosa campness by Charles Laughton. Along with his gang of reprobates he has a beautiful blend of people with him: Carole Lombard becoming increasingly sensual as the minutes progress, Kent Taylor getting it on with his boss's wife and Charles Bickford (whom I've never heard of) as an absurdly cocky American. Although what's happening around them is death, murder and mental cruelty, this bunch of misfits behave just like a bunch of mates constantly taking the p' out of each other. That such behaviour can result in one of them killing the other doesn't seem at all important in this dream world. The final scene reminds me of CARRY ON UP THE KHYBER. The direction by Stuart Walker is as good as any of his more famous contemporaries. This is one of those films you might never have heard of but when you find it you'll be so chuffed you did.

You're going to have to get past the title of this movie. Carole Lombard plays the title character. She's a singer in a Malaysian nightclub, and since at that time it was pretty scandalous for a white woman to hang around "natives", the other white people look down on her. Also, her first husband committed suicide, so Carole has quite a bit of stigma attached to her. Before she's "run out of town on a rail"-in the words of Lionel Barrymore in It's a Wonderful Life-wealthy plantation owner Charles Laughton proposes marriage. If you're familiar with Jean Harlow's films, you'll enjoy White Woman ten-fold. After only reading the above paragraph, I'm sure you're picturing Jean's character from Reckless. Then, when Carole marries Charles and relocates to his rubber factory, you'll be reminded of Jean's film from 1932: Red Dust. White Woman is so obviously Paramount's answer to Jean Harlow and Red Dust, it's mind-boggling. I've seen Carole Lombard in her classic screwball comedies, and she's completely different in this romantic drama. She looks like Jean Harlow, she speaks like Jean Harlow, she holds her shoulders like Jean Harlow-it's as if director Stuart Walker told her, "We've got to take the attention away from MGM. Be Jean Harlow's clone." In her imitation of Jean, Carole's performance is excellent. She comes across as a beautiful, serious dramatic actress, which is not how her career is usually remembered. Charles Laughton plays the cuckolded husband, and his Cockney persona is very entertaining to watch. In a way, he plays a very obsessive character, obsessed with cruel pranks. As Charles Bickford got third billing, I thought Carole would fall in love with him, but he's crude and coarse, and she prefers the gentle romance of Kent Taylor. Charles Bickford's blatantly sexual dialogue is very funny and shocking for the time period, so if you get a kick out of pre-Code nasty films, you'll want to watch this one. Also, there's quite a bit of violence in the story, which, had it been made one or two years later, wouldn't have been allowed. The violence is chilling and graphic, yet another reason to appreciate this uncensored old flick. Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, since there's an upsetting scene involving an animal, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

A nightclub singer marries the rich owner of a rubber plantation. When she returns with him to his estate in Malaysia, she finds out that he is cruel, vicious and insanely jealous. She and the plantation's overseer develop a mutual attraction, but are terrified at what will happen if her husband finds out. A slow moving film that is clearly done in the studio. Carole Lombard is way miscast in her role, unfortunately. The movie is only interesting to watch Charles Laughton who is fascinating as the weird lord of the jungle!.