Aloma of the South Seas *** (1941, Dorothy Lamour, Jon Hall, Lynne Overman, Philip Reed) – Classic Movie Review 6608

It’s just a sarong at twilight as the saronged lady Dorothy Lamour leads director Alfred Santell’s lavish but creaky 1941 reworking of Maurice Tourneur’s 1926 silent movie (with Gilda Gray, Percy Marmont and Warner Baxter), mixing adventure and romance to please the escapist-minded World War Two wartime audience.

Paramount Pictures got audiences all of a quiver with ‘Pagan love – in an exotic, exciting tropic paradise!’ They are selling sex on the South Seas, no doubt about it.

It was nominated for two Oscars: Best Cinematography, Color (Karl Struss, Wilfred M Cline and William E Snyder) and Best Effects, Special Effects (Gordon Jennings, Farciot Edouart, and Louis Mesenkop).

Jon Hall co-stars as a young Polynesian chief called Tanoa, who quits college at Harvard in America to prevent a native uprising in Tahiti when his father dies. Naturally, Lamour plays Aloma and provides Hall’s lovely love interest, or perhaps Hall provides Lamour’s love interest.

Lamour and Hall make a sweet and attractive couple, and excel in these roles, having starred together in John Ford’s 1937 The Hurricane. But still the pride of place in the movie goes to the gorgeous-looking Oscar-nominated Technicolor cinematography, Paramount’s ostentatious production, Lamour’s skimpy costumes and the rather more comprehensive volcano, in the erupting climax that re-appears in Paramount’s Road to Bali (1952), also starring Lamour.

Also in the cast are Lynne Overman, Phillip Reed, Katherine DeMille, Fritz Leiber, Dona Drake, Esther Dale, Pedro de Cordoba, Norma Gene Nelson, John Barclay, Scottie Beckett and Noble Johnson.

It runs 78 minutes, is written by Frank Butler, Seena Owen and Lillian Hayward, is shot by Karl Struss, Wilfred M Cline and William E Snyder, is produced by B G De Sylva and Monta Bell, and is scored by Victor Young, with photographic special effects by Gordon Jennings and Farciot Edouart, and sound special effects by Louis Mesenkop .

It is based on a story by Seena Owen and Curt Siodmak, and the 1925 Broadway play by John B Hymer and LeRoy Clemens.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6608

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