Singapore Woman * (1941, Brenda Marshall, David Bruce, Virginia Field, Jerome Cowan, Rose Hobart, Heather Angel) – Classic Movie Review 13,352

Warner Bros remake their 1935 Bette Davis film Dangerous as the 1941 American romantic drama B picture Singapore Woman, starring Brenda Marshall, David Bruce and Virginia Field.

‘INTRIGUE! ROMANCE! MARKED WOMAN OF THE ORIENT!’

Director Jean Negulesco’s 1941 American romantic drama B picture Singapore Woman is based the novel Hard Luck Dame by Laird Doyle, and stars Brenda Marshall, David Bruce, Virginia Field, Jerome Cowan, Rose Hobart and Heather Angel, as Warner Bros remake their 1935 film Dangerous.

Brenda Marshall plays Vicki Moore, the jinxed hard luck dame of the novel’s original title, wallowing in gin and self-pity as a result of believing that she is the victim of a curse from the widow of a man she supposedly drove to suicide after playing with his affections. But David Ritchie (David Bruce) takes her back to his rubber plantation to try to give her a new start.

Singapore Woman is a rather daft and unsuccessful rehashing of the Bette Davis Oscar-winning tour de force film Dangerous, but lacking all the original’s crackle, glamour, melodrama and … Bette Davis.

The plot itself is nothing special, the story’s setting is swapped from New York to Singapore for no apparent reason, and the performances are depressingly lacklustre.

Singapore Woman is one for the vaults.

Dangerous was remade as Singapore Woman with Brenda Marshall in 1941, using some of the sets from Davis’s 1940 film The Letter., including the famous porch and steps of the plantation house where Bette Davis’s character shot her lover.

Negulesco is the sole-credited director but he quit and the film was finished by producer Harlan Thompson.

It was shot in black and white at Warner Brothers Burbank Studios, California, and runs just 64 minutes.

Release date: May 17, 1941 (US).

The cast

The cast are Brenda Marshall as Vicki Moore, David Bruce as David Ritchie, Virginia Field as Claire Weston, Jerome Cowan as Jim North, Rose Hobart as Alice North, Heather Angel as Frieda, Richard Ainley as John Wetherby, Dorothy Tree as Mrs Bennett, Bruce Lester as Clyde, Connie Leon as Suwa, Douglas Walton as Roy Bennett, Gilbert Emery as Sir Stanley Moore, Stanley Logan as Commissioner, Abner Biberman as Singa, Eva Puig as Natasha, Alexis Smith as North’s secretary Miss Oswald,  Ian Wolfe as Sidney P Melrose, Marten Lamont as Gerald, Charles Irwin as reporter Eddie, David Thursby as Mine Foreman Frank, Leyland Hodgson as Mine Foreman Sullivan, and Glen Cavender as Mine Foreman Glen.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,352

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