I really enjoy the B pictures from RKO in the 30s and 40s - so unpretentious. This one is an example, running at 65 minutes. Its main problem is it should so clearly be a comedy but in fact its a drama with wisecracks. Lucille Ball is a show girl who gets stranded in Panama; she tries to roll a prospector, fails, and goes to work for him as a housekeeper. There's an exotic native girl and Ball's no-good fiancee to content with.
Fast moving enough with some bright dialogue and that enjoyable 30s Hollywood recreation of South and Central America, but Ball spends a lot of the film being glum when it would have been better had she shown more spunk.
The 1932 version Panama Flo apparently made the sexual connotations of the story a lot more explicit - they are here (Ball comes close to prostitution several times and at the end it seems she becomes a prostitute) but not really strong enough for it to work as a drama. The ending seems a lot like Pretty Woman - rich man comes along to sweep a prostie off her feet.
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