Thursday, March 31, 2022

Movie review - "Aloma of the South Seas" (1941) ***

 Jon Hall and Dorothy Lamour were a huge hit together in The Hurricane but she was at Paramount and he was with Goldwyn then Universal so they only made one other film together, this one. It's a cute story, with the duo playing a couple who were betrothed as kids and then reunite as grown ups, after he's been to America.

It hits all the tropes - there's frolicking in lagoons, waterfalls, sarongs, colour, native feasts, volcano, a wedding ceremony. Lamour chuckles about Hall threatening to punch her.

Hall and Lamour are an amiable couple - she was a better actor than Maria Montez, warm and sympathetic. The show is stolen by Philip Reed as Hall's jealous nephew who wants Lamour - in one scene he casually shoots a random to death to scare Lamour. Another scene Reed confronts Hall with a rifle and as Hall approaches the action cuts back to Hall as a kid (Scotty Beckett I think) taunting the Reed character.

Someone called Lynne Overman is the comic relief. Katherine de Mille (Cecil's daughter) is in love with Reed.

Solid melodrama, cast and production values. Not directed with particular verve but it ticks all the boxes.

In her memoirs, Lamour wrote that Hall's nickname was Casanova "because he was known to disappear from the set for a romantic fling with any lovely girl who came along."


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