Beaudine

 

GALLANT LADY-1942-Dr. Rosemary Walsh (Rose Hobart) in jail convicted of a mercy killing, is reluctantly involved in a jail break (she was handcuffed to one of the escapees). She decides to give herself up but is side tracked when she sets an old guy's broken leg. She meets Dr. Steve Carey (Sidney Blackmer) who knows she's an escaped con. He takes her under his wing but trouble brews when rumors about their relationship spread through town. After his sister Linda (Lynn Star) gets the lowdown, Steve admits he's in love and proposes marriage. Their plans don't work out so well as Steve punches the hick deputy. After Rosemary runs away, Steve is arrested. 

Rosemary takes refuge with Nick (Richard Clarke) & Nellie (Claire Rochelle) and henchman Baldy (Vince Barnett) the ones who broke her out in the first place. Bad move. They involve her in a bank robbery where a guard is killed and Nick is hit. Rosemary and Nellie rob a doctor at gunpoint for supplies so Rose can operate on Nick. Meanwhile Steve is taken a beating in his trial. Rosemary decides to go back and help but her bus crashes. When tending to the injured she's arrested. Steve is found not guilty and Rosemary is given a pardon. 

This run of the mill morality drama was directed by the super prolific William Beaudine and produced by the ultra cheap PRC. It also features one of the most horrible racist stereotypes of the only two black characters in the cast....

Thanks for reading!

In The Big Year Of 1931

EAST OF BORNEO-1931-In this early Carl Laemmle produced “talking picture”, a young woman Linda Randolph (Rose Hobart) comes to Borneo looking for her husband Dr. Allen Randolph (Charles Bickford). It turns out Randolph is now using a new name and 300 miles away. Since she's his wife she needs to make the journey despite the warnings that it's no trip for a white woman alone. Nevertheless she sets out with a kind of huge crew led by Hrang (Testu Komai) and sees stock footage of crocodiles, lions, hyena and an orangutan family. At night a giant python visits but does no harm. Then a leopard attacks and mauls one of the white crew. Hubby Dr. Randolph is a drunk chess playing companion to Hashim, the prince of Naruda. Randolph seems to be down on women and doesn't know his better half is searching for him. When Hashim (Georges Rentavent) learns a white woman is soon to arrive he decides to greet her even though Randolph asks him not to. Hashim welcomes Mrs. Randolph and invites her to dinner where she meets hubby who's plastered. 

Later the couple talk. Randolph doesn't want his wife because he believes she left him for another man, although she denies this saying that her relationship with this other man was merely platonic and only happened because of her husband's workaholic ways. Randolph has none of it and sends her away. Things don't go too well for the Mrs. after she sees a man eaten by crocodiles and a baby monkey killed by a tiger and she wants to leave. Then she accidentally ruins Randolph's experiment. He’s looking for an antitoxin for yellow fever. The prince seems desirous of the white woman and won't let her leave but in a fit of sober allegiance to his wife Randolph tries to help her escape. Of course they are recaptured and Randolph is set to become croc food but when the prince puts his moves on Linda she shoots him! He doesn't die and Randolph operates on him but the volcano erupts and Hashim is killed. The Randolphs get away. 

EAST OF BORNEO was made by Universal pictures the same year as the horror classics FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA but is forgotten today. There is a tenuous connection between this jungle romance and Dracula as Randolph's slave is played by Luptia Tovar (who died in 2016 at the age of 106!) who would play Mina in the Spanish language version of Dracula that was shot at night after Tod Browning’s version wrapped up for the day.

Thanks for reading!