What is more awesome than Herbert Marshall and Claudette Colbert in a romantic comedy melodrama action adventure film? Herbert Marshall and Claudette Colbert wearing leopard skin in a romantic comedy melodrama action adventure film!This campy Cecil B. DeMille spectacular was more than a little bit responsible for the enforcement of the Production Code. Claudette Colbert has an infamous nude scene that worked the censors into a frenzy. It's tame by today's standards of course, but hot stuff for 1934. Herbert Marshall is adorable in it too. "I didn't want you to get pneumonia." I'll bet!
Colbert plays a shy, bespectacled school teacher of whom it is said, "girls like her chaperone themselves. Right into the old maid's home." She is shipwrecked with Arnold Ainger (Herbert Marshall) a shy rubber chemist and Stewart Corder (William Gargan) an earthy American journalist, and Mrs. Fifi Mardick (Mary Boland) the obligatory aristocrat complete with lap dog. It doesn't take long before Colbert looses her glasses and goes native. What fun!
Thanks to Four Frightened People, I've gone bananas for Herbie this week and made a Herbert Marshall Picture Gallery as well as a Youtube Playlist. Enjoy!
5 comments:
I love this movie!! I actually bought the Cecil B Demille collection just for this film.
lol, isn't it funny how in movies as soon as the glasses come off, the girl is suddenly attractive? :)
WOW! Thank you for that clip! I've always had a crush on Claudette and I've never seen this movie. It was great to see Cheetah, too, who passed away last year (maybe early this year) as the longest-lived chimp in history.
BTW, one of my favorite things to do with Colbert movies is to see how closely they stuck to her requirement to shoot her only from her good (right) profile.
I thought this movie was tremendously fun. I'd seen so many bad reviews that I was a bit afraid and then when I saw the stills, I thought there is no way this could disappoint! And it didn't.
Kate, I agree that's got to be one of the silliest conventions ever, but it's still used. The other one is cut a won'as hair short and suddenly everyone mistakes her for a man, like in Sylvia Scarlet.
Hey Steve, I hadn't heard that Cheetah finally passed on. I was shocked to hear a few years ago that he was still alive, while everyone else involved in this movie is long gone. Was he the oldest chimp ever? I'd heard that chimps could live exceptionally long lives.
I can't imagine a bad side of Claudette. She's gorgeous. And I love her with long hair, though this was the first movie I've seen where she didn't have the bob.
Steve if you enjoyed the clip, you can see the whole movie on the Youtube playlist I've linked. Many, many gems on that list!
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