Tropic Zone (1953)

That was an excellent one.

Perfect cast and a good story

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Ronald Reagan (Dan McCloud), Rhonda Fleming (Flanders White), Noah Beery Jr (Tapachula Sam), Estelita Rodriguez (Elena), Grant Withers (Bert Nelson), John Wengraf (Lukats), Argentina Brunetti (Tia Feliciana), Rico Alanez (Captain Basilio), Maurice Jara (Marcario), Pilar Del Rey (Victoriana), Nacho Galindo (willing worker). Director: LEWIS R. FOSTER. Screenplay: Lewis R. Foster. Based on the 1940 novel Gentleman of the Jungle by Tom Gill. Photographed in Technicolor by Lionel Lindon. Film editor: Howard Smith. Music: Lucien Cailliet. Song "I'm in the Mood for Love" (harmonica solo) by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh. Art directors: Hal Pereira, Earl Hedrick. Costumes: Edith Head. Dance director: Jack Baker. Producers: William H. Pine, William C. Thomas. A Pine-Thomas Production. Copyright 1 January 1953 (in notice: 1952) by Paramount Piuctures Corp. No New York opening. U.S. release: January 1953. U.K. release: 15 June 1953. Australian release: 24 April 1953. 94 minutes. Cut to 91 minutes in the U.K. SYNOPSIS: Freed from his long-term contact at Warner Bros, and now on his own as a freelance actor, Ronald Reagan was faced with the problem of finding work. Not just end-of-the-road assignments, but decent pictures that would maintain his star standing in the industry. His agent informed him that the going would be tough. 'Tropic Zone', a "B" readied by the Pine-Thomas mill, proved the best of a mere handful of offers. In 'Tropic Zone', Pine-Thomas explored the hazards of growing bananas amid greed and corruption in Central America. The film is actually a western, with plantations instead of ranches, and bananas instead of cattle. Reagan plays Dan McCloud, a roguish American on the run from a neighboring republic because of his involvement in a deposed political faction. Since McCloud is an expert fruit farmer, he is given a job by the local banana baron (John Wengraf), who wants to corner the market by taking over all the other plantations, including one owned by lovely Flanders White (Rhonda Fleming). COMMENT: By the humble standards of the "Two Dollar Bills", this is a reasonably fair adventure yarn, a bit long in the telling, more than a bit predictable in the plotting, but moderately well acted and directed.Reagan has much his usual role as the hero who trades in his feet of clay for an iron fist. The other players, led by the over-decorative Rhonda Fleming and the delightfully villainous John Wengraf, are also appropriately typecast. But the movie's main appeal lies neither in its story nor its actors, but in Lionel 'Around the World in 80 Days' Lindon's lush Technicolor cinematography. OTHER VIEWS: Except for his final film, The Killers (1964) — which was actually designed for TV anyway — Ronald Reagan was always personable and almost always a Mr. Nice Guy. A bit slow on the uptake maybe, but a hero who in the end could always be relied upon to embrace what the script thought was right. And not the least of his virtues, so far as women picture-goers were concerned anyway, was his impeccable dress sense. Conservative to the extreme — except perhaps for a too rakish tilt of the hat — Ronnie was rarely anything but a model of sartorial refinement. Even his down-and-out-in-the-tropics attire for 'Tropic Zone" was supremely well-cut. — John Howard Reid writing as Tom Howard.

At the hysterically campy conclusion of this Technicolor romp, you half expect Carmen Miranda to pop out among the thousands of bananas being marched down to the docks in a procession which seems to have influenced Cecil B. DeMille's method of having the Hebrews leaving Egypt in "The Ten Commandments". Ronald Reagan believes himself to be wanted on the mainland for a crime he didn't commit and is hiding out on this Caribbean Island where all of the natives are Hispanic, not one black among them. He becomes the foreman for Rhonda Fleming's banana plantation, making an enemy out of her drunken former foreman (Grant Withers, aka the final Charlie Chan) and the ruthless buyer (John Wengraf) out to take over all of the island's plantations. Then, there's Estelita Rodriguez, the pint-sized Mexican spitfire in love with Reagan who has an initially polite rivalry with Fleming over her desire to monopolize Reagan's time and Noah Beery Jr. as the very cheery side-kick in love with Rodriguez himself. Rodriguez gets to sing a few sultry numbers and devours each of her lines as if it was the biggest banana split she could get her claws on.A delightful adventure in the Jon Hall/Maria Montez vein, you might confuse this as an unofficial remake of Warner Brothers' "Torrid Zone" which dealt with the same subject. However, other than bananas and villains, the two share nothing in common, but are both tremendously entertaining. Fleming, a beauty who could pass as Maureen O'Hara's twin, isn't as feisty as her look-alike, but don't underestimate this red-head. She's a worthy match for any man and a fantastic business woman here to boot, showing that women business owners can do more than run beauty companies. Reagan is light-hearted and charming, even if his character at first seems a bit amoral. If you're lucky enough to land a copy of this, you might want to consider keeping it, because you'll want to re-visit it over and over as a forgotten treasure of camp where the characters are as bananas as the fruit they pick.

According to the Citadel Film series book The Films Of Ronald Reagan, the Gipper signed with Pine-Thomas productions to do this film because of the fact they gave him his first starring western. Reagan was a fine horseman and would love to have made a few westerns when he was in his salad days at Warner Brothers. But Jack Warner other than in Santa Fe Trail wouldn't put him in them. Pine-Thomas who did the B pictures at Paramount put Reagan in The Last Outpost and it became a favorite film of his. And there wasn't too much out there available when the studios started letting go of their contract players.The book characterizes Tropic Zone as a western with a tropic setting. Reagan plays a two fisted adventurer who got on the wrong side of a revolution in one Central American country and had to flee to another without passport. A fact that villain John Weingraf holds over him. Rhonda Fleming who owns a banana plantation needs a strong foreman to replace the drunken Grant Withers and Reagan fills the bill and in other ways as well even though Estelita Rodriguez has her eye on him.Watching the film I suddenly remembered where I had seen this plot before and it was in a John Wayne western War Of The Wildcats. There instead of bananas it was oil as Wayne led a caravan just like Reagan does here to meet a deadline and get a contract for Fleming and not incidentally to get Fleming.Estelita Rodriguez sings both a Spanish and English version of the Jay Livingston-Ray Evans song I'll Always Love You that Dean Martin introduced in My Friend Irma Goes West. I kind of prefer what Dino did with the song.As Reagan and Fleming had similar politics the two must have gotten along fabulously. In fact she was his leading lady in several films of the Fifties.Tropic Zone began his career as an independent player. His films after this were competent enough, but mostly routine and this is no exception.

This is the umpteenth version of the gorgeous damsel in distress(Fleming) whose valuable banana plantation is coveted by a villain .But fortunately a raider (Reagan)comes to her rescue. This is conventional to a fault,a weak adventure story padded out with a lot of exotic dances ,all performed by a brunette who's "crazy about" the hero and thus is jealous of Fleming.