Panama Flo (1932)

How sad is this?

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

deal for implied sex coincidence is ridiculous sleaze is implied"Panama Flo" is a film clearly rooted in the Pre-Code Era--a film filled with lots of sleazy subtext and characters who are ALL rotten! When the film was remade seven years later as "Panama Lady", it was scrubbed clean of all its sexual tension...and was, as a result, an incredibly dull film!When the story begins, Flo (Helen Twelvetrees) is working at a sleazy dive of a bar. She's dead broke and her only chance of getting away from this dump is her boyfriend, Babe (Robert Armstrong)...a guy who's promised to marry her as soon as he returns from his trip to South America. The problem is that after two weeks, Babe still hasn't returned and weeks turn into months. Into the hellish dive comes Dan (Charles Bickford)--an oil man with a huge wad of cash practically burning a hole in his pocket. The 'lady' who runs the dump convinces Flo to help rob the guy and he's not as dumb as he looks...but he's on to the scam too late...and another woman working in the bar runs off with the money. Now here's where the sleazy Pre-Code stuff comes into it. He could easily have Flo tossed into prison but instead gets her to agree to be his 'housekeeper' down in the South American jungle. It's very clear that this is a job with plenty of fringe benefits...though Flo does her best to keep the lecherous Dan at bay. Into this sexual tension arrives Babe...and considering how huge South America is, this is ridiculous! Flo thinks Babe is there to rescue her...but he is, at heart, a complete pig. So what happens next? See the film.Is this a very good film? Nah. The plot is pretty dumb and the whole coincidence angle is just too dumb to be real. The very end, by the way, is even dumber!! But, in a salacious way it IS worth seeing because it is so exciting and scummy!

Gotta love the precode films! In New York City, Helen Twelvetrees is Flo, working at "Sadie's", and we flash back to her days in Panama. (they even say "swell" which was a big no-no in those days, for some reason. ) Bob Armstrong is the boyfriend "Babe", and "Sadie" is Maude Eburne, a character for sure! When Flo and another girl try to snitch dough off a drunk "McTeague", played by Charles Bickford she is forced to keep house for him to keep him from going to the cops. This one is one of the extra-exotic early talkies, since it supposedly takes place in Panama. Flo is bored, and wants to get out. Then things start to really happen, and she might have a chance to get out. Robert Armstrong looked pretty creepy, with his slicked hair and heavy greasy make-up. He had been in a couple silent films, so maybe he was still doing the make-up ? the other actors didn't have such weird, heavy make-up. A good twist towards the end! ... didn't see that one coming! Directed by Ralph Murphy and Tay Garnett, although only Garnett is credited at the beginning. Written by Garrett Fort... didn't end well for him; he offed himself at 45. He had started in the silents. This film was actually pretty good - they put more thought into this one than most of the ones from the time.

Helen Twelvetrees is excellent as Flo, a burlesque dancer who gets fired by her harridan of a boss (the amazing Maude Eburne) and ends up virtually enslaved by a brutal oil explorer (Charles Bickford) in the heart of the South American jungle. Panama Flo is a top notch melodrama which also features Robert Armstrong in the rather thankless and not terribly interesting role of Flo's true love, Babe the aerial photographer. What really sets this film apart, however, is the exemplary cinematography of Arthur Miller, which shows just how far film had recovered from the static and stagebound early days of talking pictures. In Panama Flo, the camera moves fluidly--at times its almost hyperactive--swooping in and out of the action with long dolly shots and outstanding use of deep focus. Miller went on to win Academy Awards for his work on How Green Was My Valley, The Song of Bernadette, and Anna and the King of Siam, and he also shot the atmospheric western The Ox-Bow Incident, which deserved a nomination but didn't get one. Panama Flo benefits further from second-unit work by a 24-year old Stanley Cortez, who clearly learned a lesson or two from Miller. An excellent little film that can be enjoyed as much for its technical superiority as for its very enjoyable and appropriately spicy pre-Code plot.

Here's one of those totally obscure but jaw-dropping precodes that pop up at 2 am every month or so on TCM. This one fits squarely in the Tropical Tramps sub-genre, a cousin to the Carole Lombard flick "White Woman", but with an even rawer atmosphere.RKO's cutie-pie sob-sister Helen Twelvetrees is surprisingly cast as a cabaret dancer in a sleazy Panama saloon. The old crone who runs the joint (Maude Eburne, in a wonderfully grotesque characterization) announces that she can no longer pay her dancers or supply them with promised tickets back home. But she invites them to hang around the club anyway and make money off the customers any way they please. Our heroine reluctantly helps relieve a two-fisted, hard-drinking oil man (Charles Bickford) of his wad of cash by slipping him a mickey, but he gets wise. Rather than do time in the nightmarish local hoosegow, she agrees to be Bickford's "housekeeper" in his shack in the croc-infested Venezuela jungle. Eventually, an aviator ex-boyfriend (Robert G Armstrong) shows up, and the testosterone flies like spit in a bullpen. The finale is quite a curve ball.There's great slangy patter, lots of innuendo, and some very seedy sets. The principals play it full-throttle, and though it's definitely not great art, it shows what realities Hollywood could vigorously grapple with before the Code. Apparently, contemporary critics mocked the picture for its unbelievable shifts of character, but I'd say that this very unpredictability helps give it a modern edginess. Don't miss it when it turns up again. Remade by the studio as "Panama Lady" with (wait for it...) Lucille Ball in the title role (and she's surprisingly good).