Panama Lady (1939)

Thanks for the memories!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Blistering performances.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

You know what confused me about this film? The idiotic notion that McTeague, the male lead, would coerce Lucy to come with him to his South American hideaway to serve as his housekeeper, when he already had Cheema, another female housekeeper, in residence at his relatively small house. And it seemed even more ridiculous that the two housekeepers would get into several jealous and potentially deadly conflicts.Then it suddenly entered my thick head: They're his PROSTITUTES, you moron! It's a post-Code movie, so the writers had to portray Lucy and Cheema as a couple of chaste "housekeepers" who were getting into fights over which one of them would polish McTeague's banister.After that, the movie made much more sense.Lucille Ball is gorgeous in this film, almost Lauren Bacall-ish in many of the shots. Her character is the polar opposite of the Lucy Ricardo we all know and love. This Lucy is chronically depressed, more than a little whorish, and not the slightest bit funny. Her character would probably be a drug addict and/or alcoholic if the movie were re-made today. And, with her incredible talent, Lucille Ball pulls it off beautifully, and makes you forget the I Love Lucy she later became.At first I was put off by Alan Lane's performance as McTeague, which I initially found nebulous and unclear. But after the film was over, I was impressed with his performance, for precisely the same reasons. It was McTeague's somewhat schizophrenic personality that actually made the movie work. And although I don't recall ever seeing Steffi Duna before, her Cheema character was exotic and intriguing. Again, her behavior was hard to pin down at first, but made more sense at the end.Kudos also to the production and direction team, who applied a few very creative touches. Notable among those is the scene that was shot from the blindfolded Lucy's perspective, and the camera shifting to Cheema's shadow while she was doing something shadowy.Hey guys, this movie's only an hour long. Why not give it a shot? And even if it isn't making a lot of sense at first, try to stick with it. If you're like me, the payoff will be worth the relatively short investment of time.

Most of her admirers do not realize that for many years prior to her TV career, Lucille Ball was a very competent, dishy, and prolific motion picture actress. This particular opus, though both sordid and incredible, does present Miss Ball, with billing over the title, in an undoubtedly bizarre concoction, that has, for whatever reason, been strangely overlooked for many years. Most interesting perhaps is that her character's name is "Lucy,"(the first time Miss Ball ever portrayed a character with that name--though this particular 'Lucy' has nothing in common with Mrs. Ricardo.)Essentially it is celluloid pulp fiction detailing the romantic and criminal mis-adventures of a New York show girl reduced to dancing in the floor show of a Panamanian dive. While thus employed, she is innocently implicated in the robbery of a drunken oil prospector, who only drops jail charges, if she will agree to become his live in--"housekeeper." Enter true love here.The illicit and licentious angles of the story, with its strong intimations of prostitution at the dive, and free-love at the prospector's camp, (with a interloper-native girl named "Cheema" no less), are unmistakably suggested, through "Sadie Thompson" style dialogue and atmosphere. For example, one of the "B girls", named Pearl, decked in cheap jewelry over a flowered frock, achieves unparalleled camp value with her lowered eyelids, hands on the hips swagger as she moves in for the kill--greeting her would be conquest with the highly original, "Hello handsome." RKO's technical accoutrements, as would be expected, are A-1, though this is clearly a second feature. Miss Ball plays a decent and attractive doll, who retains her virtue, despite being forced to tramp the streets or the pampas, as the case would have it, (perhaps owing to her lack of education--she proudly mis-pronounces "petroleum" as "petoleum" !Though much of the dialogue is painfully stereotypical, (Cheema witnessing a murder, declaims in threateningly thick accents with finger pointed accusingly, "Cheema tell tribe!" the story manages to engage by sheer force of its outrageous plot. Even better, is Evelyn Brent, as the madame "Lenore" (with a trollopish wardrobe that anticipates Carol Burnett as "Eunice") who gets such enunciate such subtleties as "...Be nice to Mr. McTeague Lucy or I'll fire you!"With such dialogue as this it would appear the script is written by and for idiots, but, lo and behold, it's by Michael Kanin who later penned Katherine Hepburn's "Woman of the Year," (surely Mr. Kanin your tongue was firmly in your cheek?) Despite her perpetually impecunious state,Miss Ball's character somehow manages a nifty array of outfits, that includes a white sharkskin suit, and a wool blazer, skirt, grosgain pumps, and trilby hat ensemble, that, assuredly would have been the envy of most Gotham girls that were "down and out" in 1939.Yes, Miss Ball is plenty attractive here, though to witness her at the peak of her pulchritude, check out "Beauty for the Asking" also from 1939.All in all though, with its blend of simmering sin, and triumphant virtue, as laid out in both the South American and Manhattan jungles, "Panama Lady" is really rather fun as an outrageous camp fest. Enjoy.

Unusual role for Lucille Ball as a down and out showgirl in Panama whose no-good fiancé involves her in illegal nefarious deeds. She winds up abandoned and has to escape into the jungles of Ecuador with a dangerously roguish oil prospector (Allan Lane)who graciously allows her to "shack-up" with him in a very compromising manner, even though he has a sultry native "housekeeper" who attempts to do her in by poisoning. The boyfriend eventually shows up to "rescue" her in his plane but only intends to murder her at the behest of his gun smuggling friends. This film definitely holds the interest with Ball and Lane carrying it with their downbeat nearly noir characters and situation. Stick around till the end, as you will care whether these two appealing people can make a go of things or no.

1940's The Stranger on the Third Floor is usually cited as Hollywood's earliest example of true noir style, but here's a movie from a year earlier that also incorporates a guilt-ridden protagonist with a past, first-person narration, and a flashback structure. Both were probably inspired by the French film Pepe le Moko (1938), but since this is a remake of a 1931 film called Panama Flo, who knows whether they weren't all present in that version as well? In any case, it's quite a decent little B that gives Lucy one of her toughest and most downbeat dramatic parts, on a par with Dance Girl Dance; if you only know her for her later comedy days, it's well worth seeing these early roles to see the kind of realistic blue-collar gal in the Ginger Rogers mode which she played very well.