Down to Their Last Yacht

After the 1929 market crash, the Colt-Stratton family falls from high society to the working poor. Their last major possession is a large luxury yacht where they live. They are forced to rent to the newly rich loud-mouthed Nella Fitzgerald for a gambling trip. The ship runs aground on the South Sea Island of Malakamokolu which is ruled by white Queen Malakamokalu (Mary Boland).

This is a weird little comedy musical adventure. I like the opening premise but it turns into a bit of mess with too many characters. I don't like the music generally although I can't hate that too much. This takes a weird abrupt turn in the middle. It's old Hollywood exoticism with some brown-faced acting and a white crazy Queen. The movie may as well start with the shipwreck and let its freak flag fly.

This RKO comedy was the last film that Sidney Fox did. 8 years later the tiny young actress was dead from overdosing on sleeping pills.

She went out on a weird movie with Down To Their Last Yacht. She's an heiress whose family only has its yacht left. It gets rented out to Polly Moran who is hosting a big cruise for those who made out OK and didn't lose their shirts in the Depression.

They are a crowd of boors as Captain Ned Sparks finds out. He's planning to rip them off until he runs the ship aground on an island where Mary Boland is queen.

If that ain't weird enough I can't help it. The film is funny but it has a surreal quality to it. I thought the ending would show it was Fox's dream. That wasn't it though.

Fans of some of the players will like this.

Such a fun group -- Mary Boland (The Women), Ned Sparks (Bride Walks Out, Imitation of Life), Sterling Holloway, Sydney Blackmer. Too bad they couldn't have given that group a better script to work with, but here it is. As the title suggests, the family is quickly running out of cash, so they rent out their "last yacht" for a big cruise to the upper crust. The script starts out with a plausible story, but goes silly about halfway through, and i'm also not a fan of all those musical song-and-dance numbers. Ned Sparks is his usual awesome self, with his slow, dry, sarcastic statements, as the captain. When the ship runs aground, they have to deal with "Queenie" (Boland), who pretty much carries the second half of the film, with her musings and wisecracks. and that final song and dance number... it just goes on for-everrrrrrrr! this one is just campy and silly enough to be fun, but the story line goes off the rails, for sure. fun, if just for the historical value. Directed by Paul Sloane, who had been around since the EARLY days of silents. It's watchable, and has two of my favorite character actors... Boland and Sparks! Check it out! it's fun and upbeat.

As noted in other comments for this film, this one starts out looking like a typical 1930s screwball comedy about high society but changes course quickly. The story takes several sharp left turns into becoming a musical farce set in a Polynesian island kingdom. Of particular delight is Mary Boland's shabby-glamorous queen and her manservant in tattered livery. The two romantic leads are undistinguished, particularly the male. But any film with Ned Sparks deserves some credit, and the musical numbers aren't as tedious as many others of the period were. It's a curious affair, made all the more startling by the film's rapid pacing, but I feel I must say that other comments make "Down To Their Last Yacht" sound like something from the avant-garde. In truth it's no more 'out there' than W.C. Fields' "Million Dollar Legs" or some of Wheeler & Woolsey's more absurdist work. Not a classic, but certainly worth watching if you come across it.

I'm not sure if this movie is bizarre, as several previous reviewers have claimed, or just a silly attempt to slap something together that will appeal to audiences after they have sat through whatever the main feature was.

For this must certainly have been made as the B movie for houses that showed double features.

Humor: Mary Boland is her usual funny self. Sterling Halloway, who could be funny, doesn't get much to work with.

Sex: You get to see lots of "native" men and women in skimpy outfits. For 1934, this could have been titillating. No one would have mistaken them for real "natives," however. Some of them sing with noticeably New York accents.

Music: The big production number near the end, the second-last number, is pleasant.

Production values: Some of the editing of that production number is interesting.

And there you have it. For 64 minutes, it's fine. Longer than that would have been too long for something so unsubstantial.

I can't imagine anyone would have paid money to see just this, without a better main feature.