Panama Lady

Saloon dancer Lucy (Lucille Ball) is in trouble in Panama. She gets bailed out by oil rigger Dennis McTeague (Allan Lane). He hires her to be his housekeeper in his jungle camp. She fears the worst of his intentions but he's a gentleman. She's his housekeeper.

This story would work better if it's a bit darker. I don't know what I was expecting. I knew this isn't a comedy, at least not an I Love Lucy comedy. She needs a bit more chemistry with Allan Lane. This needs something to help it work as a romance. Their banter could be better. Lucille Ball does deliver some sly looks which would remind fans of her comedic moves. She has some of her sardonic mannerisms. This is good for her fans but not so good for non-fans.

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.

Back in the pre-TV days when the major Hollywood studios were allowed to own chains of theatres across the country to show the films they made and profit from both sides of the business, they had to keep those houses booked and so churned out a steady stream of "programmers" to fill their screens between the major "prestige" releases. Running between 60 and 90 minutes (the equivalent of TV shows today), these films were more than training grounds for later star performer and directors, they frequently provided quality work for studio people between "A List" projects. The quality varied with the studio, but RKO-Radio was one of the best and PANAMA LADY is much better than some suggest. Any fan of Lucille Ball's work should mark it as a "must see." It will strongly remind them of her better known dramatic work for director John Farrow in her next film the same year, FIVE CAME BACK.

A product of an era when the words of a screenplay mattered more than the explosions and silly chase scenes, PANAMA LADY (an RKO-Radio release now available mainly in a good print on a long out-of-print 1983 VHS release - #7001 - of a 1955 "C&C Movies for Television" print), was an above average reputed remake of an earlier pre-code/proto-Noir film about a girl caught up in the "white slave" (prostitution) trade. RKO, facing the prudish Production Code and a rising star in Lucille Ball (STAGE DOOR, ROOM SERVICE and a couple of her "Anabel" films behind her and TOO MANY GIRLS, DU BARRY WAS A LADY and BEST FOOT FORWARD still in front of her) expunged most of the references to sex in favor of timely (WWII was raging in China and would start in Europe in four months although the U.S. would hold on to its neutrality for another two and a half years) gun running and jealousy subplots and got solid dramatic performances from Lucy and her co-stars (especially Allan Lane as the good boyfriend and Donald Briggs as the bad).

Taken seriously, the 65 minute spring 1939 (May 12) release offers a lot of solid fun. The attempt at twists in the resolution of the South American plot and the O'Henry-esquire finale do come across as a little strained, but the production getting there is generally first rate after the stock footage of New York landmarks in the opening "framing" scene.

Had first tier screenwriter Michael Kanin (Garson's older brother, one film away from his Oscar winning WOMAN OF THE YEAR screenplay) worked a little harder on the last five or six minutes, the film might be far better remembered today - or was he done in by second time director Jack Hively (already having edited THE AFFAIRS OF ANABEL with Lucy and one of the SAINT films he would go on to direct) pushing too hard to finish on time and under budget? A decade later, over at Universal International, Hively was also director for one of their rare Broadway musical transfers, ARE YOU WITH IT - one of his last full Hollywood directing credits. It's one of Donald O'Connor's best performances, but also suffers from production and editing indignities which may have left a lot of good material on the cutting room floor.

First off, even though I saw the film some years ago, I can't forget Evelyn Brent's electric performance in a supporting role in which she manages to steal every scene from the star throughout the movie's first half. In fact, as I recall, Lucy just wisely keeps a low profile in her appearances with Ms. Brent, who is just too much to compete with. But finally her character takes a final exit. After that Lucy does come alive as the star and shines from then on, rising above the mediocre material of this B- film. And Lucy Recardo she is not!

What I like most is Lucy's line at the story's high-point: "I'm going to take just one more crack at making a gentleman out of you, and if that doesn't work, we're really in trouble!"

Dance-hall girl Lucille Ball helps roll Allan Lane. When he sobers up, she has a choice: jail, or accompany him to his place in the middle of Ecuador to be his housekeeper. She chooses the second.

And that's quite literally what she is, and no more. In fact, she's the head housekeeper since she has Steffi Duna helping her out, when Miss Duna isn't trying to poison her in a fit of jealousy over Lane. This is the peak of the Production Code Era, or the nadir depending on your viewpoint, and this remake of a decidedly pre-code movie has been carefully denuded of anything that might offend Joe Breen.

What makes this movie interesting -- besides the fact that Miss Ball's character is named 'Lucy' -- is that this might be the first film noir. That's a risky statement to make, because defining film noir is so difficult that even Eddie Muller, who should know, says that it's an attitude. But by the time people noticed the genre, a film noir movie had certain things that marked it: it was a crime picture, told in flashback with a magical realism attitude, set in a corrupt world, and the camerawork was derived from German Expressionism, with a lot of shadows. There was often a femme fatale and a clock.

This movie meets most of those criteria, particularly the camerawork. J. Roy Hunt isn't a name to conjure with, but he was a solid professional in charge of the camera on some fine A Pictures for Paramount in the silent era. He moved to RKO in 1929, and handled the camera for many of their important pictures, but after 1938 the prestigious movies went to other cinematographers.... not that RKO was producing many of those. Still, his lighting added a lot to many movies that might otherwise be forgotten. He was the credited DP on more than 200 movies through 1952 and died twenty years later at the age of 88. In this movie there are plenty of shadows.

The other key person here is the director, Jack Hively. In 1939 Hively directed five movies. Other years he was an editor. The flashback structure of this movie undoubtedly made it tricky to shoot, and someone with an editorial background must have seemed a natural choice for this B movie.

It certainly wasn't considered an important movie at the time, and the issue of whether it was a film noir is a murky one; over in Japan, Ozu had directed DRAGNET GIRL in 1933, and it looks like a film noir to me, Other sources credit 1942 as the year noir began, with THE MALTESE FALCON and THIS GUN FOR HIRE considered key. I'm confounded by a philosophical question: can a movie be a genre movie if it's the first one? Does the leader make a movement, or followers?

Whichever side of the question you come down on, this is a minor picture competently produced, even if the interesting stuff had been largely eviscerated. That, to me, is the heart of film noir: with the Production Code in force, the audience had to look into their own assumptions of how the world really worked to understand what the people on the screen were talking about and doing. They had to look into the shadows, and there are plenty of them here.