George Town: 'Pride of Penang'

On the western coast of Malaya lies the island of Penang. It's a British colonial outpost and George Town is its largest settlement.

James A. FitzPatrick goes to the Far East to do another episode of his travel show. This is obviously filmed before the war which would soon arrive in the area. It's in color. It's exotic. It's fascinating. I can do without James keep repeating the word Chinese. Of course, he brings along the Chinese girls back to their hotel for a shoot. I hate that he wastes half the episode on that. It's one of his more lazier standard moves.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras under the supervision of Robert Carney to Prince of Wales Island off the coast of Thailand, to shoot pictures of its capital and talk about the oddities of its history, like the middle of the 19th century, when American ships brought ice to the place.

The commentary seems rather restrained given Fitzpatrick's usual sesquipedalian vocabulary. Perhaps that's because this is the last Traveltalks shot outside the Americas for five years. World War Two got in the way.

Georgetown, Pride of Penang (1941)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Another fun entry in James A. FitzPatrick's TravelTalks series. This time out we travel to the "Prince of Wales Island" where we learn that 160,000 Chinese are currently living. We learn about their various old customs, which includes painting the front of their ships white to make "eyes" for them to see during bad weather. We also learn about the rice, coffee and spices that are major exports and we get to see a sacred funeral as it holds up traffic going through the streets. Finally, we get to see the sacred Snake Temple where various deadly snakes live out their lives with people stopping by to worship and give them food. Fans of the series will find this entry to be right up their with the rest. This one here offers the fine narration and great Technicolor and the stories told are fairly interesting. I think the highlight of the film has to be the Snake Temple but the various ways of the streets were also interesting. We also get to hear how firecrackers are used to scare off evil spirits.