Pagan Lady

This little tropics-set potboiler will remind many of Joan Crawford's RAIN, but Evelyn Brent (as Dorothy Hunter) is more in control of her destiny than Sadie Thompson is.

The film opens in Havana where Brent is a bar tender and party girl. Husky Charles Bickford (as Dingo) wanders in and asks for a New Life? She's never heard of it but he's got her attention. He proceeds to list a bunch of ingredients which she tosses into a glass. Then he downs it all.

They take off together and end up on an island at a hotel run by Lucille Gleason. The sardonic Roland Young is a guest. The creepy Willises are also around (Leslie Fenton, Gwen Lee). The news that a famous reformer and his nephew (William Farnum, Conrad Nagel) are stopping by on their way to rescue island natives sets everyone on edge.

The naive Nagel instantly falls for Brent (Bickford is on travel) while Fenton and Lee set to work spreading lies and rumors. An innocent swim turns into a local scandal when Brent and Nagel get marooned on a island alone after a storm. But Bickford returns to straighten everyone out.

Some interesting dialog here about Nagel's brand of religion (the rabid reformer) versus Brent's. She tells him her god is in a golden sunset, not in the pages of a book.

Several scenes are filmed on beaches with crashing waves and sea breezes and the sound is excellent. All the actors are quite good here with the exception of hammy Farnum.

This film re-teams some of the cast from 1929's Dynamite - Charles Bickford, Conrad Nagel, and Leslie Fenton. "The pagan lady" is Evelyn Brent, even though that is a bit of a misnomer, although Brent's character, Dot Hunter, does fall into the dictionary definition of the term pagan - someone who has no religion and delights in sensual pleasures.

Dot starts out as a bartender in Havana when in walks Dingo Mike (Charles Bickford) and orders up a drink that sounds like something you'd consume on a dare. He drinks the concoction down in one swallow and also manages to outsmart Dot's boss and his rum-running hooligans. You see, Dingo is a bootlegger himself. He literally sweeps the lady off her feet and they set up housekeeping in a tropical hotel full of colorful characters, some of whom are in the bootlegging business too.

Dingo takes off for a business trip, and while he's gone a fire-breathing pastor and his nephew (Conrad Nagel), a rather reluctant pastor-to-be, take up residency in the hotel. Dot is bored so she decides to entertain herself by seducing the naive young pastor. Things don't work out like she planned.

The plot is really nothing to write home about. The main attraction is Brent's acting. She gave some rather uneven performances early on in talkies having originally been a silent actress, but she's really on her mark here as a gal who has probably had a tough time of it over the years and knows how to take any loss or setback on the chin. Just don't expect a big dose of Bickford here. He's terrific when he's on screen, but he disappears completely for about half of the film.

Honorable mention goes to Roland Young as an often intoxicated doctor who plays the part of peacemaker and counselor when he can, and to Leslie Fenton and Gwen Lee as battling bootlegger husband and wife.

Evelyn Brent is a bartender in a Havana bar when rumrunner Charles Bickford swaggers in and carries her away to Florida. They're happy with each other, slanging by day and making love by night. But she worries how long it will last. How long before he tires of her or she of him, or he gets killed in a shootout with Prohibition agents? Then in come a bunch of Christian ministers holding a convention. Among them is Conrad Nagel, who falls for her on sight.... and since Bickford is gone on a 'business" trip, she likes him.

I am a sucker for Evelyn Brent from the silents and the talkies, through her last appearances with the Bowery Boys. There's a sad reality to her performances that seems genuine as she warily treads the dim corners of the demi-monde. Pair her with Charles Bickford at his early, emphatic best, and you have something. Add in Roland Young as the inevitable alcoholic doctor in these Sadie Thompson knockoffs, and you really have something.

Here's a movie in which Conrad Nagel as the naive boy of 34 is not out of place. His commonplace good looks, wan presence and, as a friend of mine notes, "the looks of Leslie Howard without the raw Latin sexuality" offer Miss Brent a redemption that Bickford can't: respectability, Christianity, and no fear that she will be called in to identify a bullet-riddled corpse. But is that enough for a girl who's been around the block and enjoyed the ride?