Congo Maisie

Congo Maisie is a cute little film from the Maisie series which features a great independent female character. Maisie is a woman who keeps her self respect, her dignity, and her good girl status through all of her adventures. Ann Sothern was very lucky to have come across this character. Maisie is a tough cookie with a heart of gold.

This film in the series is pleasant, even if isn't my favorite one. It does have similar aspects to Red Dust, but it really isn't a remake as Mogambo later was.

Maisie sings and dances and performs magic tricks. The audience gets to see her think fast on her feet and to use her natural intelligence. She may not be a highly educated person, but she is someone everyone would want to have in their lives.

Enjoy this trip to Africa, and don't forget to bring your umbrella!

Ann Sothern does what she can with the material in this far-fetched story set in the jungles of West Africa, but the film never really makes an impact. Although the acting is fine throughout, the fast-talking Sothern is the only character I really liked. And the only sequence I truly enjoyed was the one-minute crash course Sothern gets from John Carroll on how to assist in an appendectomy. I think even I could do it now.

The film has been called a "loose" remake of Red Dust (1932), but it is actually based on a different book, "Congo Landing," which was written by the same author after Red Dust was released. It is similar in plot to it as well as to Torrid Zone (1940).

MGM's Tarzan sets got some extra use when in Ann Sothern's Maisie series she did an African film Congo Maisie. The plot which was recycled from Red Dust would get recycled again for Mogambo only that one was actually done on African location.

Ann Sothern stows away on the wrong boat, she has a job in a coastal African town, but this boat commanded by J.M. Kerrigan is going upstream to a small settlement, a research facility where married couple Sheppard Strudwick and Rita Johnson. Even further into the wild is another former doctor now rubber plantation magnate John Carroll and all three go visiting there.

Where both an outbreak of witch doctor fundamentalism and an attack of appendicitis on Strudwick puts the whole party in jeopardy. But not with the ever resourceful Maisie using some tricks she learned from when she was a magician's apprentice.

Using her Maisie character as a bridge between what Jean Harlow and later Ava Gardner did with same part, Sothern is light, breezy, entertaining and very wise in a street smart way. The Maisie series went on for about a decade and Sothern's ingratiating and affable personality was the reason why.

We could all use a wise Maisie in our lives.

If you are a fan of the Maisie films you may be surprised (as I was) that this is only the second in the series (out of ten). It's so over the top it feels like the series has "jumped the shark" and the brassy showgirl from Brooklyn finds herself in Africa in an isolated medical camp surrounded by restless natives.

In all her films Maisie gets into hilarious situations, but the best scenes are when her suffering stage acts go horribly wrong just before she gets fired.... In Congo Maisie however the "disaster" stage act comes at the climax when she must out voodoo a native witch doctor with hokey illusions from her nightclub act - and of course this means she has to present her entire show including singing St Louis Woman to the accompaniment of native drums while wearing a showgirl costume. This is mere minutes after assisting in emergency surgery, meanwhile clearing up the relationships of everyone around her.... It's all for laughs at a manic screwball pace. Southern moves briskly from scene to scene holding the energy. By the time she starts doing her nightclub act in the jungle I was in love.

All the Maisie movies are charmers, and as the series progressed Maisie joins the war, works in an airplane factory, goes out west and discovers a hidden goldmine.... Maisie is practically a prototype of Scooby-Doo-esque iconic American adventures, borrowing liberally from trendy plot lines appropriate for a B comedy. They are all feather light and Ann Southern puts so much heart and sweetness into her character, It's wonderful to see same Maisie story progression, her fighting and falling in love with her leading man again and again - even though we know it won't be the same guy next time, poor Maisie!

But Congo Maisie is the one that really stands out as the most outrageous and off the hook. It breaks from the apple pie formula into stylized farce, and pokes fun at so many movie tropes of the day that it stands out from the rest of the series as a funny parody of many films, from Harlow's Red Dust to Ann Harding's Prestige, all painted with broad strokes and with snappy dialog.

During the late 30s and through the 40s, Ann Sothern made ten Maisie films. They were clearly B-movies--short, relatively low budget (for MGM) and meant as second films in a double-feature. Yet, despite this, they also were very polished and entertaining. Clearly, MGM made nice looking B-films.

In this second installment, Maisie is inexplicably in central Africa! Why is never really explained well and seeing the blonde Sothern traipsing about what is supposed to be African jungle is rather surreal. As far as the plot goes, it's a reworking of "Red Dust" but due to the Production Code, the sexiness of the remake is much more subdued than the original. In the original, Jean Harlow was a tramp--a nice tramp but clearly a tramp. Here, Maisie is a nice girl--a show girl but a NICE show girl.

When the film begins, Maisie stows away on a boat. Instead of heading down river to Lagos, it heads up river to disease-ridden and superstition-filled jungle. Along the way, she teams up with a grumpy ex-doctor, Dr. Shane (John Carrol), and they head to a jungle hospital--where the "Red Dust"-like plot ensues. There, another doctor's wife is bored and lonely and immediately falls for Dr. Shane. But, Maisie being a good girl, she does what she can to help the lady realize her problems WON'T be solved with an affair. How all this works out you'll just have to see for yourself.

Aside from stealing a few clips from "Trader Horn", the film looks pretty good for a stage-bound B-movie set in the jungle. And, the acting and story work well. Overall, it's an agreeable little film and a decent remake since the story is more a reworking than a direct remake. Worth your time even if it is a bit patronizing in how it depicts many of the Africans.