Review of White Cargo

Lusty half-caste on a British-owned rubber plantation in Africa--speaking in broken English and always preceded by the tinkling of her jewelry--insinuates herself between the two badgering white foremen; she childishly pits the hotheaded adversaries against one another, winner take Tondelayo! Leon Gordon's play, an adaptation of the novel "Hell's Playground" by Ida Vera Simonton, raised enough eyebrows in the 1920s to make it a hit, but by 1942 the material was already seeming awfully trite and thin. Director Richard Thorpe doesn't even try to disguise the stage-origins, keeping his actors running from Point A to Point B in quick little mad dashes. However, despite the lack of style and finesse, Hedy Lamarr's ripened female-savage is something to see, and occasionally her lines even get intentional laughs. ** from ****