China Seas | |
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Directed by | Tay Garnett |
Written by | James Kevin McGuinness Jules Furthman |
Based on | China Seas 1931 novel by Crosbie Garstin |
Produced by | Irving Thalberg Albert Lewin |
Starring | Clark Gable Jean Harlow Wallace Beery Lewis Stone Rosalind Russell Robert Benchley Akim Tamiroff |
Cinematography | Ray June Clyde De Vinna (2nd unit) |
Edited by | William LeVanway |
Music by | Herbert Stothart |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
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Running time | 87 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $1.1 million [1] [2] |
Box office | $2.8 million [1] [2] |
China Seas is a 1935 American adventure film starring Clark Gable as a brave sea captain, Jean Harlow as his brassy paramour, and Wallace Beery as a suspect character. The oceangoing epic also features Rosalind Russell, Lewis Stone, Akim Tamiroff, and Hattie McDaniel, while humorist Robert Benchley portrays a character reeling drunk from one end of the film to the other.
The lavish MGM epic was written by James Kevin McGuinness and Jules Furthman from the 1930 book by Crosbie Garstin, and directed by Tay Garnett. This is one of only four sound films with Beery in which he did not receive top billing.
Alan Gaskell (Clark Gable) is an abrasive, gambling captain of a steamer, the Kin Lung, shuttling between Singapore and Hong Kong. Tensions are high before the Kin Lung sails from Hong Kong because some pirates are discovered disguised as women passengers, while others try to smuggle weapons aboard.
Dolly Portland (Jean Harlow) is Alan's former girlfriend, who Alan later describes at the Captain's table as a "professional entertainer," who travels with her maid (Hattie McDaniel). Another of Alan's former loves, aristocratic Sybil Barclay (Rosalind Russell) from Sussex, England boards the Kin Lung. "I am in your hands again," Sybil taunts Alan. As the story develops, they plan to marry when the ship docks in Singapore. However, Dolly tries to win back Alan.
Meanwhile, Jamesy McArdle (Wallace Beery) is a corrupt passenger in league with a gang of pirates planning to steal a shipment of gold bullion worth £250,000 GBP carried on the steamer. [3] Dolly discovers the plot and attempts to warn Capt. Gaskell against McArdle but he deflects her warnings.
In calm seas following a typhoon in which the ship suffered damage to its cargo and the deaths of some of the crew, the Kin Lung is boarded by Malay pirates with whom McArdle is in alliance. The pirates steal personal possessions from passengers. Finding no gold in the ship's strongbox (Captain Gaskell had replaced it with sand), they torture the captain using a Malay Boot, but he will not reveal the gold's location. Instead, with bravado Gaskell instructs the pirates, as they prepare to torture him: "My size is 9C", before fainting from the pain. While leaving the Kin Lung without the gold they had intended to steal, one of the two pirate junks is bombed by Third Officer Davids, who dies while throwing a Mills Bomb as a grenade, which sinks it. The second junk sinks in the South China Sea after a bombardment from a light cannon manned by Captain Gaskell.
Frustrated by the failed robbery, McArdle commits suicide. When the Kin Lung docks in Singapore Captain Gaskell, still limping due to his tortured foot, concludes that his love for Sybil is superficial. He recognises that Dolly gave him good warning, and that he loves her more. They decide to marry. He says farewell to Sybil.
As the film closes, Gaskell reveals the gold was safe all along. He had concealed it in a piece of deck cargo – the toolbox of the steamroller stowed on deck he had risked his life to lash down during the storm.
Irving Thalberg had worked on the film since 1930 when he assigned three different writers to come up with three different treatments. By 1931 Thalberg had decided on the one storyline and spent the next four years working on a script with two dozen writers, half a dozen dir/and three supervisors. [2]
John Lee Mahin said he and Jim McGuiness were called in by Irving Thalberg to look at the script by Jules Furthman. Mahin said Faurthman "had stolen so much—practically word for word out of famous pieces. Things by Mark Twain and Somerset Maugham—and there was a well-known English novel of the time that he had taken a whole speech from. We discovered these, and we had to do quite a lot of rewriting. Granted, nothing’s new, but Jesus, you don’t just take whole lines of dialogue!" [4]
Gable had several temper tantrums on the set, which were tolerated by MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer because the star had recently won an Academy Award for Best Actor in It Happened One Night (1934) on a loan-out to Columbia Pictures, and he did not want to risk losing him. Mayer even tolerated that Gable risked his life by refusing a stunt double in a sequence in which he assisted numerous Chinese extras in roping in a runaway steamroller that crashed up and down the decks of the cantilevered studio ship. [5]
China Seas was an early Hollywood formula adventure-movie loosely using the plot of Gable and Harlow's earlier film titled Red Dust (1932) featuring Mary Astor in Russell's role, which was subsequently remade with Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly two decades later as Mogambo (1953).
Wallace Beery had worked with both Gable and Harlow in The Secret Six (1931), in which Gable and Harlow had smaller supporting roles and Beery played the lead. Beery and Gable also appeared together later the same year in the naval aviation film titled Hell Divers (1931), this time with Gable's part almost as large as top-billed star Beery's. The pairing of Gable and Harlow was so popular after Red Dust (1932) that they wound up making six films together, with the final one being finished posthumously after Harlow's untimely death.
The film was a big hit earning $1,710,000 in the US and Canada and $1,157,000 elsewhere resulting in profits of $653,000. [1] [2]
Libeled Lady is a 1936 American screwball comedy film directed by Jack Conway and starring Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy. It was written by George Oppenheimer, Howard Emmett Rogers, Wallace Sullivan, and Maurine Dallas Watkins. This was the fifth of fourteen films in which Powell and Loy were teamed, inspired by their success in the Thin Man series.
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American film and stage actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill (1930) opposite Marie Dressler, as General Director Preysing in Grand Hotel (1932), as Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934), as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa! (1934), and his title role in The Champ (1931), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 films during a 36-year career. His contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stipulated in 1932 that he would be paid $1 more than any other contract player at the studio. This made Beery the highest-paid film actor in the world during the early 1930s. He was the brother of actor Noah Beery and uncle of actor Noah Beery Jr.
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Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and ability to select scripts, choose actors, gather production staff, and make profitable films, including Grand Hotel, China Seas, A Night at the Opera, Mutiny on the Bounty, Camille and The Good Earth. His films carved out an international market, "projecting a seductive image of American life brimming with vitality and rooted in democracy and personal freedom", states biographer Roland Flamini.
Jean Harlow was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the pre-Code era of American cinema. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, whose image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow number 22 on its greatest female screen legends list.
John Lee Mahin was an American screenwriter and producer of films who was active in Hollywood from the 1930s to the 1960s. He was known as the favorite writer of Clark Gable and Victor Fleming. In the words of one profile, he had "a flair for rousing adventure material, and at the same time he wrote some of the raciest and most sophisticated sexual comedies of that period."
Hell Divers is a 1931 American pre-Code black-and-white film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starring Wallace Beery and Clark Gable as a pair of competing chief petty officers in early naval aviation. The film, made with the cooperation of the United States Navy, features considerable footage of flight operations aboard the Navy's second aircraft carrier, the USS Saratoga, including dramatic shots of takeoffs and landings filmed from the Curtiss F8C-4 Helldiver dive bombers after which the movie was named.
Akim Mikhailovich Tamiroff was an Armenian-American actor of film, stage, and television. One of the premier character actors of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tamiroff developed a prolific career despite his thick accent, appearing in at least 80 motion pictures over a span of 37 years.
Noah Nicholas Beery was an American actor who appeared in films from 1913 until his death in 1946. He was the older brother of Academy Award-winning actor Wallace Beery as well as the father of prominent character actor Noah Beery Jr. He was billed as either Noah Beery or Noah Beery Sr. depending upon the film.
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Red Dust is a 1932 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Victor Fleming, and starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Mary Astor. It is based on the 1928 play of the same name by Wilson Collison, and was adapted for the screen by John Mahin. Red Dust is the second of six movies Gable and Harlow made together. More than 20 years later, Gable starred in a remake, Mogambo (1953), with Ava Gardner starring in a variation on the role Harlow played and Grace Kelly playing a part similar to one portrayed by Astor in Red Dust.
Bombshell is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic screwball comedy film directed by Victor Fleming and starring Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, C. Aubrey Smith, Mary Forbes and Franchot Tone. It is based on the unproduced play of the same name by Caroline Francke and Mack Crane, and was adapted for the screen by John Lee Mahin and Jules Furthman.
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