"I am Tondelayo" at one time was a phrase bandied about, though you don't hear it much, if ever, anymore. "White Cargo" is a 1942 film starring Hedy Lamarr, Walter Pidgeon, Richard Carlson, Frank Morgan, and Henry O'Neill.
The story concerns men on a rubber plantation, bored, hot, and hating it. When Mr. Langford (Richard Carlson) joins them, he's fresh and rarin' to go. As the others predict, his optimism doesn't last long.
Then along comes the scourge of the jungle, Tondelayo (Lamarr). She's Egyptian and Arab so she could pass the Hays office, which said whites and blacks couldn't cavort. Apparently Tonde has given quite a few white jungle dwellers, including the Pidgeon carrier, quite a ride. He detests her, and warns Carlson to stay away from her. But he can't. Soon she works her magic on him and his destruction begins.
Among Holllywood's spectacular beauties, Hedy Lamarr was in the top 5. She had something besides beauty (intelligence, but that doesn't come into play here) -- sex appeal. You certainly didn't have to be womanless in the jungle to find her gorgeous, especially half-dressed. Sporting dark makeup, a bad accent and bad accent, Tondelayo proves to be problematic.
I think this was intended as a serious film, and it's very well made, not like some campy movie. True, Lamarr's role is campy, and it would have been no matter who had acted in it.
You can mark this down as an entertaining film about the tropics, a favorite topic over at MGM. And maybe on Jeopardy Alec Trebek had to run through the "Hedy Lamarr" topic all by himself while the clueless contestants just stood there, but there was a time when everybody had heard of her -- and Tondelayo.
The story concerns men on a rubber plantation, bored, hot, and hating it. When Mr. Langford (Richard Carlson) joins them, he's fresh and rarin' to go. As the others predict, his optimism doesn't last long.
Then along comes the scourge of the jungle, Tondelayo (Lamarr). She's Egyptian and Arab so she could pass the Hays office, which said whites and blacks couldn't cavort. Apparently Tonde has given quite a few white jungle dwellers, including the Pidgeon carrier, quite a ride. He detests her, and warns Carlson to stay away from her. But he can't. Soon she works her magic on him and his destruction begins.
Among Holllywood's spectacular beauties, Hedy Lamarr was in the top 5. She had something besides beauty (intelligence, but that doesn't come into play here) -- sex appeal. You certainly didn't have to be womanless in the jungle to find her gorgeous, especially half-dressed. Sporting dark makeup, a bad accent and bad accent, Tondelayo proves to be problematic.
I think this was intended as a serious film, and it's very well made, not like some campy movie. True, Lamarr's role is campy, and it would have been no matter who had acted in it.
You can mark this down as an entertaining film about the tropics, a favorite topic over at MGM. And maybe on Jeopardy Alec Trebek had to run through the "Hedy Lamarr" topic all by himself while the clueless contestants just stood there, but there was a time when everybody had heard of her -- and Tondelayo.