The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The title of this movie shouldn't be about a woman but a marine. Actually Burt Lancaster is the big star and Virginia Mayo has a supporting role. My does he look good in that uniform. It reminds me of his role as the sergeant in "From Here to Eternity". He plays the same character in both! This film has a something for everyone, action, adventure, drama, comedy, and romance. Lancaster and Chuck Conners take on the Japanese invasion fleet and spoil their Guadalcanal landings. Far fetched, I'd say so, but entertaining. The comedy was spotty and corny like the conflict between the Navy and the Marine Corps, the hula dancing in shoes, and Lancaster-Conners interaction. The serious punishment for desertion that awaits Lancaster is waived, and he emerges unscathed as top kick once again. I like Burt Lancaster anytime and in this he doesn't disappoint. You can't spoil a movie with him in it no matter how ho hum it is.

Not very funny for a movie labeled as a comedy. Sergeant Major O'Hearn is being court martialed for desertion. After all he was AWOL for nine months.Chuck Connors plays a PFC hero. He has the Silver Star and the Navy Cross before the film even starts. He dies when he climbs a Jap ship's stack and throws some TNT down it. This blows up the ship and Connors. Burt Lancaster is O'Hearn. He refuses to testify until the he must to clear the record about Connors being a deserter. Then everything comes out in the open. It is still not very funny. Virginia Mayo is the love interest, first of Connors and then of Lancaster. Her testimony starts things in motion which leads to O'Hearns deciding to testify. This movie is well acted and well written but it is not comedy by any stretch of the imagination.

I found my way to this film after seeing Veola Vonn playing "Arlette" a voluptuous painter's model in "Le Fantome de la rue Morgue" (1954) which is loosely based on an Edgar Allan Poe novel.On looking at Veola's film career she seemed to specialise in acting roles playing French ladies of easy virtue and the subject film is typical when she plays Lillie Duval a madame of a brothel on a remote French island.Although she was born in NYK.(1918-1995), I wondered whether she had French parents/relatives or connections to give substance to these roles.Virginia Mayo first came to my attention in "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) playing the initially good-time wife of Dana Andrews a returning bombardier officer from the U.S.A.F. being demobbed at the end of WWII.In this film Virginia as "Ginger Martin" shows off her very feminine figure to its best advantage and soon gets Chuck (The Rifleman) Connors (Pvt.Davey White) & Burt Lancaster (Sgt. O'Hearn) squabbling over her and how best to get back into WWII on the side of Uncle Sam.For Burt it must have made a change doing this knockabout comedy after filming the heavy dramatic acting required playing another sergeant in "From Here To Eternity (1953)" in the same year.Coincidentally both films have the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour as a theme.Another face I spotted was Paul Burke (The Naked City - 1960s TV series) playing an ensign at Sgt.O'Hearn's court marshal.Obviously the plot outlined in other user comments above is comedic and Hollywood stereotypes abound which include (from an American perspective,) all foreigners who cannot speak English but we must remember that these films were produced by Americans for average Americans.I would place the growing international maturity of U.S. film producers from 1962 with "The Longest Day".One obvious editing device used in "South Sea Woman" is to utilise B&W war newsreels of the real WWII U.S./Japanese conflict and splice them into the subject B&W film. Also used were back-projection screens with "real" studio action by the actors.Oh well, c'est la guerre.I rated it 6/10 on purely on an entertainment level.

In 1942, Burt Lancaster, as Marine Sgt. James O'Hearn, is being court-marshaled for various offenses, including desertion and sinking a saloon. He stand firmly mute while various witnesses testify in such a way that he looks bad. Finally, when his friend's honor (Chuck Connors) is called into question, he decides to speak for himself at the trial."Foist," he explains, "we busted into that stinkin' Portagee dungeon and let them Free Frenchies go." The story is that he and his buddy, Connors, were left behind with Ginger, a saloon girl, (Virginia Mayo), when the Marines evacuated Shanghai. (I thought that was in 1939, not 1941, but let it go.) By a curious juxtaposition of events the trio wind up on a small, studio-bound South Sea Island called Namur, run by the Fascist-friendly Vichy French. They claim to be deserters in order to stay out of prison, and they are housed in the "hotel" run by a French woman and her "three lovely nieces." All of whom Lancaster seduces, while Connors is glued to Virginia Mayo, making goo-goo eyes at her and planning for a revolting event called "marriage." Lots of comedy as Lancaster and Connors -- in real life, both Irish athletes from New York City -- bop and deceive one another. Virginia Mayo's growing attraction to Lancaster only intensifies the rivalry.But that's nothing compared to the fight they initiate against the "Krauts" and the "Japs". They manage to sink a fleet of Japanese barges on their way to Guadalcanal, and even a Japanese destroyer, at the cost of Connors' life.Not much sense in going on about the plot. It's mostly comedic. The two tough Marines have to dress in frilly nighties while their uniforms are being pressed, for instance. As a comedy, this is pretty basic, and the absence of subtlety is notable but not necessarily regretted. There's plenty of action too, which I won't bother to spell out.Lancaster grins and shows off his mouthful of chicklets. Connors seems made of some iron alloy. (The two men couldn't be more different in their political attitudes off the screen.) Virginia Mayo is stuck in the role of a perambulating floozy, and yet it may be her most animated performance on screen. One can imagine the director yelling at her, "More, MORE!" And she delivers.It was made by the Warner Brothers. It could have been made by the Warner Brothers in 1939 instead of 1951, with Jimmy Cagney in the Lancaster role and some nobody in Connors' role. Man -- it moves FAST.What a lot of fun.