Wow! Such a good movie.

Sorry, this movie sucks

Expected more

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

***SPOILERS***Hedy Lamarr rightfully billed as the most beautiful woman in the world is half-cast French Asian belly dancer Manon de Vargnes in this tragic love story about forbidden love and the consequences that goes along with it. That in her getting involved with this good for nothing self admitted playboy or moocher who lives off the women that he romances American party boy Bill Carey played by the devilishly handsome, you can almost see the horns sticking out of his head, Robert Taylor. Carey who's to be hitched up or marry millionairess Dolly Harrison, Mary Taylor, drops her like a hot potato when he laid his eyes on the beautiful Manon at a swanky restaurant in Siagon-French Indo_Chins-while smooching off a free meal that Dolly's parents are treating him to.Even though already planning to marry rich and also half-breed French/Asian millionaire nobleman Pierre DDelaroch, Joseph Schildkraut, who's really got the hots for her Manon falls heads over heels for the handsome American Bill Carey who never worked a day in his life and doesn't have a penny to his name! We soon find out that Manon is torn between getting a passport to get out of the country that only Pierre, with his money and political connections, can provide her with or marrying the dirt poor but handsome Bill Carey. With whom she can only look forward to a life of living off the charity and kindness, as well as grubbing & scratching, of others! Madly in love and not willing to lose the beautiful Manon to a commoner as well as, what he thinks of him, bum on the street Pierre sets Carey up at first to have a job, the first one in his life, as a rubber inspector of pencil erasers at one of his rubber plantations and then marry Manon while he's out at work-which Carey hates with a passion-in the field.***SPOILERS**** The tragic ending in this crazy and confusing film has Manon in order to keep the outraged Carey from killing Pierre for taking her away from him by doing the job-shooting to death- on Pierre herself. Manon then shooting herself now peacefully dying in her lover Carey's arms, how touching, and about to breath her last breath has Father Antione,Earnest Cossart, summoned in to give her the last rites before she finally checks out for good. We see in the last few frames of the movie the passport that Pierre the lover that she killed got for Manon is in fact legit not fake which we were, by Pierre, lead on to believe. which Bill Carey was to use to get her out of the country but now totally useless for her! Since the beautiful Manon will never be able to see "The City of Lights" Paris the Eiffel Tower and most of all go sightseeing down the Champs-Elysee which she so long was dying, and in fact did, to do!

"Lady of the Tropics" (1939) is a romantic melodrama set in Indochina (now Vietnam). Hedy Lamarr gives a sensitive and moving performance as Manon de Vargnes. Lamarr's beautiful face expresses her emotions. Themes include love, racism, power, revenge and personal sacrifice. This is an underrated film.Manon is a biracial temple dancer whose father was French, and mother was Indochinese. She wants a passport to Paris, but the racist laws do not allow passports to be given to "half-castes." Biracial people are treated as second-class citizens in Indochina, which was a French colony in the 1930s.Manon is beautiful, sensitive and mysterious, with a Mona Lisa smile. She has a tendency to tell lies to avoid conflicts with men. Manon is romantically pursued by the powerful and unscrupulous businessman Pierre Delaroche (Joseph Schildkraut), who is also biracial. A king in the Angkor Wat jungle wants to add Manon to his harem of wives. However, Manon falls in love with Bill Carey (Robert Taylor), a handsome, kind, and impoverished American.Pierre Delaroche proposes marriage to Manon, and she lies and says yes. Manon probably lied to avoid offending the very powerful man with a blunt rejection. However, this lie is her fatal flaw. When Pierre finds out that Manon has married Bill, he wants revenge, and prevents Manon from obtaining a passport. Bill is unable to find work, and they struggle to make ends meet.Manon realizes that the only way to make Bill happy and obtain a passport is to make a deal with with the devious Pierre. She attends Puccini's opera "Manon Lescaut" with Pierre. (The opera is about a woman named Manon, who becomes the mistress of a rich older man, but is forgiven by the man she truly loves.) It is strongly implied that Manon sacrificed her virtue to Pierre. After doing so, Bill is given a job and Manon has her passport. However, Bill finds out about the terrible sacrifice Manon has made for him. The ending is poignant.The sets and costumes are lavish. The scenes at Angkor Wat are especially beautiful, with the huge lotus bud shaped towers in the background. Temple dancers perform. Manon looks like a goddess in a glittery Indochinese costume. (See a link to this costume in the message board.) Hedy Lamarr's costumes, designed by Adrian, are gorgeous. She wears beautiful dresses with native embroidery, and veils with beads.Nina (Gloria Franklin) sings a heartbreaking torch song in the local nightclub.The film received an Oscar nomination for best black and white cinematography."Lady of the Tropics" (1939) has a good storyline, excellent acting, exotic tropical sets, beautiful costumes, and superb cinematography. This is an underrated film, and it should be released on DVD. Highly recommended.Hedy Lamarr starred in another film with a similar concept, titled "A Lady without Passport" (1950). The 1950 movie is a good film noir. I prefer "Lady of the Tropics" (1939) because it is visually beautiful, romantic, and emotionally poignant.

With a script by Ben Hecht, LADY OF THE TROPICS is a film that recalled another Hedy Lamarr film--at least the title does--called "A Lady Without Passport"--a wretched film she made in 1950. Here too, she's a lady without passport and that's what triggers the entire plot. But it must be said that the comparison between the two films ends with the title.This is strictly old-fashioned melodrama reeking of either "Manon Lescaut" or "Madame Butterfly", with Hedy as the ill-fated heroine who allows herself to be "used" by Joseph SCHILDKRAUT while hiding her indiscretions from her smitten American admirer (ROBERT TAYLOR), who meets her in French Indochina (Saigon) before WWII and immediately falls in love with her. When Schildkraut gets revenge by planting false evidence of his association with Lamarr to open Taylor's eyes to the truth, the consequences turn tragic.Hedy has never been more beautiful and gives a sensitive performance as Manon (yes, that's her name!), a "lady of the tropics" with a sultry beauty enhanced by her MGM transformation into a stunning star who is always ready for her close-ups. Attired in an equally stunning Adrian wardrobe, she's a glittering testament to the power of Golden Age films to give stars glamor with a capital "G". Taylor, attired in white linen suits and Panama hats must have made female hearts flutter as the romantic hero willing to sacrifice all for his yen for Manon.It's a better film than I expected. Joseph SCHILDKRAUT makes a perfect villain, the kind you like to hiss, with his Oriental make-up and oily manner oozing menace at every quiet inflection of his voice. The B&W photography of some artfully designed sets is soothing to the eye and so, of course, is the teaming of Lamarr and Taylor--two of the most photogenic stars on the MGM lot.The script by Ben Hecht helps sustain interest in the storyline, even if it does get a bit too weepy toward the end. Lamarr shows evidence that she could be a very sympathetic heroine if given half a chance.

For those who don't realize it the Lady of the Tropics we're referring to is Hedy Lamarr who falls big time for visiting playboy Robert Taylor in Saigon. Of course one look at Hedy Lamarr and his romantic goose is cooked as well. But there's is a forbidden love and sad to say the message in Ben Hecht's screenplay is stick to your own kind.Lady of the Tropics was shot while Hedy Lamarr was on hiatus from the ill-fated I Take This Woman. Louis B. Mayer nor any of the other movie moguls believed in letting their players sit idly by. So Lady of the Tropics became Lamarr's second film and her only pairing with that other screen beauty Robert Taylor.Taylor plays a very honorable character here or at least more honorable than most. He's part of a visiting party of tourists off a yacht that lands in Saigon right before World War II starts. As we well know Vietnam was then under that colonial umbrella known as French Indo-China and Saigon was its capital. Among others Taylor is with is his American fiancé Gloria Franklin. Of course the romantic sparks start the second that Lamarr and Taylor catch sight of each other in that Saigon café. Taylor does an unheard of thing, he breaks it off with Franklin and weds Lamarr post haste.Sad to say, but implicit is the message that what you do with exotic beauties not 100% Caucasian is bed them don't wed them. But Taylor and Lamarr don't see it that way. As was said by Queen Latifah in the recent Hairspray, they're in for a whole world of stupid. This was 1939 not 1967 in America. We still had miscegenation laws in most states at the time so the message of sticking to your own kind was in keeping with 1939 mores. This is the exact opposite message the screen would give in 1967 in Guess Who's Coming To Dinner.Taylor and Lamarr are stunning, no two ways about that. The sets showing tropical Saigon are great and the film did get an Oscar nomination for cinematography. But the story is both melodramatic and thank God, dated.