Review of Too Hot to Handle

I'm an anthropologist, and I quite enjoyed this 1939 movie where pilot Myrna Loy and newsreel videographer Clark Gable set off to rescue her brother in French Guiana, where he's being held by members of the Saramaka (aka Saamaka) people. The opening credits thanked the chief of a particular Saamaka group for letting the movie crew film a certain dance for the first time, but the characters assume the Saamaka are cannibals who practice "Voodoo." I kept stopping the movie to read about the Saamaka folks' origins as enslaved Africans who escaped their kidnappers and started communities in Suriname and French Guiana (another reviewer wondered why the "natives" were African, that's why), and I kept wondering if filming actual members of a group on site with their permission was going to make it so this movie was somehow less ignorant and prejudiced than others filmed in this era. Unfortunately there was no effort to treat the Saamaka as human here, instead one was shot in cold blood, they were treated as children, and Gable let loose with a couple of racist remarks. It was 1939, and on par with the time it was filmed.

Otherwise, though, it's pretty sweet. Loy plays an amazing pilot who takes Gable up to take pictures of a burning armaments ship and she can also translate Morse code on the fly. Myrna Loy as Alma Harding was heroic, capable, funny and smart. Gable rescued her once, but the scene where she takes him up to record the burning ship and her role in the rescue of her brother (spoiler alert) portrayed her character as a very strong, very capable and independent person.