User Reviews

I liked this movie, probably a little more than I expected to. Loy sometimes seems confused unless she's strongly supported by a leading man, but this is one of those cases where the leading man (Gable) is up to the task. Pigeon also has a large role in the film but his is pretty much the subordinate role and almost no attempt is made to mask the fact that he will not "get the girl".

The film's plot basically has Gable and Pigeon as rival photographers for newsreel companies in NYC. Loy is a daredevil female pilot (think Amelia Earhardt) who they both try to woo on a professional and personal level. Her main angle is that her brother was lost in a crash in South America and she's trying to raise money to send out a rescue party.

The characters aren't too convincing or realistic, but this is an action/romance so that doesn't really matter. The dialogue is fun and Conway's direction makes the film flow very smoothly. The most impressive photography in the film is the aerial footage where Gable and Loy are photographing a burning ship at sea.... the effects for this were quite well done for the time.

Overall a pleasing, not too memorable, adventure film. I expected a sort of "Red Dust" type of film but found Gable's character somewhat less interesting, and the story somewhat more, than in that film.

The opening scenes of this film reminded me a bit of how the much later "Airport" (1970) begins, where you learn a little about how the business works. In this case, the business is newsreels.

This film was produced just a year before "Gone With The Wind", but what a difference with cinematography and general sophistication between the very 1930-ish "Too Hot To Handle" and the decades ahead of its time "GWTW". And, the aerial stunts Gable supposedly portrayed here just aren't believable.

Nevertheless, it's an entertaining flick, despite its flaws. And one of the chief flaws is the likable scoundrel Clark Gable...and he was likable, but not lovable...so why exactly did Myrna Loy's character fall in love with him? Did women in the 1930s really have a total lack of good taste? Just when you think the film is preposterous, things begin to look up. Myrna Loy's brother is missing in South America, and our pals (Loy, Gable, and Walter Pidgeon) head for the Amazon where they encounter South American natives, all of whom happen to be African????? And what those African transplants fall for is just plain hokey; where in blazes does Gable's compadre get a movie projector in the middle of the jungle, let along the electricity to run it. Preposterous.

The acting of Gable, Loy, and Pidgeon is all great. But the script is pathetically foolish. And speaking of acting -- kudos to character actor Walter Connolly, who turns in a heck of a performance as Gable's newsreel company boss.

Perhaps if they had simply had Latinos playing the South American natives one could forgive the inconsistencies in this film. But this blunder is all too much.

There's nothing wrong with this film...except 78 years of sophistication. Entertaining? Yes. Believable? No. NOT a flick for your DVD shelf!

This 6th and last collaboration of Clark Gable and Myrna Loy, with Walter Pidgeon, Leo Carrillo, and Walter Connolly playing the main supporting characters, is a fast moving adventurous drama and sometimes comedy, that features Gable and Pidgeon as newsreel photographers for rival news services companies. They usually were assigned the same stories to report on. On assignment in Shanghai during a bombing raid by Japanese, they aren't above faking a bomb attack or manufacturing a story about a supposed cholera outbreak. Gable is especially funny here. They also aren't above stealing each other's film footage!

Meanwhile Myrna Loy comes into the picture as a thinly disguised version of Amelia Erhardt, who had been in the news recently as having disappeared while on her round the world flight. While resting up in Manila, Myrna was tapped to fly cholera serum to Shanghai, as requested by her old friend, as played by Pidgeon(quite a coincidence!). Unfortunately, when she lands in the dark, she crashes into Gable's stationwagon, which sets her plane on fire. Gable rescues her and the serum. Thus, she considers him a hero. Nevermind that his misplaced vehicle caused the crash! This sets the stage for a competition between Gable and Pidgeon for Myrna's romantic attention, that lasts the remainder of the film.

Now that her ambition to be the first woman to fly around the world apparently has been thwarted, her driving ambition is to try to find her brother, who disappeared while flying over the Amazon, not knowing if he's dead or alive. Thus, the 'boys' try to help her achieve that goal. Gable somehow manages to acquire enough cash for her to acquire a plane, but disguises his role in giving her the money. Gable, along with his aid Jose(Leo Carrillo) get to somewhere in the Amazon separately from Myrna, as does Pidgeon. Serendipitously, they all find each other. Myrna plus Pidgeon take off in her plane, to find a village said to harbor a white man. Meanwhile, Gable and Jose take a canoe in the same direction. The latter find the village first, staying on the periphery at first. They don't seem surprised that the natives are Africans, rather than the expected Native Americans. Apparently, they are actually one of the 'maroon' tribes of the decedents of escaped slaves who ran into the unexplored interior of Surinam. The natives are dancing around a fire, with one occasionally dancing into the fire. They bring a sick white man out on a stretcher, and the medicine man sprinkles some ashes over his body before returning him to a hut. That evening, they are still dancing around a still bigger fire. They again bring forth the white man, nearly unconscious, and appear to be getting ready to throw him into the fire. Now, things start to get bizarre. Gable decides he will distract them with some powerful 'magic'. Next we see a large picture of a film of various violent happenings projected on what? For a screen. Where did he get the projector and electricity for this?? Next, Gable somehow makes a cloud of smoke at the village entrance, with himself emerging. After a while, the chief decides that his magic is stronger than the medicine man's and makes him the new medicine man. Gable, as well as Jose, don the medicine man's chicken costume, their head being covered by a chicken head. They then carry the nearly dead white man to their canoe, but their canoe is gone. Thus, they bring him back to the village. Soon, they spot Myrna's plane overhead. Soon, Myrna and Pidgeon saunter into the village, find Myrna's brother, and take some newsreel. Footage. Gable and Jose don't reveal themselves. Rather, Gable takes Pidgeon's camera, and Pidgeon is afraid to fight for it. Eventually, Myrna and Pidgeon carry her brother to the plane. About this time, the chief changes his mind and declares that the white men medicine men are evil. Thus, Gable and Jose, still costumed, run for their lives, to a canoe and paddle away, toward the seaplane. They try to get on board, but Pidgeon shoots at them, and they let go. Now, they are in a very bad situation.

When Myrna and Pidgeon arrive in NYC, they are shocked to find that a newsreel of their rescue has already been released. They assume it must have been Gable?? Hence, Myrna calls Gable a hero and goes looking for him, in a very weak ending.

Gable and Walter Connolly supply the majority of the humor. ..........I think the title, which refers to Myrna, was inappropriate, much better applied to the '60 film of the same title, starring Jane Mansfield, and to the TV series of the same title. To me, it implies that the modest Myrna was a sexpot. I would have opted for something like "The adventures of a lady flier". ........... See a decent copy for free at YouTube.

You would think that the bombing of China in 1937 would be serious subject matter. Instead, this film turns into a nonsensical farce where two guys from two competing news services join forces to rescue the brother of Myrna Loy, a female pilot. What happened to China? The brother has been missing in the Amazon region.

The usually reliable Marjorie Main could have been such a riot as the stenographer to one of the companies. Instead, she is funny at the beginning of the film with her high toned sarcastic voice and then disappears for the most part.

Clark Gable befriends Myrna Loy, the pilot, who is romantically linked to Walter Pidgeon. Pidgeon gives up without a fight as it becomes evident that Gable shall take her away.

The part of rescuing the brother becomes almost silly as Gable and his pal don tribal clothes to get the brother out.

This is absolutely inane fanfare.

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.