Law of the Tropics (1941) User Reviews

Constance descends into the land of the B movie

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 8 January 2006]

After just seeing the glorious Constance Bennett at her peak in "What Price Hollywood?" it is sad to see her, at the age of 36, in a B movie, but there you are - welcome to the world of being a middle-aged leading woman in films back in the golden age. She was in good company. In her next film, she would play a supporting role in an A movie that drove 36-year-old Greta Garbo out of Hollywood: Two-Faced Woman.

Bennett at this advanced age (hah!) was still beautiful, but it was hard to tell underneath the fright wig she wore. This improved when she put her hair up later on in the film. She plays a singer who marries Jeffrey Lynn (at age 32, he looks to be much younger than Bennett somehow) in order to escape a detective who's been chasing her. An inventor in a managerial position on a rubber plantation in South America, he wants to bring back a wife, so the two make a deal. Along the way, of course, they fall in love.

This is a pleasant movie, helped by the likability of the key players: Bennett, Lynn, Regis Toomey, and the gorgeous Mona Maris, who plays Toomey's wife. Craig Stevens, then very young and very hunky, has a small part as the owner's son, but he's involved in possibly the best scene, a fight between Lynn and himself.

Bennett deserved better. Shortly before leaving films in 1951, she was honored for her work on behalf of the post-war occupying troops and the Berlin Airlift. In the '50s, she did a club act, returning to movies in 1965, where she looked stunning as John Forsythe's mother in "Madame X." She died shortly afterward. She went out the way she came in.

however

[lukemcgook · 6/10 · 12 April 2001]

Deep, deep, miserably deep "B". However, Bennett is delightful, as always, and makes the picture worth watching. Also, if you've ever had the urge to beat the crap out of Peter Gunn, there's an OK fight scene that Craig Stevens gets the worst of, and the chick who plays Regis Toomey's wife is a 40's hottie.

Still A Temptress, In A New Decade

[Handlinghandel · 5/10 · 4 September 2005]

Constance Bennett in the 1940s. Her role is an Ann Sheridan-type role. And she looks like part-Benett, part-Jane Wyman, and a good part Lucille Ball. (The penciled-in brows, the full red lips ...) This could not be called a good movie. It holds its own, though. Jeffrey Lynn is good, as he always was. The other female lead, Mona Maris, is very alluring and a good actress.

The plot is silly as can be.

In "What Price Hollywood?" Bennett sang in French. She wove in and out of seats at a cabaret much in the style of Marlene Deitrich in "morocco." In "City Across The Bay," her sister Joan sings a racy song that puts one in mind of Carmen Miranda. Here Bennett sings a song that is partly in Spanish. (The story takes place in South or Central America.) Everyone gives it his or her best. Often that isn't much but it's a hard movie to dislike.

Constance Bennett in the tropics

[jarrodmcdonald-1 · 7 November 2022]

In the late '30s and early '40s, Warner Brothers had a prolific B-picture unit. To save costs, this unit often recycled plots from earlier hits. Or else they reused a script that had already been filmed, with slight modifications to bring things up to date.

LAW OF THE TROPICS is a remake of OIL FOR THE LAMPS OF CHINA, a 1935 crowd pleaser that starred Pat O'Brien as an executive working at an overseas location for his company. This time around, contract player Jeffrey Lynn is assigned the role. Instead of taking place in the Orient, the action is now set in South America with the attendant Latin stereotypes.

To cover the fact that this B production had a smaller budget than the original, the studio hired Constance Bennett for the lead female role. She plays the part of the exec's wife in a makeshift marriage of convenience. As expected, Miss Bennett provides her usual touch of glamour. Her career as a star was on the downswing, though you'd never know that by how she looks and acts in this picture.

Another change to the story is that the corporate product is no longer oil but rubber. I guess this was done to make a clearer connection to contemporary concerns about the use of rubber for national defense. After all, the U. S. was on the verge of joining a world war.

Of course much of this is shot on the Warners backlot, and frankly it shows. But I think in films of this type, we can suspend some disbelief. One character says the goal in building up the company's presence in foreign posts is to extend the reach of civilization...implying law and order, which these other cultures must lack in spades. This feels like a polite business way of advocating the nation's presence in international locales, as part of the United States' ongoing Big Stick diplomacy.

As a modest studio effort meant to appeal to a mainstream audience, the story never is allowed to get that deep. Or to cause viewers to question what America does abroad. Most of what we see is couched in melodramatic terms. This is where Miss Bennett's casting is helpful.

Constance Bennett was known for a series of precode tearjerkers a decade earlier. In those outings, she played troubled dames dealing with checkered pasts. She gets to do the same here. There is an unwritten law in Hollywood, not the tropics, where a gorgeous woman made to suffer on celluloid for more than 70 minutes-- with her assorted romantic entanglements and unending angst-- will make us feel better about our own comparatively uneventful lives.

Still enjoyable...even though it's a remake.

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 25 August 2022]

Only a few years earlier, Warner Brothers made "Oil for the Lamps in China"...and remade it as "Law of the Tropics". Such things were very common for the studio...and they even sometimes made remakes only a couple years later! I loved the first film...what about this remake?

The plots are very, very similar. The only main difference I saw is that the remake was set in South America, not China as well as the film being a little less of an indictment about corporate greed and indifference.

Instead of top actors, however, in the remake they used second-tier ones. Constance Bennett, once a bit star, had a career tailspin...probably, sadly, due to her age. Jeffery Lynn was never a top star but a competent B-movie actor. Despite this, they both did a very nice job and the film is STILL good....just not quite as good as the first one.

Usual acting!?

[jcjccaz · 7/10 · 23 August 2022]

Good movie with the usual plot. Girl doesn't go with intended (always different reasons) and other girl (in this case Constance Bennett) falls in love (with Jeffrey Lynn). He gets telegram and drinks because of being jilted. But they are all good serviceable actors and the top four in the film are as good as any known star or character actor. So, why do some make "it" and some not so much? It comes down to whether you like them when you see them or not. They catch your eye AND THAT'S IT GENERALLY SPEAKING!!

What stars do when they can't afford to retire

[hotangen · 4/10 · 9 January 2015]

Bennett has top billing, which must have been some consolation for starring in this story of a torch singer in the tropics attempting to elude the law. The film is OK - and it has several pleasing songs sung by a trio of tropical lads - but the presence of Bennett does not raise it from "B" to "A" status. Maybe Jack Warner wanted to help his old poker partner by giving her a job. And she took it because, according to her biographer, she hadn't put away so much as a dime for the inevitable rainy days and she needed the money to support her palatial lifestyle.

Although the former #1 glamour queen of Hollywood is only 36, she is not looking especially fabulous in this film. But Mona Maris, a dead ringer for Bennett's poker playing comrade, Kay Francis, does look fabulous. Unlike Bennett, Francis did save her money for a rainy day, but when the rainy day came she found it impossible to go quietly into obscurity and she too made a few "B" films. Both ladies, like so many other former femme stars out of fashion, took up live theatre in the late 40s. Bennett fans are advised to skip this film and watch Topper instead.

fine for B

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 3 September 2022]

Jim Conway (Jeffrey Lynn) works on a rubber plantation in the Amazon. He has come up with a new way to process rubber. He's eager to marry his girl Laura and bring her back to the jungle. Instead, he receives a Dear John telegram. He meets singer Joan Madison (Constance Bennett), and tells her his sad story. She is being chased by an unsavory character and she jumps on board his boat. To avoid embarrassment, she pretends to be Laura after marrying him. Secretly, she needs to hide under the assumed name. They get married by the captain and agree to a divorce in three months. Jim is a loyal company man but the company isn't loyal to its men.

This is loosely based on the 1935 movie, Oil for the Lamps of China. This is a B-movie. It's a bit of a jumbo. The acting is fine for a lesser movie. The movie needs something but I'm not sure what. The fist fight is fun but the movie doesn't really elevates.

B-movie programmer seems like a rip-off of "Torrid Zone"...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 13 May 2008]

Warner Bros. seemed to be doing a retread of TORRID ZONE, the film that starred James Cagney and Ann Sheridan. And CONSTANCE BENNETT is no substitute here for Sheridan, for whom the role of a nightclub singer running from the law would have been perfect...except that by this time, Sheridan was doing Grade A films.

JEFFREY LYNN, with a mustache, has the kind of role you might expect James Cagney to be in. He's the inventor of a process that produces rubber faster than the usual time it takes. He's assigned to a rubber plantation where he can carry out a way to increase production of rubber. When he's jilted by his would be bride, he makes a deal with a nightclub singer (CONSTANCE BENNETT) who agrees to play the role for a fee and as a means (unknown to him) to escape the law because of an incident in her past. Naturally, they fall in love before the last reel after the usual plot contrivances.

It's formula stuff and gets the Warner Bros. B-film treatment with clumsy attempts at humor along the way, but at least there are two nice supporting performances from MONA MARIS (looking beautiful) and the reliable REGIS TOOMEY, both sympathetic to Bennett's cause.

Summing up: Passes the time quickly, but is one you'll soon forget. Bennett's penciled in eyebrows are a distraction and she looks ill suited for a role that would have fit Sheridan like a glove.