Movie of the Month: China Seas (1935)

China Seas is a real MGM high octane thriller, set on the high seas, with… Romance! Pirates! Deception! A torrid love triangle!

Gable is Alan Gaskell, a roguish captain of a ship that sails between Hong Kong and Shanghai. It’s established pretty early on that he’s been having some adult fun ashore with a Shanghai harlot, Dolly, who goes by the name China Doll (Harlow). So imagine his surprise when setting his ship off to sea that she is on board as a passenger! She confesses she is madly in love with him; he is weary of her and rejects her advances. She is green with jealousy upon the arrival onboard of Sybil,(Russell), a distinguished former paramour of Alan’s from England. Lily sets out to win her man back but ends up embarrassing herself in front of him and the lady by telling of Alan’s seedy behavior. Rejected by him once again, she decides to get even and is persuaded to be in cahoots with Jamesy (Beery), a crooked first mate who is collaborating with Malaysian pirates to loot the ship. She steals the keys to the armory cabinet from Alan’s stateroom and passes them on to Jamesy. Pirates overrun the ship and torture Alan so he’ll reveal where the gold is hidden. When Alan won’t give in, they assume there is no gold and give up, and a courageous officer blows them up with grenades. Alan, aware that the pirates were helped from someone on the inside, interrogates Jamesy and China Doll. They confess and Jamesy commits suicide. Once they dock in Hong Kong, China Doll is led off the boat by the authorities to be tried for conspiracy. Gable admits his love for her and tells her he’ll stand by her during the trial and marry her.

Perhaps Gable was able to give such a compelling performance as a troubled sea captain because he himself was quite troubled during the film’s production. Loretta Young contacted him at this time and informed him of her pregnancy (that had to have been a stressful day…), Louis B. Mayer was breathing down Gable’s neck about his affairs with Elizabeth Allan and others, and Gable and Beery were not getting along.

I imagine this was about Clark's expression when hearing about Loretta Young's condition...

Production had to be shut down and the men had to be separated one afternoon when Beery slapped Gable across the face instead of pretending to do it like in the script.

Gable does have some of his best lines to Harlow’s China Doll:

“Someday you’ll say something nice and never forgive yourself.”

“Let’s quit good friends instead of like a couple of cab drivers after a drunken brawl.”

“You’ve always got a good reason for anything you do. In fact I don’t know anybody who can think of more remarkable good reasons than you can on short notice!”

I must say this is not one of my favorite Jean Harlow movies. After years of her hair being bleached by harsh chemicals and curled and dried under high heat, her hair was completely fried and had started falling out. It was cut very short so it could grow back in healthier. The result is that Jean was fitted with rather-ridiculous, cotton-candy-looking fluffy platinum wigs for this film. They look rather silly, especially when her hair doesn’t move in the wind! During the storm scene, they couldn’t use a wig on her because it would look so fake wet, so for a few seconds you can see Jean’s soaking wet real hair. Also her eyebrows were at their pinnacle of ridiculousness–thin and in a complete semi-circle over her eyes. I much, much prefer the natural-looking Jean in Wife vs. Secretary.

She also doesn’t have very much to do other than pout about losing Gable to Russell. But her scenes with Beery are full of snap and crackle. She’s at her best playing a wisecrack!

This is one of Rosalind Russell’s earliest films and she is still at the point where she is typecast as a prim and proper lady, before her days as the queen of zany comedy.