The Road to Singapore

Loved watching this really dated film...William Powell in 1931 had already perfected his suave, self-assured persona on screen, and in this filmed play, he presents the wonderful self-assured and beautifully dressed image he gave us later in Manhattan Melodrama and The Thin Man series he's so well remembered for. Louis Calhern is the weak, career obsessed doctor who marries Doris Kenyon, a former nurse It's interesting to watch the young Calhern play the emotional, naive, career obsessed, wife-neglecting doctor, because we always knew him as an older actor, dignified and mustached in the 40's and 50's. Powell steals the movie as the hard drinking seducer of other men's wives, which of course, includes the doctor's bored bride. What's fun is how the film depicts the hot and humid tropics, complete with incessant jungle drums, as a place where passion can overheat the idle rich and cause near-tragic troubles for all. Doris Kenyon, whom almost no one remembers today, but may be best known for her role with Rudolph Valentino in the silent, Monsieur Beaucaire, holds her own, was 34 in this film and is quite the blonde beauty though one of her gowns, a black and white number, comes off as almost comical today. See this one for Powell, for the way he dresses and comports himself, and for those incessant drums.