Aloma of the South Seas

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 127, 28 November 1941, Page 16

Aloma of the South Seas

(Paramount)

F you saw Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall escaping from Sam Goldwyn’s hurricane, if you saw the same Miss Lamour surviving crocodiles and an earthquake

in Her Jungle Love, and more recently a forest fire and a tidal wave, then you'll be perfectly justified in expecting at least a volcanic eruption in Aloma of the South Seas. And you'll get it. Not haif you wilt. Lakes of lava and showers of fiery rocks. All in colour, too. You'll also get Miss Lamour, in a sarong, so simple and so playfully innocent as Aloma the island maid that it would be a shame to ask her how she came by her plucked eyebrows and her Hollywood manicure. And Jon Hall again, all bronzed about the torso, as Tanoa the island king, who returns from a sojourn in the States with a Harvard accent and a collection of bottle tops and who counts the world where the bottle tops came from well lost the moment he sets eyes on Aloma bathing

in a limpid island pool. There’s alsothere has to be-a snake in this Paradise of Technicolour: one Rivo, who covets both the maiden and the leadership of the tribe.. And Lynne Overman, of course, Miss Lamour’s faithful companion

in many a cataclysm of nature. And half the good-looking young women and young men of Hollywood, clad in a rainbow array of sarongs, sinjangs, lavalavas, and breech-clouts, and all wriggling around in some of the very latest South Seas dance steps. Not to mention some very impressive high priests and medicine men who officiate at various island ceremonies (with hundreds of extras), and angold island woman who provides comedy relief and says such delightful things as "’Thou hast been a great pain to me in the neck." And I mustn’t forget Miss Lamour’s parrot (the monkey must have died, or perhaps they don’t have monkeys on this island). Altogether you'll get what you probably expect (and perhaps deserve). And if you expect it, you’ll probably enjoy it. But what interests me is what the forces of nature can have in store for our Dorothy in her next picture. Anything less than the end of the world will be almost anti-climax.