This poster was made to promote the mostly forgotten b-picture Call of the South Seas, one of those Westerners-in-paradise flicks so popular during the mid-century period. The set-up here is simple: a roguish adventurer fetches up on a Pacific island looking for work. He takes a job at an exporting firm, but finds that his employers are paying the local Polynesians a pittance of the fortune being earned. The movie stars Janet Martin as Tahia, who’s local but whose mother was French, grandmother was French, and great grandmother was French, a line of dilution strong enough to ensure that she possesses the needed racial purity to serve as love interest to co-star Allan Lane. While her blood has been whitewashed, her linguistics have not, leading to her delivering hilarious lines like, “I come because I very angry and if I don’t let it out I burn all up inside.” The filmmakers had a grand old time making this movie, and the end result, clumsy though it may be, is non-malicious. It also has Adele Mara in a small part, and as a bonus she’s wearing this. Call of the South Seas premiered in the U.S. today in 1944.
