MOVIE OF THE DAY: "ANGEL ON THE AMAZON" (1948)

Steam from dry ice wafts through the pseudo-Amazon jungle, while animal noises added post-production echo through the plaster of paris trees. Suddenly, a hunting expedition led by a young blonde woman for whom the phrase "beautiful but vapid" seemed to have been created walks quietly toward us. 

Suddenly, a leopard appears before them. As the men freeze in their tracks, the woman confidently lifts her gun, aims, and shoots at the back projection footage behind her. 

We can be only in one place: a soundstage at Republic Pictures, where Vera Ralston, a former Czech figure skater, is starring in yet another picture at the behest of studio head Herbert J. Yates, no matter if anyone wants to see it. That she's also Yates' mistress is only a coincidence. Welcome to Angel on the Amazon.

Brent and Bennett share memories of working with
Bette Davis and Cary Grant instead of the
girl sleeping with the studio boss.

George Brent and Constance Bennett play pilot Jim Warburton and Dr. Katherine Lawrence, who are flying to South America. When asked about the possible danger for "a woman" on the trip, Warburton chuckles, "She's no woman, she's a doctor!" Had my wife been watching this, she would have rolled her eyes so hard they'd have given me a migraine.

Vera Ralston looks for her next cue while Constance
Bennett wonders how her career came to being fourth-
billed to a talking mannequin.

Yet the flyboy and femme medico, along with three guys (two of whom are bizarrely named Dean and Jerry) do eventually crash in the jungle. They're rescued by Christine Ridgeway (Vera Ralston) and her Latino sidekicks. Although Ridgeway possesses the personality of a shag carpet, Warburton is immediately intrigued by her. Maybe because she seems intellectually unable to put one foot in front of the other, let alone fire a rifle. 

Vera continues looking for a cue, without success.

Ridgeway leads them to her camp, where Warburton quickly learns that not only is she uncomfortable talking about herself, she doesn't even respond well to compliments -- a problem Vera Ralston herself never had to endure.

By the following morning, Ridgeway has left before the others have awoken, leaving behind only a so-long-and-thanks-for-the-distraction letter for Warburton. One of her sidekicks tells him that she's prone to taking off without notice, sometimes for a week, sometimes for two years. Some men would find that a plus when looking for a wife.

Dr. Lawrence is impressed that Christine is able to
drink without having to use a sippy-cup.

Warburton and Lawrence leave for Rio. (As for their three pals, they just kind of disappear, never to be seen again. Good way to keep the budget low.) Any plans Dr. Lawrence had for wrangling her cockpit companion go kablooey when they run into Christine at the racetrack in Rio. 

Despite having shared only 12 sentences and one drink with Christine, Warburton wants to marry her. (There's a new TV reality series: 90 Second Fiancée). But just as he's ready to slip her the ring, Christine spots an elderly man leaving their hotel. Showing a trace of life for the first time, she runs to the desk clerk, who hands her the note the old gent left her: Be happy, dearest. So naturally she gets all morose. Jeez, can't dames do as they're told?

"Give me 10 minutes so we can pad out
the running time."

Christine needs a change of scenery, so she takes Warburton for a spin in her convertible. And by spin, I mean driving the roads of Rio in the middle of the night like a maniac. One blown tire later, she crashes into a palm tree. Warburton, knocked unconscious, wakes up alone the next morning with a lump on his head.

Any other guy would have thanked his lucky stars this nut was out of his hair (or, in his case, toupee). Not Warburton. In an attempt to figure out what the deal is with Christine, he strikes up a conversation with Sebastian Ortega, a friend of her family's, who sets the stage for a lengthy flashback.

Vera hits a B-flat. Very flat.

 Ortega recounts the trip down the Amazon he and Christine's parents, Judith and Anthony, took shortly after their marriage. A black leopard snuck up on them at nap time. As the beast attacked Anthony, Judith (also played by Vera Ralston) grabbed her knife and, screaming in alleged terror, killed it.

Ralston's reaction is the highlight of Angel on the Amazon. The vacant stare she wears throughout the movie is on full display while slashing a leopard that's trying to eat her husband. You could dub in the voice of somebody doing vocal exercises or even yawning, and it wouldn't seem out of place. It's probably this scene, more than any other, that cemented her reputation as a movie "star". 

"Say, aren't you Colin Jost of Saturday Night Live?"

In case you're wondering what this has to do with with Christine, we find out when Warburton visits the now-elderly Anthony at a Pasadena cemetery, where you always want to meet your prospective father-in-law.  In yet another flashback, we see Christine's parents throwing a party for their darling teenage daughter. Her boyfriend, however, has the hots for the startingly-youthful Judith, who looks exactly like Christine. And unfortunately acts like her, too.

Watching the bf putting the moves on mom proves too much for Christine, who hops in her car and drives madly down the road, with her parents in hot pursuit, before going off a cliff. Maybe she was looking for her cue again.

"She stopped aging 25 years ago? Oh, OK.
What's for lunch?"

Wait, hold it! How did Christine survive that accident?!  Obviously, you didn't pay notice the original tagline on the one-sheet at the top of the page: CURSED WITH ETERNAL YOUTH! The woman we thought was Christine was actually Judith, who stayed the same age after the panther attack, because... something about a shock freezing the aging process, but really just because it was just in the script. 

I hate to drag you into this mess, but what would your reaction be upon hearing that the young woman you were in love with was actually her mother frozen in time? Whatever it is, it likely wouldn't be like Warburton, who looks like he's been told his wannabe fiancée has a cold. It's as if the writers just threw up their hands and said, Oh what the hell, this is a Vera Ralston picture, nobody's gonna take it seriously anyway.

"Darling, how wonderful to see you again! But why
couldn't you stay young?"

But for reasons that escape me -- I think it has something to do with seeing Anthony at the hotel in Rio earlier -- Christine Judith, now in a Pasadena hospital, transforms to her real age, which is still younger than her husband, but too old to be considered attractive to any man over the age of 21. She meets her husband at the cemetery, where they limp into whatever future they have left, without discussing what the heck's transpired over the past two decades.

One of a couple dozen or so movies that Herbert J. Yates made in an attempt to turn his sweetie into the next Ingrid Bergman (or any other actress with a foreign accent), Angel on the Amazon came when Republic was trying to shake off its B-movie past and play with the majors. And while it occasionally made good on its attempts at classy movies -- John Ford's The Quiet Man and Orson Welles' Macbeth, to name two -- it took more than a 90-minute running time to deserve the top of a double bill. 

"George, get us back to 
civilization -- like Warner Brothers!"

Just the title tells you Angel on the Amazon doesn't succeed, even if it does feature two former A-listers, George Brent and Constance Bennett, in an attempt to draw people who would otherwise turn up their nose at a Republic picture. (Franklyn Farnum, once one of the biggest stars of silents, was reduced here to an unbilled extra. Stars of today, take note!).

Brent, never the liveliest of actors even at his peak, walks through Angel on the Amazon as if thinking about last night's dinner. Constance Bennett, though, makes you wonder what an ace like her is doing in this dreck. While it's never made explicit that her character has a thing for Brent, Bennett's subtle body language, right down her eyes, suggests there's more to her than a stethoscope and a supply of malaria pills. It's almost as if she's reminding the audience who the real actress around here is. 

Herbert B. Yates makes an honest woman, if not an
honest actress, of Vera Ralston.

But who are we kidding? New York's Museum of Modern Art didn't show Angel on the Amazon because of two former lead actors, nor is Amazon Prime running a newly restored print to introduce a new generation to the classics. 

These screenings are strictly to marvel at Vera Ralston, the actor whose emotions run the gamut from nothing and back again, in a role that defies explanation with a script that makes even less sense than her career. Somebody should make a movie about her relationship with Herbert J. Yates -- that would be even less believable than being frozen in time after a panther attack.

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