MOVIE OF THE DAY: "WHITE WOMAN" (1932)

 Was there ever an actor who enjoyed acting with such sordid gusto more than Charles
Laughton? If Warren William was the King of Pre-Codes, then Laughton was its manipulative Crown Prince, humble and by-your-liege one moment before pulling out the dagger the next, sweating, slobbering, and spitting his way to the throne. 

Laughton isn't just aware of his homeliness -- he positively relishes putting it on display, exaggerating his already outsized features to the point of repulsiveness. Even when dressed to the nines as a navy captain in The Devil and the Deep, he's a hideous excuse of a man. But give him tacky clothes, sloppy hair, and a ridiculously archaic walrus moustache as in White Woman, while coated in humid jungle sweat and speaking with a proud cockney accent, he's a nightmare come to life for the likes of a knockout like Carole Lombard.

The look of love is in your eyes...

While the movie's title is White Woman, it might as well be White Slob. Laughton is top-billed and gets the lion's share -- make that wild boar's share -- of screentime as Horace Pin, the autocratic owner of a rubber plantation. Lombard is Judith Denning, a singer who is ordered to leave the Malaysian city where she lives for the crime of -- gasp! --working at an integrated nightclub. Yup, we're in pre-code territory, alright.

Judith, a woman "with a past" (her husband blew his brains out under mysterious circumstances) has nowhere to go. Pin, possessing the amorous style of an overfed hyena eyeing a baby gazelle, offers his pudgy hand in marriage so she doesn't have to wander the world like women with a past have to do. Before you can say "There goes the bride," Judith is living in connubial hell in the middle of a jungle, where all the plantation workers are on the run from the authorities for crimes ranging from drug dealing to murder. At least they didn't sing at integrated nightclubs!

David marvels at how Judith's make-up never
runs in this blasted heat.

One of the workers, David von Elst, isn't so bad -- he just went AWOL from his outfit after one of his fellow soldier's severed head was tossed through his window by angry natives. (I guess they'd have to be angry to do that.) When he and Judith ("the first white woman I've seen in ten years") start doing the hubba-hubba, Pin transfers him to his other plantation downriver. Hey, it's the Depression, and it's better than being fired.

Ballister and Judith decide who has better
cleavage.

David's replacement, a roughhouse named Ballister, doesn't care that Judith is married to the boss, either. But unlike David, he enjoys rubbing it in Pin's face. Too bad for Ballister that Judith isn't interested in rubbing anything in his face. It doesn't matter, anyway; once Pin insults a tribal chief, the natives are out for revenge. David, having risked his life making his way through the jungle, returns to take Judith away, leaving Pin and Ballister to face their fate alone. Some honeymoon!

The menage-a-trois of your nightmares.

Laughton hovers over White Woman -- one of the more outrageously sleazy studio pre-Codes -- like a putrid Geppetto. As in The Devil and the Deep, he manipulates everybody around him for his own amusement. Having grown up poor and looked down upon, he now relishes the reversal that money has brought him. Some bosses feel like killing their employees when they quit -- this guy outsources it to the locals with poison spears. 

To Pin, Judith is just another of his employees, her job merely to be brought low as with the others. Continually addressing her as "your ladyship", you can't be sure if he's serious or sarcastically reminding her how far she's sunk. When he brings her home after the wedding, the first thing he does is show her the bedroom -- articulating the word in a way that sleep is the last thing on his mind. As Judith enters and tries closing the door, he immediately steps in behind her, slamming it shut so that we know what's about to happen is going to ugly indeed. 

Laughton tells Bickford to stop trying to steal
his scenes.

Of the other men in White Woman, only Charles Bickford, as Ballister, can stand up to Laughton both physically and professionally. Whereas Pin mumbles his words, Ballister barks them like a ferocious pitbull. He regards Pin not as his boss so much as his damaged equal, and doesn't care what fate brings him. Despite being only slightly less uncouth than Pin, he's got more personality than Judith's lover David, who, as played by Kent Taylor, doesn't seem like the kind of man a hot number like her would go for. But perhaps that's the whole idea -- she's one of those "bad girls" who comes to realize that a "nice guy" is exactly what she needs. Only in the movies, kids.

Ladies, how would you like this guy
gazing at you every morning?

And then there's Carole Lombard (thought I forgot about her, eh?). Her portrayal of the

unfortunate Judith is sincere and sympathetic. She's lovely to look at, of course, and she can actually sing. You definitely feel bad for Judith being stuck on a tropical hellhole where she gets more enjoyment from the camp's pet monkey than her husband. And even that doesn't last. (I'll let you find out for yourself -- it's too good to spoil.)

But nobody can outdo Charles Laughton, who conveys more with a leer than a dozen leading men can do with an entire script. More than anyone in the pre-Code days, he delights in disgusting the audience to the point where they probably regretted buying a ticket to the movie. That's a real actor.

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For more Charles Laughton pre-Codes, go to Payment Deferred and The Devil and the Deep.