Sea Wife (1957)

After WWII, a man (Richard Burton) returns to England and places an ad in a newspaper trying to contact a young girl (Joan Collins) he was shipwrecked on a desert island with along with a racist Brit (Basil Sydney) and a black purser (Cy Grant). They were all on a ship that was torpedoed by the Japanese near Singapore. Based on the novel SEA WYF AND BISCUIT by James Maurice Scott and directed by Bob McNaught. Originally, the film was going to be directed by the Italian neorealist Roberto Rossellini (ROME OPEN CITY) but 20th Century Fox was horrified by the frank depiction of a sexual relationship between Joan Collins' nun and Richard Burton and Rossellini was replaced by the nondescript McNaught. We'll never know if Rossellini's version would have been a superior film but it certainly would have been more provocative than what we get, which is a typical "beautiful girl stranded on a desert island with three men" adventure. To the film's credit, it retains the racial tension between Sydney's racist and the black purser. Handsomely shot in CinemaScope on the island of Jamaica by Edward Scaife (THE DIRTY DOZEN). With Ronald Squire and Beatrice Varley.