The Road To Singapore (1931)

After his attempts to seduce a woman (Doris Kenyon) traveling on the same ship fail, an alcoholic womanizer (William Powell) discovers that she is going to marry his neighbor, a doctor (Louis Calhern). But his amorous inclinations are not stopped by her marriage and she becomes more receptive to his advances after she realizes how cold a man her husband is. Based on the play HEAT WAVE by Roland Pertwee (by way of the novel by Denise Robins) and directed by Alfred E. Green (THE JOLSON STORY). This overheated pre code romantic triangle creaks a bit but it's still quite daring for its era. It's the kind of melodrama where native drums incessantly beating through the steamy night awake passions among the Caucasian population. In one scene, the married Doris Kenyon is seen wearing an evening gown while having dinner with Powell, in the next scene she's wearing a robe, an unsubtle indication they've been to bed. The movie does have a disturbing racist element, the contempt the colonials have for the indigenous people of the island they've usurped from its population. With Marian Marsh, Alison Skipworth and Ethel Griffies.