Synopsis
She Made the Frozen North... Red Hot!
A San Francisco singer flees Chinatown on murder charges and poses as a missionary in Alaska.
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Klondike Annie
Cast
Mae West Victor McLaglen Phillip Reed Helen Jerome Eddy Harry Beresford Harold Huber Lucile Gleason Conway Tearle Esther Howard Soo Yong John Rogers Ted Oliver Lawrence Grant Gene Austin Vladimar Bykoff Philip Ahn Eddie Allen Richard Allen Polly Bailey William Bailey Frank Baker Kathryn Bates Edna Bennett Ed Brady James Burke George Burton Wong Chung D'Arcy Corrigan Nell Craig Show All…
Director
Producer
Writer
Story
Editor
Cinematography
Art Direction
Set Decoration
Composers
Songs
Studio
Country
Primary Language
Spoken Languages
Alternative Titles
Annie du Klondike, Энни с Клондайка, A Sereia do Alaska, 情海奇花, 클론다이크 애니, La hermana Annie, 美しき野獣
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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USA
Releases by Country
USA
21 Feb 1936
- Theatrical
Popular reviews
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"When caught between two evils, I generally like to take the one I never tried."
If you go into this looking for a typical Mae West comedy, you'll be plum out of luck. There are almost no jokes or double entendres. The witty lines like the one above are more philosophical than hysterical. Frankly, this is a deeply sad film.
West sheds her past life (and the Mae West persona) as she flees San Francisco for the untamed wilds of Alaska. There she impersonates a pious woman and tries to clean up a prospecting town. She sermonizes to the drunks on their own terms, using salty language and dancehall antics. It works.
But her own life is a mess, with…
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Far from Mae’s best, but if you enjoy her schtick (i certainly do), it’s still pretty fun.
Religious hypocrisy and interior vs exterior goodness is surprisingly central to many of her works. Her novelization of She Done Him Wrong—which, if you can find a copy I totally recommend; it’s fantastic—is much heavier on it than the film, as is her other novel, The Constant Sinner. I think this could have been a much better and more interesting movie were it not for code-enforced restrictions, which also stripped the most powerful portions from She Done Him Wrong. The ending there, for example, is actually quite sad, as—in a reversal from this film—West’s Lil learns that the seemingly pious man whose purity intrigued her is merely a pretender, yet another man interested in her body. It’s a cynical conformation of her worldview, and the final line is her part bitter, part resigned, part triumphant, “I always knew you could be had.”
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Klondike Annie took an unexpected approach to Mae West’s persona making her a polite, religious, hardworking missionary but is it much more than cunning deception. Director Raoul Walsh's flexible capabilities of any genera in cinema (Weston’s, si-fi, silent) delves into the profound comedic products. West's sexual erratic behavior is very much downplayed focusing on her effectuates chemistry around decaying friendships, handsome law enforcement, and a curmudgeonly sea captain! The alluring Chinatown setting opens the feature-complete with enticing art designs, Chinese stone dragons, and fascinating lyrical double meanings. West ventures into unknown territories for her characters as instead of learning lessons and then becoming compassionate, she’s already caring for sweet illness-stricken Annie. Tame feelings towards certain situations are the soul of…
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An unfortunately pious outing for Mae West, she converts to Christianity about halfway through and the movie doesn't recover until the very end, when she delivers one of the all-time great final lines in history.
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This one opens with a title card that says "San Francisco Chinatown in the '90's" and me saying "uh oh" out loud to myself. When we meet her, we find Mae West to be the captive of an 'oriental' man, quickly made all the more 1930's by her opening musical number in which she croons "I'm an occidental woman, in an oriental mood for love." All of this is difficult for 2021 eyes, thankfully it only takes up a few minutes and is only the opening scene.
If you can get past that, there are actually some interesting and unexpected moments here. After escaping, West finds herself on a boat with a religious sister named Annie who helps her along…
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Welcome to the world of Mae West. First she sings the oriental blues! Then she turns.... holy?! Fighting sin? Mae West??!!! What's wrong with that picture?! Ah.... Will H. Hays and his damn production code has made Mae West a Hays Code slave. And to quote one of her lines from this film "....and I ain't hypocriting either". Yeah, well, whatever she's doing she did take a mild stab at the morals at the very end of the film. But that was for love and not for her own belief. So a very toned down Mae West vehicle, but not totally censured. She's still the sassy ol' gal running away from murder and seducing men.....
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A pretty obvious bid by Mae West to prove she could "really act". So it is, for one thing, the least-funny of her movies, and the first one since She Done Him Wrong that can't be reasonably characterized as a comedy. It is, for another thing, the first one of her films where you can meaningfully feel the presence of a creative team led by a strong director, in the form of Raoul Walsh. The result is probably unsatisfying if what you want is a woman saying filthy jokes in a smokey voice, but from where I stand, this is the best thing in West's career, with some real complexity and ambivalence in its story about sin and salvation, and…
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My first Mae West film, believe it or not, and zowieee! What a woman! She's got such a presence and clear talent (singer! writer! actor!), but I'm not particularly a fan of her exaggerated acting style - purring lines and throwing her hips around. She shines most here when she's singing (I'm an Occidental Woman in an Oriental Mood for Love wouldn't fly today, I'm afraid) and in her more softer moments, which are few, but revelatory. It's a shame the censor board got after this one, because you can definitely tell something is missing (a stabbing scene, in particular), but what Mae West did sneak in (street smarts and sex) is still something to awe at.
Side Note: If Rose (West) had picked the cute inspector (Phillip Reed) over the burly Captain Bull (Victor McLaglen), I would have chunked that axe at her myself!
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'Ya ain't no oil paintin', but ya are a fascinatin' monster'
It's a Mae West film alright but it's been so watered down and butchered by the censors that there's barely any comedy left at all, in fact a whole eight minutes was removed from Klondike Annie, including footage of a crucial plot point, never to be seen again and leaving audiences confused, so it's difficult to discuss Raoul Walsh's otherwise very well directed film without this tampering in mind.
It's not very funny but it's easily the most developed and likeable West character yet in a story that works surprisingly well as a western drama more than anything and the charismatic Victor McLaglen is always interesting to watch as…
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McLaglen is the most ideal screen partner of West's career, but between how much the Hays office forces her to tiptoe around her material and West/Walsh mismatch this never gets going.
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Hmmm. Probably my least favourite so far - Mae at her most muted. It's interesting to see her attempt some dramatic acting, and she is quite successful at selling her spiritual change of heart, but then she just stays at the same level for the rest of the movie. It's pretty dull to watch, honestly. (And it doesn't help that there are a lot of songs here, which all just seem to have a chorus and no verses, so their repetition does quickly drive you round the bend!).
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KLONDIKE ANNIE is an experiment in censorship, and although it falters at points, it's a testament to West's auteurism and adaptability. It's her first post-code enforcement effort and while relatively tame, she manages to weave in an elaborate string of abstract innuendo (and better yet, a damning condemnation of organized religion!)
It adheres to typical West conventions, most important of them being that the lead character (West) is responsible for the arc's resolution, with a heavy-handed dosage of sensual beguilement helping to pawn the mindless, sex-crazed men who cross her path. This time, West is a kept woman in the slums of Chinatown, who murders her employ before skipping up north to Alaska to capitalize on the gold rush. From…