Raoul Walsh (1887–1980)

Set just before Pearl Harbour, the story sees San Francisco prostitute, Mamie Stover (Jane Russell) being chased out of town and heading to Hawaii. On the boat journey she meets and falls in love with writer, Jim Blair (Richard Egan). Arriving in Hawaii she quickly gets a job as a dance hall hostess entertaining the troops. She struggles to climb the ladder into high society while trying to maintain a relationship with Jim against the background of her scandalous job. Raoul Walsh’s show more adaptation of William Bradford Huie’s novel (via a screenplay by Sydney Boehm) is a soapy and relatively tame affair. Mamie’s real profession of prostitute is masked behind the “hostess” role but it is still fairly obvious what’s really going on. Jane Russell looks great and has plenty of witticisms and one-liners to throw about. She plays Mamie as cunning with a streak of hard ruthlessness but with a softer side that she keeps buried and only occasionally let’s slip through. Richard Egan is a bit of a sap and it’s hard to fully believe his romance with Mamie. Walsh uses the attack on Peral Harbour as, more-or-less, a plot element to get Jim Blair enlisted and move along the dynamics between Jim and Mamie. The film is nice-looking throughout, shot in widescreen with a soft sheen by Leo Tover. “The Revolt of Mamie Tover” is an interesting but far from great piece of soapy melodrama. It is too tame given the subject matter, but a story of a woman who tries to earn her own living and find a place in society without the assistance of or reliance on a man has a certain progressive edge for the 1950’s. show less

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