Klondike Annie

Action man Raoul Walsh must have been chafing at the bit as Mae West let the suggestive drawl of her dialogue dictate the film's measured pace. 'She Made the Frozen North Red Hot' said the posters, but the film could do with being a bit hotter: considering the story - Mae in the Klondike, adopting the identity of a Salvation Army missionary - the humour is tame indeed. But by 1936 censorship problems were beginning to knock the stuffing out of our heroine, though she still had her eyebrows to flutter and her blue-beat songs to sing ('I'm an Occidental Woman in an Oriental Mood for Love'). And watered down or not, Mae still remains - in the words she uses to describe her co-star McLaglen - 'no oil painting but...a fascinating monster'.