''East of Sumatra'' is a 1953 American

south seas Today the term South Seas, or South Sea, is used in several contexts. Most commonly it refers to the portion of the Pacific Ocean south of the equator. In 1513, when Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa coined the term ''Mar del Sur'', ...

adventure film An adventure film is a form of adventure fiction, and is a genre of film. Subgenres of adventure films include swashbuckler films, pirate films, and survival films. Adventure films may also be combined with other film genres such as action, an ...

directed by

Budd Boetticher Oscar "Budd" Boetticher Jr. ( ; July 29, 1916 – November 29, 2001) was an American film director. He is best remembered for a series of low-budget Westerns he made in the late 1950s starring Randolph Scott. Early life Boetticher was born in ...

and starring

Jeff Chandler Jeff Chandler (born Ira Grossel; yi, יראַ גראָססעל; December 15, 1918 – June 17, 1961) was an American actor, film producer, and singer, best remembered for playing Cochise in '' Broken Arrow'' (1950), for which he was no ...

Marilyn Maxwell Marvel Marilyn Maxwell (August 3, 1921 – March 20, 1972) was an American actress and entertainer. In a career that spanned the 1940s and 1950s, she appeared in several films and radio programs, and entertained the troops during World War ...

Anthony Quinn Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (April 21, 1915 – June 3, 2001), known professionally as Anthony Quinn, was a Mexican-American actor. He was known for his portrayal of earthy, passionate characters "marked by a brutal and elemental v ...

and Suzan Ball.

Plot

Duke Mullane (

), manager of a Malayan

tin Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from la, stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a silvery-coloured metal. Tin is soft enough to be cut with little force and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, t ...

mine, goes to a little-known island to open a new mine in the jungle. Initially, the natives are friendly, especially dancer Minyora ... who is soon to be married to local ruler King Kiang (

). A series of unfortunate incidents changes Kiang's attitude to hostility, and Duke is stranded with his crew, Minyora, and his old flame Lory (

), who is engaged to his boss.

Cast

as Duke Mullane *

as Lory Hale *

as Kiang * Suzan Ball as Minyora * John Sutton as Daniel Catlin *

Jay C. Flippen Jay C. Flippen (March 6, 1899 – February 3, 1971) was an American character actor who often played crusty sergeants, police officers or weary criminals in many films of the 1940s and 1950s. Before his motion-picture career he was a leading va ...

as Mac *

Scatman Crothers Benjamin Sherman Crothers (May 23, 1910 – November 22, 1986), known professionally as Scatman Crothers, was an American actor and musician. He is known for playing Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show ''Chico and the Man'', and Dick Hallo ...

as Baltimore * Aram Katcher as Atib *

Anthony Eustrel Anthony Eustrel (12 October 1902 – 2 July 1979) was an English actor. Eustrel made guest appearances on television programs such as ''Perry Mason'', ''Maverick'', ''Peter Gunn'', ''77 Sunset Strip'', ''My Favorite Martian'', '' Hogan's Heroes' ...

as Clyde * Eugene Iglesias as Paulo (as Gene Iglesias) *

Peter Graves Peter Graves (born Peter Duesler Aurness; March 18, 1926 – March 14, 2010) was an American actor. He was best known for his role as Jim Phelps in the CBS television series ''Mission: Impossible (1966 TV series), Mission: Impossible'' from 1967 ...

as Cowboy *

Earl Holliman Henry Earl Holliman (born September 11, 1928) is an American actor, animal-rights activist, and singer known for his many character roles in films, mostly Westerns and dramas, in the 1950s and 1960s. He won a Golden Globe Award for the film ' ...

as Cupid (as Henry Earl Holliman) * James Craven as Drake * John Warburton as Gregory Keith

Production

The film was based in part on a treatment by Jack Natteford and

Louis L'Amour Louis Dearborn L'Amour (; né LaMoore; March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was an American novelist and short story writer. His books consisted primarily of Western novels (though he called his work "frontier stories"); however, he also wrote hi ...

; the latter, best known for his Westerns, had visited Sumatra while in the merchant marine. In his memoirs, L'Amour called it "my first motion picture":

The story was of tin mining, and made a bit of sense as written. A big company was rushing in to exploit an island, ruled by a Rajah ... He wanted a hospital, medicines, and doctor for his people. The Company wanted to get in and get the tin and get out with as little trouble as possible. The idea was good, the cast was capable – and instead of a meaningful picture, the producers or somebody turned it into a sex and jungle epic. In any jungle picture with a beautiful native girl, you can sure that before long you will find her swimming naked or nearly so in a pool, usually with a waterfall, and there the leading man comes upon her. He is often in the pool himself and it leads to what is expected to be a titillating scene. So it was in this case. The sincere young Rajah is largely forgotten; he doesn't get his medicines and his hopes and the picture go down the train.

Director

later described the movie as "just a fun film to make all my friends some money". Filming started in November 1952.

Gloria Grahame Gloria Grahame Hallward (November 28, 1923 – October 5, 1981) was an Academy Award-winning American actress and singer. She began her acting career in theatre, and in 1944 made her first film for MGM. Despite a featured role in ''It's a Wond ...

was offered the female lead but turned it down. She was replaced by

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:East Of Sumatra 1953 films 1953 adventure films American adventure films Films directed by Budd Boetticher Universal Pictures films Films set in Indonesia Films set in Malaysia Films set on islands 1950s English-language films 1950s American films