Simply Perfect

As Good As It Gets

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

MGM's Tarzan sets got some extra use when in Ann Sothern's Maisie series she did an African film Congo Maisie. The plot which was recycled from Red Dust would get recycled again for Mogambo only that one was actually done on African location.Ann Sothern stows away on the wrong boat, she has a job in a coastal African town, but this boat commanded by J.M. Kerrigan is going upstream to a small settlement, a research facility where married couple Sheppard Strudwick and Rita Johnson. Even further into the wild is another former doctor now rubber plantation magnate John Carroll and all three go visiting there.Where both an outbreak of witch doctor fundamentalism and an attack of appendicitis on Strudwick puts the whole party in jeopardy. But not with the ever resourceful Maisie using some tricks she learned from when she was a magician's apprentice.Using her Maisie character as a bridge between what Jean Harlow and later Ava Gardner did with same part, Sothern is light, breezy, entertaining and very wise in a street smart way. The Maisie series went on for about a decade and Sothern's ingratiating and affable personality was the reason why. We could all use a wise Maisie in our lives.

This time, just call Maisie "Congo Maisie" in this 1940 second entry into the "Maisie" series. Each episode of Maisie's fabulous life is done as a separate entity as if the previous one never happened. So don't get too attached to anyone.Maisie, stranded as usual, stows away on a ship that doesn't go the way she wants and, in fact, breaks down. She tags along with a rubber plantation manager (John Carroll) when he hikes to his old house where he worked as a doctor (he's since forsaken the Hippocratic oath). Now it's the home of a doctor who does research (Sheppard Strudwick) and his wife (Rita Johnson)."Congo Maisie" is chock full of adventure, with Maisie assisting in an emergency operation and, wearing a gown and a Carmen Miranda headpiece from her club act, fends off witch doctors. It's quite funny but as my sister yelled out to me hearing some of it, "Is that a politically incorrect movie you're watching in there?" Uh, yeah.John Carroll is the new object of Maisie's affections. He talks a lot and uses a monotone that becomes grating real fast. I recall a photo of him where he was presented as a Gable wannabe. Forget it. Rita Johnson is absolutely lovely, and Sheppard Strudwick is very good. Fun.

Quick-witted, fast-talking, wise-cracking and often penniless, Miss Mary Anastasia O'Connor undauntedly takes her nightclub act on the road--usually the very long road--persevering, and performing by the stage name of Maisie Ravier.Chapter Two of the resulting ten-film series bearing her name, and recounting her saga, finds her itinerary set in the wilderness of the Congo, hence "Congo Maisie" (MGM 1940).While much of its cast (including J.M. Kerrigan, E.E. Clive, Everett Brown, Tom Fadden, Lionel Pape and Nathan Curry) appears in its story's periphery, the lion's share of this jungle tale concentrates upon its second leads (Rita Johnson, as Kay McWade, and Shepperd Strudwick, as Doctor John 'Jock' McWade), its leading man (John Carroll, as Doctor Michael Shane) and, especially, its ever-lovely leading lady (Ann Sothern, as Maisie Ravier).This time around, Maisie books her nightclub act at a remote village up river from a western African port. Again impoverished, she cleverly stows away upon a river barge to attempt to reach her destination but is soon discovered by its renter, Doctor Shane (John Carroll).Evicted from his quarters, but remaining on board, she pawns trinkets for morsels of breakfast, about which time it is learned that the barge must dock for several days because of rising waters.Stranded from the raft, Doctor Shane reluctantly "rescues" Maisie, by inviting her to accompany him on a three- or four-mile hike through the uninviting wilderness to the nearby fortified medical research station, which he once managed.Here, Maisie is welcomed by its current operators, Kay and Doctor John McWade (the pretty Rita Johnson and the kind and gentlemanly Shepperd Strudwick). Miss Johnson is often cast as a "foresaken first wife" or "a possessive and haughty other woman." Here, she combines the types in gentle fashion, forlorn from her station in life, and seeking the advances of a handsome suitor.And Maisie, with her present bag of resources and presence-of-mind perception to figure the score, suddenly finds herself with her hands full, facing the breaking down of her hosts' marriage, a patient in need of emergency surgery, treacherous weather conditions, an impending attack on the fort by tribal natives, simultaneously, while trying to resolve her feud and feelings for Doctor Shane, before the raft sets sail again.

Ann Sothern does what she can with the material in this far-fetched story set in the jungles of West Africa, but the film never really makes an impact. Although the acting is fine throughout, the fast-talking Sothern is the only character I really liked. And the only sequence I truly enjoyed was the one-minute crash course Sothern gets from John Carroll on how to assist in an appendectomy. I think even I could do it now.The film has been called a "loose" remake of Red Dust (1932), but it is actually based on a different book, "Congo Landing," which was written by the same author after Red Dust was released. It is similar in plot to it as well as to Torrid Zone (1940).