Database – sample

Unlike White Shadows in the South Seas (MGM, 1928), where the Melville connection went unannounced, the general public were made aware of Last of the Pagans’ connection to Melville through the trade press. On December 6, 1934, it was publicized that “M-G-M’s readying a production unit for a trip to the South Seas in two weeks to film ‘Typee’” (Motion Picture Daily 1934, 20), and by February 12 of the following year it was established that “the largest picture entourage ever to venture forth, left here [California]” for Papeete, where they would shoot “exterior scenes for ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ and ‘Typee”’ (Motion Picture Daily 1935b, 11). On the same date, Variety lists Melville as “A—Author” of the screenplay together with John Farrow (1935, 30), and it is only on October 17 that MGM confirms that Last of the Pagans would be the “final title for the picture based on Herman Melville’s novel, ‘Typee’”(Wilk 1935, 10).
Although movies like White Shadows were perceived to be instructional for their ethnographic detail, by the mid-1930s films about the South Seas were being incorporated to literary-minded curricula. A piece for the journal The Motion Picture and the Family suggested a list of “movie-book film[s]” for librarians to “‘Be Prepared’ for the demand [movies like these] will bring.” To that end, it recommends they have books like “Tietjen's Boy of the South Seas, Melville's Typee, Nordhoff's Derelict and Pearl Lagoon and Ellsworth's Exploring Today” ready in anticipation of John Ford’s Hurricane (Hurley 1937, 5, 6).
Directed by Richard Thorpe (his first feature film), Pagans was advertised as an action film and it seems clear that it belonged to the line of the MGM South Sea cycle originated with White Shadows. The title is supposed to remind potential viewers of van Dyke’s The Pagan (1929) and at the same time strives to hit a more literary note by alluding to Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826). It also expanded on White Shadows’ experiments with sound and used synchronized dialogue and subtitles to translate the islander’s Polynesian dialect. One reviewer described it as “an authentic idyll of that idyllic land, the South Seas,” while another deemed the movie to be “[g]ood. If your appetite hasn't become jaded with a repetition of South Sea Island tales” and noted that it “relies for its plot upon Herman Melville's romance, “Typee’” (Photoplay 1936, 6; Silver Screen 1936, 10).
Certain production choices made for Pagans should also be noted, especially its casting practices and how they influenced the representation of islanders in the movie. White Shadows was praised in the press for “proving” that islanders could perform at the level of professional actors, but the leads in the picture went to Western performers Monte Blue and Raquel Torres. Tabu, took the next step and gave the lead to Matahi and Reri, two islanders. The producers at MGM seemed to want to walk a middle-path and cast Hollywood actors who in their minds had some connection to Polynesia. As Taro, they cast Ray Mala, an Alaskan with Inupiaq ancestry who had previously starred in successful films like Igloo (1932) and Eskimo (1934). As Lileo, they cast New Jersey-born Lotus Long, daughter of a Japanese-Hawaiian couple, who had previously starred in The Mysterious Mr. Wong (1934) and shared the screen with Mala in Eskimo. However, producers must have felt uneasy that Mala and Long were not ‘authentic’ enough, and they asked the makeup department to develop “a new makeup process, [to] make white men look like South Sea natives,” which consisted of “putting oil on the skin, then baking under violet ray lamp” (Motion Picture Daily 1935a, 11).