Tropic Zone (1953)

Interesting facts

Tropic Zone is a 1953 American crime film written and directed by Lewis R. Foster and starring Ronald Reagan, Rhonda Fleming, Estelita Rodriguez, Noah Beery Jr., Grant Withers and John Wengraf. It was released on January 14, 1953, by Paramount Pictures.

Production

The film was based on a 1939 novel by Tom Gill called Gentlemen of the Jungle about a banana plantation in British Honduras. In May 1951 the producers at Pine-Thomas Productions read a copy of the novel en route to the premiere of their film The Last Outpost in Tucson. They bought the film rights intending to make it a vehicle for Rhoda Fleming, as the last of a four-picture deal she had with Pine-Thomas.

Estelita Rodriguez was borrowed from Republic.

Paramount built a large set for the film, reportedly the studio's biggest new set in ten years. Designed by art director A. Earl Hedrick together with studio supervisor Hal Pereira, and covering four stages, the set depicted "a complete Caribbean native village", with "16 buildings, irrigation ditches, five hilltops, a schoolhouse, two roads, two streams, a complicated powerhouse" and more.

Edith Head, who had already won the first four of her eight Academy Awards, handled the costumes for the film, highlighted by Fleming's fourteen different outfits, all of them in "jungle tones".

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