Lovers and Luggers

Lovers and Luggers (1938)

Epic pearling adventure romance in glorious sun-splashed tropical settings of Thursday Island!

Daubeney Carshott, a concert pianist, leaves London to dive for pearls on Thursday Island in the South Seas at the whim of Stella Raff, his fiancée. Once there, he discovers that the life he leads as a pearl diver is better in every way than his former existence as a social-lion pianist. He meets and falls in love with Lorna Quidley, after learning this Stella had send other suitors off in quest of a giant pearl for her.

Date of release
1938-03-03
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (3)
Runtime
1h 39m
Genres
Adventure, Romance
Director
Ken G. Hall

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Lovers and Luggers

Lovers and Luggers is a 1937 Australian film directed by Ken G. Hall. It is an adventure melodrama about a pianist who goes to Thursday Island to retrieve a valuable pearl. It has been called one of Hall's best films.

Production

It was one of a number of Australian films around the pearling industry, other ones including Typhoon Treasure. Cinesound had just made another adventure melodrama Tall Timbers.

Hall gave the lead role to American actor Lloyd Hughes, who had been a star in the silent era and since then mostly worked on stage. Hall had met Hughes when the director visited Hollywood in 1935. The actor went on to make The Broken Melody for Hall.

This was the first of what would be several character roles Alec Kellaway played for Ken G. Hall. The cast included a Hong Kong actor called Charlie Chan.

James Raglan was signed on a seven-week contract. Filmink argued "Hughes isn’t great, but the key players around him are very good."

Hall was enthusiastic about the project because of his love for the tropics, although budget considerations meant most of the film had to be shot in the studio, with only the second unit going to Thursday Island under Frank Hurley. Hurley also shot some footage at Port Stephens and Broken Bay. Cinesound built one of its largest ever sets to recreate Thursday Island. It has been called "one of the best-looking Australian movies of its era."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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