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After the Hays Code was enforced in 1934, reigning in sexuality and violence in Hollywood’s output, Mae West’s brand of sexual innuendo was greatly diminished. But the old broad still has some appeal in Klondike Annie. West plays a woman on the run, fleeing an overbearing lover in San Francisco’s Chinatown. On a ship to Alaska, she falls in love with the brawny captain (Victor McLaglen) and assumes the identity of a kindly nun (Helen Jerome Eddy) who dies en route. At first she hopes the new identity will throw off the authorities, but she ends up feeling she owes it to the kindly nun to play the part for a while — at least long enough to help a charitable religious group grow their membership. In Alaska she also picks up a second lover, a young policeman (Phillip Reed) investigating her disappearance after her Chinatown beau turns up dead.
Klondike Annie crams a lot of story into a short runtime, sometimes taking leaps that require a more-than generous amount of suspension of disbelief. McLaglen’s and Reed’s characters lack any depth or realism — they’re simply head over heels for West’s character, right at first sight. I suppose this comes part and parcel with West’s schtick, though. Their infatuation gives her the opportunity for some great retorts, including this classic doozy: “You’re no oil painting, but you’re a fascinating monster.” While it’s not one of her best films, there’s enough here to interest fans of Hollywood’s original buxom bad girl.
Directed by Raoul Walsh. With Harry Beresford, Harold Huber, and Lucile Gleason. The soundtrack features West singing “Mister Deep Blue Sea,” “I’m an Occidental Woman in an Oriental Mood for Love,” and “It’s Better to Give Than to Receiver”.