Hurricane (Samuel Goldwyn). Since most Hollywood actors and many actresses look foolish when stripped down to a sarong, pictures requiring this type of undress are proverbially hard to cast. Producer Samuel ("The Touch") Goldwyn risked almost two million dollars on the talents of an unknown young actor and; a girl who a year ago was a $75-a-week stock player.
Jon Hall (real name Charles Locher), 24, was known as "Terutevaegiai" (young white god on Heaven's highest shelf) by the Tahitians with whom he paddled outrigger canoes, rode surf boards, and whom he defeated in the all-island swimming championship of 1926. His father, Felix Locher, onetime resident of Tahiti, is now a Los Angeles insurance broker. Hall is a second cousin by marriage to Hurricane's coauthor, James Norman Hall. His well-distributed 190-lb. frame enabled him to win fame as a track star and ski-jumper when he left Tahiti to go to school at Neuchatel, Switzerland. He had been acting in a few plays in the down-at-heel Hollywood Playhouse when Director John Ford, a neighbor, noticing his build and good-looks, suggested he be tested for the role of Terangi. Picked out of 160 candidates for the lead in his cousin's story, Hall found his brawn useful when battered daily in the Goldwyn tank by repetitious deluges of 2,000 gallons of water, thrown at him from a height of 65 feet, for his aquatic skill when he dived from the 70-ft. mainmast of a schooner, from a 75-ft. cliff, freestyled through the water while sharpshooters pumped bullets around him.
Dorothy Lamour (Jungle Princess, High, Wide and Handsome), lithe but unathletic, was publicized by Paramount, which loaned her to Goldwyn for Hurricane, as a jungle-woman who lived on bananas, coconuts, papayas. A monkey and a leopard were planted in her apartment, over her protests, until the monkey got loose, so disturbed other tenants that police were called. Miss Lamour (nee Slaton), 22, has never been nearer a jungle than the isthmus at Catalina Island, where parts of Hurricane were filmed. She is a 5 ft. 5 in., 117-lb., healthy, heavy-lipped New Orleans girl who won a beauty contest, went to Chicago, sang with Herbie Kay's orchestra on a "celebrity night" program, married Kay.
The palpable success of Mr. Goldwyn's gamble on his two "discoveries" is due partly to their own able performances, partly to the skillful production of bald, burly Associate Producer Merritt Hulburd, partly to the inherent soundness of the story by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. Their hero, Terangi (Jon Hall), has been happy all his life because he has been free and healthy. His boss, Captain Nagle (Jerome Cowan), gave him a blue cap when he made him first mate of the fishing schooner; after that Terangi was happier than ever. His happiness reached a vivid, lyric pinnacle when he was married in the Catholic church, in front of all the island, to his love, Marama (Dorothy Lamour). He did not understand her nightmare a few nights later when she dreamt of a high wind and birds flying away. Its omen seemed to have no bearing on the six-months' jail sentence he drew on his next trip for hitting a white bully in a waterfront saloon.