Associate producer: Albert Lewin. Producer: Irving Thalberg. Copyright 6 August 1935 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp. New York opening at the Capitol: 9 August 1935. U.S. release: July 1935. Australian release: 25 December 1935. 9 reels. 89 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Captain Alan Gaskell, skipper of the "Kin Lung" on its way to Hong Kong with a valuable cargo aboard, is angered to find his mistress, China Doll, on board. To complicate matters, Alan's classy British fiancée, Sybil Barclay, has booked passage on the vessel. To console herself for Sybil's presence, China Doll involves herself in a drinking bout with Jamesy MacArdle, a scoundrelly China Seas trader. She manages to drink him under the table after winning a good deal of money from him. A torn fragment of a hundred pound note is among the bills and China Doll suspects that the Oriental writing on it could be important. Meanwhile, Gaskell has maneuvered the vessel through a typhoon and when he returns to his cabin he finds China Doll there. He misinterprets her presence.NOTES: Negative cost: $1 million. Initial domestic rentals gross: $1.5 million, placing it equal 4th at the U.S./Canadian box-office for 1935. Fortunately the movie also took big money in England and Australia.Carol Ann Beery is Wallace Beery's real-life adopted daughter. This was the fourth of the six films made by the screen team of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.COMMENT: Grand entertainment from a grand cast. Every role is perfectly played, with Beery coming across most effectively as the Harlow- smitten pirate. (Hard to believe that he actually detested Harlow in real life. What a consummate actor!). Garnett's direction with its fluid camera movement and rapid pacing takes full advantage of the film's spacious sets and exotic production values. Great action, with Gable noticeably doing some of his own stunts. Benchley is amusing and there are enough agreeable sub-plots to keep interest really humming.For once, here is a cult favorite that all of us can all enjoy. Most expansively produced, superbly crafted entertainment, brilliantly directed by the then master of pace, verve and vigor, Tay Garnett, at the peak of his career. And it's available on a superb Warner DVD.

Aside from being a fine movie with a nice plot with plenty of intrigue and tension, this movie - and I've seen 'em all - had the single MOST terrifying scene I'd EVER seen in any movie bar NONE!! If you see it at around 50 minutes into it, it seems to last forever. For the life of me I really don't have a clue how they filmed this one. Don't forget this isn't CGI. Take your sea sick pills and fasten your seat belts for this one!!!!!Gable, Harlow, Russell & Beery - along with the great Hattie McDaniel in a small role. And a great cast make this one a serious winner.The 2 other "cast" members are a baby grand piano and a steam roller. Trust me.

A good cast and lots of action highlight "China Seas," a 1935 film directed by Tay Garnett and starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery and Rosalind Russell. Gable plays Alan Gaskell who is captain of a ship sailing from Hong Kong to Singapore. He's in love with the refined Sybil Thorndike (Russell) and attempting to reform his some of his bad habits. He has a constant reminder of his former life, however, and that's his old girlfriend Dolly (Harlow) who wants him back. When the ship is hijacked by pirates looking for gold, Gaskell wonders how much Dolly and her drinking buddy, MacArdle, were involved.Gable and Harlow worked extremely well together and give good performances here, and there's a lot happening - a typhoon and the pirate attack - which make for good adventure.Derivative but very enjoyable.

The studios in the "Golden Age" of films loved to stick to successful formulas that worked for their actors and directors. Just go down the list of performers that you can recall: A fine actor like Basil Rathbone is either the heavy or villain, or Sherlock Holmes (but not, as he wished, Rhett Butler). Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich could not play normal housewives, nor could Joan Crawford play a stupid woman. Oliver Hardy could always have a wife, but never a happy marriage (and if it approached happiness, Stan Laurel would help destroy that). Lewis Stone, sterling character actor, only achieved permanent stardom when he inherited the role of Judge Hardy from Lionel Barrymore, and he would remain the perfect, wise father to Mickey Rooney in a dozen films. As for Barrymore, while he had a higher degree of stardom than Stone, he fell nicely into a niche as the original Dr. Leonard Gilespie, opposite Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare.In 1932 MGM got the bright idea of making a dramatic film of Vicki Baum's "Grand Hotel" with an all star cast (John and Lionel Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, and Tully Marshall). The film won the best picture Oscar, so it became a standard for other MGM projects to copy. The best known is "Dinner At Eight" (both Barrymore brothers again, Beery again, Jean Harlow, Marie Dressler, Billy Burke, Edmund Lowe, Lee Tracy, Hersholt again). But "David Copperfield", "The Prisoner OF Zenda", and several other Selznick films, and "The Women" (with only a cast of actresses - Crawford, Shearer, Russell, Fontaine, Goddard, and Boland) followed the same formula with variants by the settings and plots of the films."China Seas" was an early example of the formula "all star" film, a "Grand Hotel" set at sea. The plot is varied: C. Aubrey Smith is having a cargo of gold shipped by his ship captained by Gable. The passengers include Harlow (who has had a long standing on-again, off-again romance with Gable), Russell (Gable's current love interest - a real English lady type), Beery (an untrustworthy gambler and thief - he may be planning to steal the gold), Robert Benchley (an American novelist on a permanent toot), Edward Brophy and Lillian Bond as a married couple on a tour (Ms Bond has her secrets from her husband), Akim Tamiroff (a man who knows how to take advantage of secrets), Dudley Digges (a self-satisfied and smug chief executive officer), and Lewis Stone (a former sea captain, now reduced in rank and a pariah due to an act of cowardice).The film is a lively mixture of comedy and tragedy, including the death of one of the villains. Harlow demonstrates an interesting way of playing cards and drinking that suggests more than the film shows. Benchley never appears clear eyed and sober throughout all the film. Stone, in a powerful moment, leaves the self-righteous Digges with a permanent black mark on his self-esteem. Gable and Beery show what the "boot" is, and how effective it is. This is a film where the activities of the cast are so involving you never get bored even when you see the film another time. And at the end, as the ship reaches port (as in "Grand Hotel"), life goes on as though nothing (including a pirate attack) ever even occurred.