Night Cargo

Sultry nightclub singer, Marty, headlines at the Sinagapore nightclub owned by hard-drinking sea captain Shark Moran, who falls desperately in love with his star entertainer. Shark hires crusty sailor, Bruce Donaldson, to sail on his next voyage. When Shark learns that Bruce and Marty were formerly lovers, he flies into an rage and assaults the girl. The police discover the nightclub owner's lifeless corpse, and suspecting Marty, launch an all-out dragnet to bring her to justice.

A 1936 South Sea adventure, Night Cargo is a cheeky adventure that rocks between comic hi-jinx and tragic heartache. Jacqueline Wells, who later signed with Warner Bros. in 1940, played opposite filmdom's top male stars, including Errol Flynn in Northern Pursuit (1943), Humphrey Bogart in Action in the North Atlantic (1943), John Wayne in both Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and The High and the Mighty (1954), and Alan Ladd in The Big Land (1957), her last picture. Walter Miller, who played the rambunctious Shark Moran, appeared in over 250 silent and sound pictures before a heart attack took his life as he worked on the 1940 Gene Autry western, Gaucho Serenade.

Silent screen juvenile Lloyd Hughes, who once starred opposite Mary Pickford, found himself headlining this ultra-low-budget melodrama, the final release from Poverty Row company Peerless Pictures Corp. Searching for his long-lost love, Bruce Donaldson (Hughes) makes the acquaintance of Shark Moran (Walter Miller), a Singapore planter who eventually makes him his partner. Unbeknownst to Bruce, his missing fiancée, Claire Martineau (Jacqueline Wells), is working as a dancer in a Singapore dive under the name of Marty. Shark, who is bankrolling the dive, asks Marty to marry him but she is still pining for the man who once left her because his wealthy family took a dim view of showgirls. When Marty presents him with a photograph of Bruce, Shark flies into a rage and is stabbed by the girl's faithful servant (Jimmy Aubrey). While trying to flee, Marty runs into Bruce who brings her to the plantation. There, Tiana (Carlotta Monti), Shark's servant who has been trying to seduce Bruce, accuses Marty of murdering her employer. In the end, however, a witness acknowledges that Shark was killed in self-defense by Marty's servant and the lovers are reunited.