Reduced to mere producer status at his own M-G-M (and with David Selznick breathing down his neck), Irving Thalberg needed a big fat hit. Hence this entertaining, but hopelessly slapdash multi-star vehicle combining elements of GRAND HOTEL and RED DUST. The many stars include Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Rosalind Russell (veddy British, here), Donald Meek, Dudley Diggs, C. Aubrey Smith, Akim Tamiroff, & Robert Benchley who's soused thru-out. Plots come and go with little reason, while Thalberg’s typical reliance on post-production reshooting flattens the surprisingly strong directorial rhythm Tay Garnett intermittently gets going. Harlow looks strikingly different from one cut to the next, often vaguely ill. But probably thanks to scripter Anita Loos, the whole malarkey has enough spunk & spirit to carry off absurdities like Lewis Stone slithering snakelike across the ship's deck with live hand grenades held in his teeth.
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