Her Primitive Man
Cast & Crew
Charles Lamont
Louise Allbritton
Robert Paige
Robert Benchley
Edward Everett Horton
Helen Broderick
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
A new book being written by "adventurer" Pete Matthews, entitled Life and Death Among the Lupari Savages , is making thousands of dollars in advanced sales due to the publicity efforts of its publisher, Martin Osborne. Unknown to the publisher and the treatise's prospective readers, however, is the fact that Peter is writing his book from the barstool of a Havana casino, where he is getting his information about the headhunters of Lupari Island from Orrin Tracy, a worldly bartender. Wealthy anthropologist Sheila Winthrop learns of Peter's deception and tells Martin that she plans to expose the hoax if the book is published. Unaware that his book has been canceled, Peter takes a $10,000 loan from his socialite girl friend, Marcia Stafford, with an offer of marriage as his collateral. Later, Peter meets Sheila, and learns that she plans to go to Lupari Island and bring one of the natives back to New York City. With the help of Orrin, Peter then impersonates a Luparian headhunter named Pangi and becomes Sheila's anthropological subject. Returning to New York, Peter and Orrin make a deal with Martin to write a book about the "headhunter's" life with the Winthrop family. Matters are complicated, however, when Marcia nearly recognizes Peter at a nightclub. Peter is then forced to become a house guest of the Winthrops, and must change back and forth from "Pangi" to himself in order to continue his ruse. Sheila soon begins to fall in love with Peter, despite her engagement to stuffed-shirt Gerald Van Horn, and she confesses these feelings to "Pangi." In a fit of passion, Sheila kisses "Pangi," which brings great disgrace upon the Winthrop family. Peter, in turn, destroys the only copy of his expose of the Winthrops, having fallen in love with Sheila. Meanwhile, Gerald and Marcia combine forces and attempt to bribe Orrin into exposing "Pangi" as a fraud during Sheila's lecture before an anthropological society. Their plot fails, however, when Peter and Orrin bring a real Luparian headhunter to the lecture in "Pangi's" place. Afterward, Peter confesses all, then uses the bribery money to pay back Marcia. Now free of their previous romantic entanglements, Peter and Sheila are united, while Martin, Gerald and Caleb, the Winthrop's gardener, flee for their lives as the real headhunter sets his sites on their craniums.
Director
Charles Lamont
Cast
Louise Allbritton
Robert Paige
Robert Benchley
Edward Everett Horton
Helen Broderick
Stephanie Bachelor
Walter Catlett
Ernest Truex
Louis Jean Heydt
Nydia Westman
Oscar O'shea
Sylvia Field
Ian Wolfe
Irving Bacon
Herbert Evans
Lane Chandler
Tim Ryan
Florence Lake
Matt Mchugh
Alice Fleming
Ray Walker
John Roche
Howard Hickman
Eddie Bruce
Walter Tetley
Martin Ashe
Dorothy Granger
Vernon Dent
Cyril Delevanti
Alphonse Martell
Fred Barton
Philo Mccullough
Barbara Fleming
Polly Bailey
Al Thompson
Sidney Miller
Billy Bletcher
Ernie Adams
Crew
Bernard B. Brown
Charles Carroll
Michael Fessier
Michael Fessier
R. A. Gausman
John B. Goodman
Jack Gross
Dick Irving Hyland
Ernest Pagano
Ernest Pagano
Richard H. Riedel
Leigh Smith
Ray Snyder
Ernest Truex
Charles Van Enger
Edward Ward
Vera West
Mack Wright
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This was the first film to be produced by the screenwriting team of Michael Fessier and Ernest Pagano. According to the Daily Variety review, the pair received this promotion from Universal based on their authorship of that studio's 1943 box-office hit, Fired Wife (see entry above). An April 1943 Daily Variety news item states that Universal had originally purchased the Dick Hyland story for producer Alex Gottlieb; it has not been determined if Gottlieb had any input on the production of the released film. Hollywood Reporter reported that Her Primitive Man shared the same sound stage with another Universal production, For the Boys (see entry above) in November 1943, and that this was the first time since the silent era that two films had been shot simultaneously on one stage.
