Trade Winds is a 1938 comedy film distributed by United Artist. It was directed by Tay Garnett

Tay Garnett

Tay Garnett was an American film director and writer.Born in Los Angeles, California, Garnett served as a naval aviator in World War I and entered films as a screenwriter in 1920. He was a gagwriter for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach, then joined Pathé and began to direct films in 1928...

, and starred Fredric March

Fredric March

Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...

 and Joan Bennett

Joan Bennett

Joan Geraldine Bennett was an American stage, film and television actress. Besides acting on the stage, Bennett appeared in more than 70 motion pictures from the era of silent movies well into the sound era...

. The screenplay was written by Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....

, Alan Campbell

Alan Campbell (screenwriter)

Alan K. Campbell was an American writer, actor, and screenwriter. He and his wife, Dorothy Parker, were a popular screenwriting team in Hollywood from 1934 to 1963....

 and Frank R. Adams

Frank R. Adams

Frank Ramsey Adams was an American author, screenwriter, composer, and newspaper reporter. He was born on July 7, 1883 in Morrison, Illinois. Educated at the University of Chicago, Adams worked as a reporter for several Chicago newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, City Press, Chicago Daily...

, based on story by Tay Garnett.

Plot

The night that San Francisco socialite Kay Kerrigan has to identify the body of her younger sister in the morgue, she confronts millionaire playboy Thomas Bruhm II in his apartment. Kay blames her sister's suicide on the callous Bruhm, who hands her his gun and blithely tells her to shoot. Enraged and humiliated, Kay shoots at Bruhm's stomach and he falls dead. After Kay hastily leaves, police detective Ben "Homer" Blodgett sees Bruhm's body with a fatal bullet in the back of his head and, finding Kay's handbag, deduces that she is the murderer. When an all-points bulletin is issued for her arrest, Kay drives her car into the bay, making the police believe that she is also a suicide victim. Some time later, in Hawaii, Kay pawns a unique piece of her jewelry, and Police Commissioner Blackton knows that she did not die. Not trusting the bumbling Homer's capacity to track Kay down, the commissioner contacts former policeman Sam Wye, a brilliant detective who specializes in finding, and romancing, women. Sam leaves his creditors and his fuming secretary Jean Livingstone behind and heads for Hawaii, accompanied by Homer. After charming some hairdressers, Sam discovers that Jean changed from blonde to brunette and sailed for Japan. Homer and Sam then search for Kay throughout the Orient. While Homer looks at tobacco shops asking if a woman has purchased Kay's special brand of Egyptian cigarettes, Sam goes to cafes trying to see if a woman has been playing Frédéric Chopin's "Andantino in A Flat Major," Kay's favorite melody, on the piano. When Homer thinks he has found the woman, it turns out to be Jean, who followed Sam to rekindle their old romance and collect a $100,000 reward now being offered by Bruhm's father. Jean also has a photo of Kay and the tip that she is travelling on a British passport as "Mary Holden." On a boat sailing toward Saigon, Sam finally meets Kay, and immediately falls in love with her. He doesn't let her know that he is a detective, and she falls in love with him as well. Now jealous as well as miffed over Sam's attempts to keep her from collecting part of the reward, Jean poses as a missionary's daughter and becomes friendly with Kay herself. She also helps Kay when she thinks that Sam secretly wired for the reward. Travelling from port to port, Jean, who is now very fond of Kay, helps her get away, then when Sam finds them again, she goes with them on a slow boat back to San Francisco after Kay decides that she no longer wants to be a fugitive. In order to help Kay avoid capture from rival police detective George Faulkner, Sam makes Faulkner believe that Jean is Kay, long enough for him to take Kay to a distant island. When Faulkner does track them down, Sam intends to shoot him, but Faulkner wounds him instead and Sam suddenly says that he has captured Kay for the reward. Back in San Francisco, the press calls Sam a "heel" for turning in his sweetheart, and even Homer and Jean, who have fallen in love with each other, think that Sam is a cad. After collecting the reward, Sam buys Bruhm's apartment and invites all of Bruhm's old girl friends to a party. During the party, he reveals to Homer that he has discovered that Kay's gun actually had blanks in it and thinks that Bruhm was killed from behind by a jealous lover. By rigging up a phony radio broadcast, Sam makes the real killer, Mr. Johnson, think that Kay has been found guilty of murder, and coerces him into confessing that he killed Bruhm for having an affair with Mrs. Johnson. Now free from the murder charge, Kay marries Sam, who finally has shaken his image as a cad.

Principal cast

• Fredric March
  Fredric March
  Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...
  
   as Sam Wye
• Joan Bennett
  Joan Bennett
  Joan Geraldine Bennett was an American stage, film and television actress. Besides acting on the stage, Bennett appeared in more than 70 motion pictures from the era of silent movies well into the sound era...
  
   as Kay Kerrigan
• Ralph Bellamy
  Ralph Bellamy
  Ralph Bellamy was an American actor whose career spanned sixty-two years.-Early life:He was born Ralph Rexford Bellamy in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Lilla Louise , a native of Canada, and Charles Rexford Bellamy. He ran away from home when he was fifteen and managed to get into a road show...
  
   as Ben Blodgett
• Ann Sothern
  Ann Sothern
  Ann Sothern was an American film and television actress whose career spanned six decades.-Early life and career:...
  
   as Jean Livingstone
• Sidney Blackmer
  Sidney Blackmer
  Sidney Alderman Blackmer was an American actor.Blackmer was born and raised in Salisbury, North Carolina. He started off in an insurance and financial business but gave up on it. While working as a builder's laborer on a new building, he saw a Pearl White serial being filmed and immediately...
  
   as Thomas Bruhme II
• Thomas Mitchell
  Thomas Mitchell (actor)
  Thomas Mitchell was an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. Among his most famous roles in a long career are those of Gerald O'Hara, the father of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, the drunken Doc Boone in John Ford's Stagecoach, and Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life...
  
   as Commissioner Blackton
• Robert Elliott as Detective George Faulkner

External links

• Trade Winds at Allmovie