Jane Russell in The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Raoul Walsh, 1956)
Cast: Jane Russell, Richard Egan, Joan Leslie, Agnes Moorehead, Jorja Curtright, Michael Pate, Richard Coogan, Alan Reed. Screenplay: Sydney Boehm, based on a novel by William Bradford Huie. Cinematography: Leo Tover. Art direction: Mark-Lee Kirk, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: Louis R. Loeffler. Music: Hugo Friedhofer.
Loosely based on a novel that was loosely based on the memoirs of the sex worker Jean O'Hara, Raoul Walsh's The Revolt of Mamie Stover is one of those dodges around the Production Code that kept cropping up in the 1950s. Set mostly in Honolulu before and after the Pearl Harbor attack, it's the story of a woman who parlayed her earnings as a "dance-hall hostess" into a fortune by buying up real estate when people fled the island at the start of the war and leasing it to the military. Jane Russell got the role of Mamie Stover -- which was one of O'Hara's actual pseudonyms after Marilyn Monroe, originally cast in the part, rebelled against her 20th Century Fox contract, and Rita Hayworth, Susan Hayward, and Lana Turner were considered. It's a perfect fit for Russell. The movie is nothing special, but it's directed efficiently by Walsh, and has solid action scenes during the Pearl Harbor bombing, and colorful views of Hawaiian scenery.