White Pongo (Oct. 10, 1945)

White Pongo (1945)
Directed by Sam Newfield
Sigmund Neufeld Productions / Producers Releasing Corporation (P.R.C.)

If you needed a giant primate in Hollywood in the ’40s, Ray “Crash” Corrigan was your go-to guy. Corrigan would put on any ape costume for a paycheck. And if you didn’t have a particular vision of what your giant primate should look like, Corrigan was happy to wear his own fitted ape suit that was covered with “fur” made of human hair. He even did children’s parties and reportedly terrified some kids.

Nicknamed “Crash” for the way he tackled other football players and for his fighting skills, Corrigan got his start in Hollywood as a physical trainer to the stars, as well as performing stuntwork and acting in bit parts, such as his appearances in an ape costume in Tarzan and His Mate (1934) and as an “Orangopoid” in the Flash Gordon serial (1936). He got his big break playing a human when he was picked to star in the Republic serial Undersea Kingdom in 1936, after which he was signed as a term player for Republic Pictures. He eventually left over a pay dispute and went to Monogram Pictures.

He appeared in more than 50 movies in the late ’30s and early ’40s (including 24 outings as “Tucson Smith” in Republic’s “Three Mesquiteers” series and 20 appearances as “Crash Corrigan” in Monogram’s “Range Busters” series), but even during this fertile period of his career playing humans, he frequently found himself in monkey suits. And no, that’s not a euphemism for tuxedos.

He appeared as a gorilla or ape in Round-Up Time in Texas (1937), the Three Stooges short “Three Missing Links” (1938), the Boris Karloff horror film The Ape (1940), Law of the Jungle (1942), The Strange Case of Doctor Rx (1942), Dr. Renault’s Secret (1942), Captive Wild Woman (1943), She’s for Me (1943), Nabonga (1944), The Monster Maker (1944), and The Monster and the Ape (1945). He even did double duty in some films. In the Three Mesquiteers film Three Texas Steers (1939), he appeared not only as his recurring character Tucson Smith, but also as “Willie the Gorilla.” And in The White Gorilla (1945), he played not only the hero, but also “Konga,” the white gorilla whom the hero fights.

He also appeared as the eponymous White Pongo in this P.R.C. cheapie directed by Sam Newfield. It premiered in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 10, 1945, and was released nationwide a month later, on Friday, November 2nd. The film is one of the poorer examples of a jungle adventure I’ve seen. After the credits finish rolling over an image of Africa, a pointer stick appears, insouciantly circling an enormous section of the southwestern coast of the continent as the narrator says, “Stretching north and south of the equator in west Africa are vast areas of dense forests and swamplands as yet unexplored by white men. A virgin territory penetrated only by the great Congo river and its tributaries. Here in this wild, steaming portion of the Dark Continent is the home of the ‘ponga,’ native name for the gorilla. It was here on the fringe of gorilla territory, in a nameless native village inhabited by a tribe of fierce Negritos, an incident occurred which was destined to startle the civilized world.”

There’s so much to work with already I don’t know where to start. The combination of the verb “penetrate” with the noun “virgin territory,” the fact that “Negritos” are ethnic groups in Southeast Asia, the idea that any village inhabited by humans would be “nameless.” The only thing the film sort of gets right is the general location where gorillas live. Once the wielder of the pointer calms down and focuses on the area where the Atlantic Ocean feeds into the Congo, that is.

The plot of the film, such as it is, involves a crew of scientists and hunters who are hot to find the white ponga because if he turns out not to be a hoax, he could be the “missing link that will prove Darwin’s theory.” Why they believe this despite having no direct contact with the creature is not explained. Because he has white fur? The mind reels. The leader of the expedition, Sir Harry Bragdon (Gordon Richards), of course brings along his beautiful blond daughter, Pamela (Maris Wrixon). The most watchable scenes in White Pongo are the ones she shares with the great white hunter of the expedition, Geoffrey Bishop (Richard Fraser), who’s believable in his role as a tall, lean, Rhodesian rifleman (even though he’s a Scot with an accent that sounds British). Unfortunately, there’s also an unnecessary triangle involving a twit named Clive Carswell (Michael Dyne) who fancies himself in love with Pamela, even though she has no interest in him.

At just under 72 minutes, the film still drags. There seems to be more stock footage, travelling scenes, and establishing shots than there are scenes that advance the story. Things don’t really pick up until the last 15 minutes, which are fairly brisk, though still not what I would call “action-packed.” For a guy who made wearing an ape costume a vocation, Corrigan doesn’t really move or act like a primate, making his large role in the climax more laughable than anything else. And the frequently interspersed stock footage of actual monkeys doesn’t help. Unless you have a fetish for humans in gorilla suits, you can pass this one up with a clear conscience.