opening lines:
The old steamer trunk belonging to the captain, plastered with labels from ports all over the world, stood in the centre of the empty living room.

I can't tell whether this film (starring Julie London, John Drew Barrymore, Anna Kashfi, Dean Jones, Agnes Moorehead and Nat 'King' Cole) ever got released in Britain. I can't find any reference to it in Halliwell or in the Radio Times Guide to Film, but here's the book, proudly proclaiming itself to be 'a provocative novel based on the daring MGM film', as though we're supposed to recognize it. Anyway, I haven't seen it, but - judging from the novelization - it must be pretty poor stuff.

I mean, I don't want to sound unnecessarily naïve but surely in California in the late-1950s a newspaper headline that read SOCIAL LEADER'S BRIDE REVEALED AS QUADROON would either not exist or - if it did - wouldn't stir up too much racial hatred. Or put another way, wasn't there a more pertinent aspect of racism that a 'daring MGM film' could had examined?

Whatever, the cover's great, the book's rubbish. There you are.