You shouldn't miss this quirky melodrama about gambling addiction and degradation. On Turner Classic Movies TV channel Saturday 8 AM (ET). Good casino scenes.

Good cast with Gene Tierney (young and beautiful; one of her first movies),Walter Huston, Victor Mature, Ona Munson, and Phyllis Brooks.

Review here: http://online.tvguide.com/Movies/database/ShowMovie.asp?MI=20016

Review says, in part:

The fascinating von Sternberg returned to the East of SHANGHAI EXPRESS with this trip into the underworld of a gambling den which stars Munson as its twisted, criminal proprietor who hides behind an impenetrable mask of makeup. Pressured by Huston, an English financier, Munson is threatened with the closing of her casino, despite the fact that she has bribed the local authorities. .... ..... .....Based on a racy 1925 Broadway play by John Colton, THE SHANGHAI GESTURE was finally made after over 30 attempts by various producers, writers, and directors to get a screenplay past the Hays Office censors. For von Sternberg to get the script through he had to make numerous changes in plot and characterization, though not in spirit. "Mother Goddamm" of the play became "Mother Gin Sling" of the film, the original setting of a brothel became a gambling den, an erotic relationship became a broken marriage, and the daughter's drug addiction simply became a name, "Poppy," which only hinted at her dependency on drugs. What remained was the physical reality, in the form of Poppy, of a broken relationship, the film noir "dark side" of Poppy's mixing of real life and imagination, and the interest in vices--all favorite themes of von Sternberg, and the qualities which make this a von Sternberg film rather than a Colton play. As with von Sternberg's finest films, THE SHANGHAI GESTURE is masterfully photographed and lit, bringing forth a poetic, stylized ballet of movements and gestures which envelop the erotic romanticism that von Sternberg is able to find in the normally seedy gambling casino.

My lobby card:

Robert