The Lady from Shanghai (Film 1947)

The Lady from Shanghai is a 1947 American film noir produced and directed by Orson Welles and starring Rita Hayworth, Welles, Everett Sloane, and Glenn Anders. Welles's screenplay is based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King. Audio in English with English subtitles (Click on CC for subtitles.)

In New York City's Central Park, Michael O'Hara, an Irish merchant sailor, rescues the beautiful Elsa Bannister from a group of thieves who are attempting to rob her. After fighting off the three attackers, Michael escorts Elsa to safety, and later learns that she is married to the renowned lawyer Arthur Bannister. The following day, Arthur, a cripple, offers Michael a job working on his yacht, and Michael reluctantly accepts the offer. The yacht sets sail from New York to San Francisco with Michael, the Bannisters, Arthur's partner, George Grisby, and a small crew. During the trip, Michael falls in love with Elsa, and learns that she agreed to marry Arthur only after he threatened to expose her shady past in Shanghai. Soon after the yacht reaches the Mexican coast, Michael and Elsa realize that they are being watched by the yacht's steward, Sidney Broome, who is actually a detective hired by Arthur to keep watch over Elsa.

In addition to the Columbia Pictures studios, the film was partly shot on location in San Francisco. It features the Sausalito waterfront and Lee Kahn's Valhalla waterfront bar and cafe, the front, interior, and a courtroom scene of the old Kearny Street Hall of Justice, and shots of Welles running across Portsmouth Square, escaping to a long scene in a theater in Chinatown, then the Steinhart Aquarium in Golden Gate Park, and Whitney's Playland-at-the-Beach amusement park at Ocean Beach for the hall of mirrors scene, for which interiors were shot on a soundstage.

Other scenes were filmed in Acapulco. The yacht Zaca, on which many scenes take place, was owned by actor Errol Flynn, who skippered the yacht in between takes and can also be seen in the background in one scene at a cantina in Acapulco.

In 2018, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Cast & Characters:
Rita Hayworth as Elsa "Rosalie" Bannister
Singing voice was dubbed by Anita Kert Ellis
Orson Welles as Michael O'Hara
Everett Sloane as Arthur Bannister
Glenn Anders as George Grisby
Ted de Corsia as Sidney Broome
Erskine Sanford as judge
Gus Schilling as "Goldie" Goldfish
Carl Frank as District Attorney Galloway
Louis Merrill as Jake
Evelyn Ellis as Bessie
Harry Shannon as cab driver
Wong Chung as Li (uncredited)
Errol Flynn as man in background outside of cantina (uncredited)
Philip Morris as port steward/Officer Peters (uncredited)
Edward Peil Sr. as guard (uncredited)