The Adventures of Marco Polo
Directed by Archie Mayo. 104 mins (1938)
Gary Cooper - Marco Polo
Marco Polo travels from Venice to Peking, where he quickly discovers spaghetti and gunpowder and falls in love with the Emperor's daughter. The Emperor Kublai Khan is a kindly fellow, but his evil aide Ahmed wants to get rid of Kublai Khan so he can be emperor, and to get rid of Marco Polo so he can marry the princess. Ahmed sends Marco Polo to the West to fight barbarians, but he returns just in time to save the day.
Also starring Basil Rathbone, Sigrid Gurie, Binnie Barnes, Alan Hale, H.B. Warner and Lana Turner.
Lana Turner later recalled that her "fancy black oriental wig" had been glued around her face with spirit gum, while she felt extremely uncomfortable in her costumes and, worse yet, had her eyebrows shaved off at the insistence of Samuel Goldwyn himself, and replaced with false slanting black ones.