White Cargo is a 1942 American drama film starring Hedy Lamarr and Walter Pidgeon, and directed by Richard Thorpe.

Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, it is based on the 1923 London and Broadway hit play by Leon Gordon, which was in turn adapted from the 1912 novel Hell's Playground by Ida Vera Simonton.

During the early years of World War II Worthing (Richard Ainley) the “boss”, is on board a seaplane, the Congo Queen on an inspection tour of rubber plantations in remote locations in the West African jungle.

Worthing tells the local supervisor that they must maximize production because the Japanese hold Malaya, reducing the supply of that critical war material.

He points to a photograph on the wall that shows thatched shacks beside a river and remembers the old days, in 1910, before “refrigerators, electricity and air-conditioning gadgets…schools and infirmaries.” The camera zooms into the photo, which comes to life.

Wilbur Ashley (Bramwell Fletcher) and his boss, Harry Witzel (Walter Pidgeon), have succumbed to the monotony of living and working together in isolation and grown to hate one-another.

Ashley is finally going home, being replaced by the abominably green Langford (Richard Carlson), set to commence a four-year stint.

When Witzel's orders her expelled once more, Langford decides to marry her to put her past the slightly deranged but well-intentioned man's incessant rebukes.

In spite of his better judgment, and loud and sustained protests from Witzel, Roberts feels compelled by his faith to join the couple in holy matrimony.

[2] According to the Production Code Administration section of the file on the film in the Motion Picture Association of America collection at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the miscegenation element - a white man becoming intimately involved with a native African woman - of Leon Gordon's story caused great censorship difficulties, beginning with the U.S. distribution of a 1929 British screen adaptation of his play, also titled White Cargo.

Maurice Evans, and Gypsy Rhouma, generated complaints from industry insiders, who felt that its distribution in the U.S. violated the spirit of Hays' decree.