Tanya Borodoff Death Fact Check
Tanya is alive and kicking.
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Tanya Borodoff - Biography
Tanya (Kay Francis), a Russian refugee living in Rangoon, is romantically involved with Tony (Ricardo Cortez), a gunrunner with ties to underworld connections. When he finds himself in deep debt to Nick (Warner Oland), the owner of the notorious nightclub Jardin d'Orient, he abandons Tanya there with the understanding that Nick will put her to work as the "club hostess" in exchange for his debts. At first despairing, Tanya quickly decides to follow the advice of Madame Lacalles (Rafaela Ottiano), the former club hostess, who tells her, "You'll find out that it's easier to make men do what you want them to, than to fall in love and have them make a fool of you. Anyway, you're pretty enough to go a long way if you use your head." Tanya's rise to waterfront fame and notoriety as "White Spot," the star attraction at the Jardin d'Orient, gets her threatened with deportation and a morals charge but she uses blackmail against the accusing authority - a former customer - and manages to escape Rangoon on her own terms on a ferry boat bound for Mandalay. Traveling under the name Marjorie Lang, Tanya finds herself drawn to fellow passenger Dr. Gregory Burton (Lyle Talbot), an alcoholic with a troubled past. A romance begins to develop between the two lost souls when the ferry stops for new passengers and Nick comes abroad, anxious to win Tanya back and put her to work as the hostess of his own nightclub.When Tony returns to strong-arm Tanya into joining him as a business partner after faking his death earlier, she poisons him and, in agony, he staggers to a window and falls out of it into the river below. There are no witnesses to his murder and since he was already assumed dead, Tanya escapes punishment. The movie ends on a close-up of her beatific face as she disembarks for Mandalay with her new lover, Dr. Burton. They are on their way to help cure villagers suffering from the plague and while it is suggested that they both may die of the same, Tanya escapes the fate of most post-Code heroines who have sinned and committed murder. There is a sense of redemption and salvation in that final shot that mirrors the closing scene in Jezebel (1938) in which Bette Davis and Henry Fonda are transported to a leper colony for quarantine.
