On the way, he learns about her past and why she is called he ""lady from Shanghai."" Speaking partly in the third-person, she ells him about her seedy past - she is a White Russian that she was born in Chifu, on the China coast, where she probably lived a compromised, naughty life as a high-class prostitute:Elsa: Her parents were Russian, white Russian.The entire film was shot in sequence, except for the fishing scene (shot last).It surprised everyone by becoming enormously profitable - the seventh-highest-grossing film ever (at its time), bringing in almost $300 million worldwide.The next tangerine-colored scene - a long-shot view of the burning hot Arabian desert at sunrise - is juxtaposed to the previous scene by an abrupt cut, presenting the idea that Lawrence""s pleasurable masochism will now be displaced into the heated political/military situation in Arabia.And Huston wrote the screenplay forHigh Sierra (1941)starring Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino - another adaptation of a Burnett novel.