Joseph Sunn Jue and San Francisco's Film Colony

From right: Joseph Sunn Jue, actress Patricia Joe (Chow Kwun-ling), and cameraman Joseph Jue on the set of She's My Gal.

Here's another article about Joseph Sunn Jue and his Grandview Film Company from the May 28, 1944 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle. Like the other article I posted recently, it offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse of the pioneering studio.

Some of the actors mentioned below would go on to become big stars in Hong Kong after the war. Patricia Joe (Chow Kwun-ling) was one of Cantonese cinema's most prolific actresses in the early 1950s and made a total of nearly 200 films during her career. Cheu Mo Wong (Wong Chiu-mo) — who ended up marrying Patricia — was also quite active. In 1957, the couple returned to San Francisco with their daughter after more or less retiring from the screen and stage (although Patricia continued to make films throughout the early 60s).

Wong Hock Sing (Wong Hok-sing) — although he had performed on the stage with Sit Kok-sin's and Ma Sze-tsang's troupes and acted in more than 30 films — is best known for his work behind the camera. His directorial debut was Grandview's White Powder and Neon Lights (shot in San Francisco, 1941; released in Hong Kong, 1947) and has the distinction of being the first color Chinese film (albeit shot on 16mm). The last of the more than 160 films he directed was The Reincarnation of Lady Plum Blossom (1968), starring none other than Connie Chan. In 1971, Wong moved back to San Francisco and managed the old Grandview Theater, which had been renamed the Chinatown Theater after it was sold by Joseph Sunn Jue in the mid-70s.

The building which housed Grandview's studio is still around today, at the end of Old Chinatown Lane. I dropped by the other day but was too shy to take a photo. It appears to be in current use by one of the Chinese family associations.


Anyway, without further ado, let's step backward 65 years into the past and peek inside the San Francisco studio of the Grandview Film Company.

San Francisco's Film Colony
Produces a Bedroom Comedy
By Hazel Bruce

The only producing Chinese motion picture company in the United States is operating in San Francisco, in an abandoned storeroom on Old Chinatown Alley. The actors are young people who are business men, secretaries, actors in the classic Chinese theater by day, and motion picture heroes and heroines by evenings.

Mr. Joseph Sun Jue, proprietor of the Grandview Film Company, is the impresario of this undertaking; it is not new to Mr. Sun. In 1933 Mr. Sun opened his film studio here. His intention then was to make films for the large Chinese population of this city as well as for that of New York, Seattle and a dozen other American cities. The business flourished and shortly Mr. Sun expanded as far as Hongkong, where he bought property and established a film producing unit.

There for several years the company turned out pictures, 120 in continuous production since 1933. The Chinese classics with their magnificence and costliness, blazed across the screen, as well as dozens of modern comedies, dramas and short subjects. Perhaps the most ambitious picture made in this period was "The Prince Consort," an historical film in which the wardrobe bill alone was for $50,000. Then came the war.

'She's My Gal'
Back to California came the Grandview Film Company, to pick up production where it had left off in Hongkong. In spite of the disturbed times, Mr. Sun set up his studio in Chinatown and began turning out comedies as modern as chrome steel, dramas, historical films, an occasional classic drama. And his pictures continued to circulate; not only in this country, but in beleaguered China, the faces of the young people of San Francisco flickered across the screen in inland villages of unoccupied areas and even in the occupied provinces after the films had passed the Japanese censorship.

Mr. Sun invited me down to his studio last week at 7 one evening to see the first night's filming of a new picture, called smartly (in translation) "She's My Gal." It was a chilly evening, but as we stepped into the big open room which used to house half a dozen Oriental specialty shops, the lights were blazing on a small set depicting a modern hotel room.

Two young gentlemen loafed upon twin beds, arguing (so I was told, as the argument was conducted in Cantonese) as to how the bill for an $8.00 per day room was to be met out of a common exchequer of $20. One actor snapped his lighter open and shut in nervous anxiety as he talked; the sound man waved complicated signals from a small glass booth set near the front door. The camera, motor-driven Cine Special with a 200-foot magazine using 16mm film, moved noiselessly forward on its dolly, directed by cameraman Joseph Jue, son of the producer, and a student at the University of California. He pushed the "blimp," a padded, sound reducing jacket, carefully down over the motor.

"Cut!" said Mr. Sun.

The Usual Romance
The two actors, Wong Hock Sing and Cheu Mo Wong, members of the Mandarin Theater Company, rose, grinned, relaxed and began chatting with other members of the company.

Patricia Joe, the slender, bright-eyed leading lady of the film group, looked up from the little table where she sat wrapped in a coat over a thin dress, waiting for her cue and lacquering her nails.

"Ready, Pat," called Mr. Sun in English.

The young woman slipped off her coat and was on the set in her bright print dress. Chiang Kay, writer and dialogue director for the unit, strolled up. Mr. Chiang is tall and lean; he hooked a foot negligently on a chair and began to talk. Miss Joe and the two actors nodded. Apparently, Mr. Chiang was informing the actors what was to happen in the next scene, what the lines were. Either these actors already knew their lines, or they committed them to memory as they listened, or they improvised. There were no scripts visible.

The scene began again. In the back reaches of the big work room, people moved quietly but interestedly. An elderly man drew up beside us and offered some murmured comments. A boy with a clapper came on the scene, held the numbered device in front of the actors' faces.

"Camera!" called Mr. Sun.

The dolly wheeled up; the sound track began to buzz. The speech is registered on a separate film, superimposed on the main film later. The Grandview Film Company was off on the second scene of "She's My Gal."

"What's the story about?" I asked the producer.

Mr. Sun smiled. The usual triangle romance: two boys love one girl. Which one will get her?"

"Modern love scenes?"

"Of course."

"Kissing?"

"Certainly. Sometimes for China, we cut just before the kiss, but not often. These are modern films!"

Miss Joe came up for her coat.

"Have you always spoken Chinese?" I asked.

She grinned. "Of course. But I was born here, so I speak 'American Chinese.' I have to watch on the screen that I speak 'Chinese Chinese'... the intonations are different."

Miss Joe is a secretary for the Hartford Insurance Company by day; she is a graduate of Commerce High School in this city. After the war, Miss Joe plans to go back to China and devote her whole time to acting; her screen name is Joe Quan Ling. It has the euphonious translation: "Universal Brightness."

Markets and Produce
The business of the shooting moved along briskly. Mr. Sun, crisp and businesslike in shirt sleeves, interrupted to devise new business, some turns in the lines.

There was a large paper chart on the wall adjoining the set.

"The shooting schedule," murmured Mr. Sun behind me.

Something has to be adjusted in the sound booth. Jerry Wong, his earphones clapped down tightly, was listening to his gadgets with an absorbed air, and peering out through his glass pane. He shook his head at Mr. Sun. We sat down on a prop sofa to wait.

"Betty Leong, famous stage star of Hongkong, is one of our company," explained Mr. Sun. "She is a member now, also, of the Mandarin Theater here. That is the theater, you might say, of the Chinese opera. Both Wong Hock Sing and Cheu Mo Wong play there every night, too. They will have to be going soon now. They must be on the stage there shortly after 8:30. Everybody in our company does something else in the day time — we have students, actors, war workers.

"Our average working time is three to five nights a week, about three hours. We work always all day Saturday and Sunday, when we are shooting. We will shoot perhaps 200 feet in an evening."

(Forty feet was the sum total of the Grandview's first evening on "She's My Gal," due to newspaper interruptions.)

Mr. Sun continued: "In a year and half of work here we have made four films, and the fifth is now in the making. In China, there were 60 in our company. That included cutters and technical people. Our films are nine to ten reels and run for an hour and three-quarters. Now, of course, we have more technical difficulties and our shooting time is slower."

In China now there are no producing film companies, says Mr. Sun. But there are exhibitors, and millions of amusement-hungry people.

The sound track was functioning again; Mr. Wong in his booth was grinning cheerfully. Mr. Sun rose.

Double Roles
Once more the two sleek young men in beautifully cut clothes began their variously pitched dialogue from the modern bedroom. Presumably, they said:

"What? Eight dollars a day for this room, and only $20 to last a week between us! Besides, what money I have I need to entertain my girl!"

"Girl! My girl, you mean!"

"Your girl... Why, you..." and so on.

"Cut!" cried Mr. Sun. "Eight-twenty... time for you boys to go!"

The two tall, well-groomed young men instantly de-animated. They walked off the set abstractedly, looked around for sleek overcoats.

"They'll just have time to make it to the Mandarin," remarked the producer. "Good night!"

The young actors slid out the latticed and lacquered door, made beautiful for tourists who used to buy stem ginger and rice-pattern Cantonware in the shops here. In 10 minutes, by cutting through alleys, they would appear upon the stage of their forefathers, in stylized Chinese actor's clothing, speaking lines worn fine with antiquity.

Miss Joe was pulling on her coat. "Good night!"

"She'll be seen here soon in a film called "The Songstress," commented Mr. Sun. "It's modern, of course.

The Grandview Film Company was getting ready to close the evening's work; it was eight-thirty. The young actors stopped and scanned the wall schedule briefly as they went out. Young Mr. Jue wheeled the camera back and began to cover it.

"She's My Gal," however, stood ready and waiting to resume the next evening the momentous flicker of modern fun against the ancient timelessness of Chinese thought.