Here are three intriguing "What If" scenarios that I discovered at NewspaperARCHIVE.com. The first two—not surprisingly—never came to pass, and the last thankfully never happened.
'Mary Pickford Of China' Will Star In Six Films
by Louella O. Parsons
LOS ANGELES, July 23, 1931.—The Howard Hughes publicity department didn't have to talk long to convince me that Butterfly Wu, scheduled to make six pictures for Caddo, is a real beauty. I saw so many Orientals in Honolulu who would have photographed like Anna May Wong it's surprising we haven't had more Chinese actresses.
This Butterfly Wu is called the Mary Pickford of China and that, my friends, is the compliments of compliments, for Mary is still queen in these foreign countries. Butterfly Wu will be the star in the six pictures to be filmed in Shanghai in multicolor by Mr. Hughes.
While I suppose the appeal of these foreign made films will be greater in the Orient than in America, we shall probably see them for they are to be released for world-wide circulation.
China's Garbo Is to Play Character in Good Earth
Butterfly Wu Is to Be Brought to Hollywood
Role in M-G-M Production of Buck's Novel
By Jerry Hoffman
LOS ANGELES, June 10, 1934.—Even China has its Garbo. Her name is Butterfly Wu and she is to come here and play the role of "O-lan" in Pearl Bucks' "Good Earth" for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This means all the talk about Helen Hayes and other American actresses is ended. Irving Thalberg has decided upon a daring experiment.
An all-Chinese cast is to play the characters of "Good Earth". Anna May Wong may be the only English speaking actress among them. Another also may be Su-Yong, a Chinese star given a film test in Honolulu by Cecil De Mille and seen by Thalberg this week. The young producer is seriously considering a daring experiment for the first time in any American made movie. Since all the players speak only Chinese, the foreign method of superimposing English titles, taken from dialogue written by Frances Marion, will be used. George Hill will direct.
Chinese Cinema Queen Reported Hongkong Victim
CHUNGKING, CHINA, Jan. 15, 1942.—Butterfly Wu, movie queen of China, was killed by shrapnel during the siege of Hongkong, press reports said tonight.
Butterfly Wu was a beauty with brains, a romantic figure whose name had been linked with warlords, government officials, rich men, poor men, business men and actors.
When the Japanese took Manchuria in 1931, some persons blamed her, because Manchuria's overlord, the young Marshal Chang Hsueh-Liang, was being seen frequently in her company in Peiping, and wasn't in Mukden when the crisis came.
Butterfly fluttered quickly back into popularity, however, and for years tales of her "new romances" were staples of the sensational press.
In 1935 she made a triumphal tour of Russia at the soviet government's invitation, and went on to visit most of the capitals of Europe.
In 1936 she was married to Eugene Penn, a Chinese agent for a German commercial firm, in the Anglican Church in Shanghai.
She continued with her movie career, and out of her record salary of $300 a month even financed some of her own productions.
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