Noel Toy: She's Fan-tastic!

"She was an outrageous rebel." So says filmmaker Arthur Dong, who chronicled exotic dancer Noel Toy and fellow Chinese American performers in Forbidden City, U.S.A. (1989), a documentary about America's premiere all-Chinese nightclub.

Born in San Francisco, Noel Toy (real name Ngun Yee) got her start in showbiz in 1939 at the Golden Gate International Exposition held on San Francisco's Treasure Island. A UC Berkeley student at the time, she was offered a job at the Expo's Chinese Village that evidently involved "little more than standing around in a Chinese gown." Noel soon found another job — that also required little more than standing around, and in a lot less than a gown — at the Candid Camera attraction, which invited fairgoers to photograph live nude models.

When the Forbidden City's PR man suggested to owner Charlie Low that what they needed to attract more customers was a Chinese bubble dancer, Charlie hired Noel to perform at his nightclub. Undoubtedly, the idea was inspired by Sally Rand — the original bubble dancer — who was stirring up lots of controversy and making lots of money at the Golden Gate Expo with her "Nude Ranch" and nightly performances at The Music Box (currently known to Bay Area residents as the Great American Music Hall). So that's how UC coed Ngun Yee came to be known as Noel Toy, the "Chinese Sally Rand".

Business at the Forbidden City tripled within three months, and Noel soon began performing at other clubs around San Francisco. In February 1941, she was appearing in Reno, Nevada and later that year she was invited by a promoter to perform in New York City, where she was a big hit.

In the fall of 1942, Noel appeared in the Broadway revue Wine, Women and Song. The show ran for 150 performances, from September 28th until December 3, when it was shut down on obscenity charges. A witness at the trial said that Noel Toy "was nude except for her shoes and one other piece of clothing, and pretended to dance but didn't move her feet" (Associated Press, December 1, 1942). Another witness, commenting on her signature fan dance, testified that Noel intermittently revealed "all or substantially all her body." On December 18, the producer of the show was sentenced to a six month prison term, and the judge had these words to say to Noel Toy and fellow performer Margie Hart.

Whether or not these so-called leading attractions, these artists of the strip tease, are to be prosecuted under another law for their indecent performance, this court does not presume to know.

But the hope is expressed that they earn the just contempt of those in the theatrical profession who are still interested in maintaining the high moral standards of the stage.

—International News Service, December 18, 1942

Noel Toy gave up burlesque dancing but continued performing songs and monologues in NYC. In 1945 she met and married actor Carleton Young and retired from the stage. Noel subsequently had a sporadic career in film and television, which included appearances in Soldier of Fortune (1955), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), and a few episodes of M*A*S*H*, but not surprisingly, Hollywood didn't have much to offer her.

But lucky for us, the famously sexy — and infamously indecent — dance that made Noel Toy a star for a few brief years has been preserved on film and made available by the Prelinger Archives.


Further Reading and Viewing

• "Noel Toy – famed exotic dancer of '40s"


• Forbidden City, U.S.A. (1989)

Lam Fung: Teen Fashion

I can't tell you much about these cards besides the fact that Patricia Lam Fung indeed did start her own fashion company. If anyone has further information, please let me know!

Forbidden City: The Golden Age of Chinese Nightclubs

Walton Biggerstaff training Forbidden City dancers (1944)

I had the pleasure of chatting with cartoonist and herstorian Trina Robbins at WonderCon today. Earlier in the week in the course of my habitual internet research, I discovered that she recently finished writing a book about the Chinese American nightclub scene that thrived in San Francisco from the late 1930s to the early 60s. Due to be released sometime in the fall, Forbidden City: The Golden Age of Chinese Nightclubs will be structured as a collection of oral history interviews with performers from this exciting era. According to Trina, the book will also feature lots of photos. I can't wait!

Stay tuned for a post about Noel Toy, a burlesque dancer who worked at the Forbidden City nightclub during the early 1940s...

Wanted: Miss So Ching

So Ching in Gold Button (1966)

Why is it that I find myself tortuously intrigued by Hong Kong actresses about whom I can find scant or absolutely no information in English? Such is the case with So Ching (蘇青). Looking at her filmography, she appears to have been part of an attempt by the Mingxing Film Company to cash in on the "Jane Bond" film craze ignited by Connie Chan and Josephine Siao in the mid-60s.

During the peak of the genre's frenzy, So Ching made four "Jane Bond" films for Mingxing: Gold Button (1966), The Golden Gun (1966), The White Swan (1967), and Pink Bomb (1967). All four films co-starred Cantonese cinema's all-purpose leading man Wu Fung, Fanny Fan (who had just reignited her sex bomb image in Shaw Brothers' The Golden Buddha), and Cathay hunk Roy Chiao Hung (who was branching out into Cantonese films).

So Ching also made two swordplay films for the studio with Josephine Siao and Cheung Ying-choi: The Golden Bat (1966) and Return of the Golden Bat (1966). Here's an advertisement for all four of Mingxing's "gold" titled features from that year.

After 1967, So Ching was absent from the silver screen until the end of 1969, when she showed up supporting Patrick Tse Yin in a swordplay film called The Charming Killer. By 1970, it appears that her flash in the pan was beginning to dim. She made four films that year, one of which — The Sexual World — appears to have set the course for the brief remainder of her career.

Besides what I've been able to glean from her filmography, the only mention of her that I've come across is this one from Hong Kong film critic and independent filmmaker Bryan Chang's essay "Waste Not Our Youth: My World of Sixties Cantonese Movies". Reminiscing about the Cantonese actresses of his childhood, Chang says:

Then, one day, I was drinking with friends and the name of So Ching was mentioned. Everybody shouted 'Bravo!' To put it truthfully, she was not a first-rate actress but she was as pure as an angel in her sex appeal. She specialized in playing spies and secret agents strutting about in hot pants. So Ching is the alternative cult figure who can fill the gaps of those who dislike the sexpots Tina Ti and Fan Lai.

I wish I could tell you more about So Ching, but that's all I know. While I can't give a reward to anyone offering information leading to my further appreciation of her, here are some glamor shots that certainly capture some of her "pure as an angel" sex appeal.


From The Screen & Stage Pictorial (August, 1966)


Postcard featuring Miss So Ching

References

• Bryan Chang, "Waste Not Our Youth: My World of Sixties Cantonese Movies", The Restless Breed: Cantonese Stars of the Sixties (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1996)

Yu So Chow: Just Making a Living

The new issue (2.2MB PDF) of the Hong Kong Film Archive's newsletter features a wonderful oral history interview with martial-arts queen Yu So Chow. An English translation is available as a supplement (95KB PDF), but be sure to check out the cool pictures in the original.

Miss Yu is quite the storyteller. There are some great anecdotes, like the one about when she was filming a fight scene with Sek Kin at 5 o'clock in the morning and was so exhausted that she forgot to move her arm out of the way of his blade. "Blood jetted out, and one could see the tendons splitting apart and bones sticking out... One of my co-stars So Siu-tong came over to dress my wound with some Chinese ointment. Then, I soldiered on until I completed the shoot. It was pitiful..."!

Chang Loo (1932-2009): Rest in Peace

I just learned over the weekend that Hong Kong singer Chang Loo recently passed away. A vivacious performer, she was always pushing the boundaries of Chinese popular music with her interpretations of the latest sounds from around the world (from Hank Williams and Patsy Cline to Japanese enka and Hawaiian hula).

In tribute to her remarkable career, here is her 1963 song 打魚忙 ("Busy Fishing"?), which — if my own babelfishing is to be trusted — was based on a 1960 song by Nikkatsu action star and enka singer Kobayashi Akira that was in turn based on a traditional Hokkaido fishing song.

Mo Lei Tau Bao

A big thanks to committedtofilm for pointing out this clip of Stephen Chow's hilarious performance of "Cha Shao Bao" that was recently posted at FTIN.

As you may know, Stephen Chow has made a brilliant career out of remixing Chinese culture for contemporary audiences, from God of Gamblers III (1991) all the way to Kung Fu Hustle (2004).


Stephen Chow's "Cha Shao Bao" from God of Gamblers III

Diana Chang: Cha Shao Bao

One of my favorite songs on Retrochine, the just released album that remixes classic Shaw Brothers film songs from the 1960s, is an updated version of "Cha Shao Bao", which was originally sung by Diana Chang Chung-wen in her Hong Kong movie debut, Three Sisters (1957). Singing to the tune of Rosemary Clooney's "Mambo Italiano", sexy Diana invited moviegoers to try her cha sao bao. Audiences must have liked them, because Diana quickly became Hong Kong cinema's premiere sex symbol.

Here she is, singing "Cha Shao Bao"...



And if you want to hear the equally delicious new version by Gloria Tang, order yourself a copy of Retrochine. It's a must for fans of sounds both new and vintage.

Lee Tung Foo: Not Your Average Hollywood Chinese Servant

I recently watched Phantom of Chinatown (1940), the final entry of the Mr. Wong film series — mostly to see Chinese American actor Keye Luke in what I believe was the only leading role of his career. While it was undeniably a step forward to cast a Chinese actor rather than another white actor in the role of detective Mr. Wong, Phantom of Chinatown is certainly not the vehicle I would have chosen to showcase the charming Keye Luke (who would have been fantastic in something like a romantic comedy).

Anyway, all of this is a roundabout way of saying that for me the real standout of the film was the fellow who plays Keye Luke's servant. Just look at the way that he owns the stage in the following scene.



My curiosity piqued, I was surprised to discover that this plucky servant was played by none other than Lee Tung Foo, a pioneering Chinese American vaudeville performer that I had the pleasure of learning about in Krystyn Moon's must-read book Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s-1920s.

Lee was the first Chinese American (born in Watsonville, California in 1875) to perform in the American idiom on the vaudeville stage. Making his debut on January 30, 1905, at the Empire Theater in Oakland, California, he challenged Chinese stereotypes and long-held notions that the Chinese were unwilling, and indeed unable, to become American. It must have been quite a shock for white audiences, accustomed to thinking of Chinese either as uncivilized heathens or bizarre "celestials", to see Lee dressed in a tuxedo singing light operatic arias only to switch to a kilt for his famous Scottish impersonations. As he liked to tell audiences, while speaking in a brogue, "[you] may not believe it, but there is some Scotch in me, honest, nearly half a pint". Besides all that, Lee could also "sing Gregorian chants, cowboy ballads, hillbilly groans, French chansons, German lieder, Italian opera, and ... Cossack battle hymns" (Oakland Tribune, June 27, 1936).

By 1920 Lee had stopped performing on the vaudeville stage, married a lady named Alice Pitch, and settled down in New York as a restaurateur. At some point he returned to the stage, appearing in minor theatrical roles on Broadway. In 1936 director Lewis Milestone remembered seeing Lee in a play called Roar, China and persuaded him to take a role in his film The General Died at Dawn. Lee ended up moving to Hollywood and playing bit parts in 67 films over the next 36 years. His last appearance on the silver screen was in The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Four years later, he died on May 1, 1966 at the age of 91.

Lee Tung Foo was truly a man ahead of his times. While I'm tempted to feel sad about the trajectory of his performing career from vaudeville pioneer to Hollywood stereotype, I'm also curious to check out all his bit roles for that brief — but unmistakable — glimmer of America's "Original Chinese Entertainer".



References and Further Reading

• The Unsung Joe: Lee Tung Foo


• Krystyn Moon, "Lee Tung Foo and the Making of a Chinese American Vaudevillian, 1900s-1920s" (Journal of Asian American Studies, Feb 2005)

Patricia Lam Fung: Canto Pop Star

The bidding for some Patricia Lam Fung albums auctioned on eBay recently went way beyond what I expected them to fetch. In five years of religiously scouring eBay for Hong Kong movie memorabilia, I've never once seen these up for sale, so they must be pretty hard to come by.

Patricia Lam Fung was the first youth idol and pop star of Hong Kong's post-war baby boom generation (setting the stage for Connie Chan Po Chu and Josephine Siao Fong Fong later in the sixties), and singing and dancing were a big part of the movies she made for Shaw Brothers' Cantonese division. Not only that, her film songs were instrumental in the development of what would eventually become known as Cantopop. What a shame then that her songs are currently unavailable on CD. Thankfully, one of her fans has put several of Lam's most beloved songs on YouTube. I've gathered them all in a convenient playlist for your listening pleasure.

And here are those albums...


Lam Fung Song Album No. 1 [sold for US $360]
Features songs from The Merdeka Bridge (1959) and When Durians Bloom (1959).


Lam Fung Song Album No. 2 [sold for US $283.08]
Features songs from Glass Slippers (1959) and Young Rock (1959).


Lam Fung Song Album No. 5 [sold for US $316]
Features songs from First Love (1960), The Chase (1960), Love and Chasity (1960), and Revolutionary Heroine (1960).

Li Lihua: The Lady Thief (1948)

Evergreen star Li Lihua is not known as a martial-arts actress, but her strong presence made her eminently suitable for playing the role of a lady knight. In King Hu's The Fate of Lee Khan (1973), she was memorable as the leader of a younger generation of lady knights (played by Hsu Feng, Angela Mao, and Helen Ma). Before that, during her tenure at Shaw Brothers, she starred in Rape of the Sword (1967) and the never released Angel of the Wilderness (1962). And way back in the late 40s, shortly after she left Shanghai to settle in Hong Kong, she made The Lady Thief (1948). Without further ado, here is a clip from that film. A big big thanks to SHUESIK for sharing this priceless treasure with all of us!

BTW, Li Lihua's opponent (and brother in the film) is played by Shaw Brothers mainstay Yang Chi-Ching, perhaps best known to Western fans for his role as the Long Armed Devil in One Armed Swordsman.

The Cheap Thrill of Palm Power

As Todd of 4DK so rightly pointed out in his comment on my previous post, some of us actually prefer "cheap thrills" to "superior" realism when it comes to martial arts movies. Indeed, some of us would rather watch "Buddha's Palm" than "Fists of Fury".


Buddha's Palm (1964)

Lin Dai and Han Yingjie

Movie queen Lin Dai and action choreographer Han Yingjie

While I don't count myself a Lin Dai fan, I've always been dying to see her one martial-arts film, The Swallow (1961). Directed by Yueh Feng and featuring fight choreography by Han Yingjie, it appears to have been an early attempt by Shaw Brothers to compete with the popular swordplay films that were being cranked out by the Cantonese industry at the time. Employing the same language that they used for the launch of their "Action Era" in 1965, Shaws promised audiences a superior, more realistic, martial-arts film.

Martial arts films of the past relied heavily on special effects to give the momentary thrill. Scenes of daggers being spat out of the mouth, hauling mountains and crushing waves and an array of invisibility powers such as disappearing into the earth, waters and fire were nothing more than cheap thrills.... 'The Swallow Thief' appeals to the audiences with its 'realism'... each move, block, throw, choke, and lock is broken down step by step.... In shunning the use of special effects, the cast has to master the martial arts to rise to the challenge in order to bring the real thing to the audience.

—extracted from the film brochure, translated in the HKFA online catalog

It's interesting to read that as early as 1961, Hong Kong filmmakers were already developing the foundations of the constructive editing — in this case, the breaking down of action into distinct and legible units — that would become one of the defining characteristics of Hong Kong action cinema. Besides making real martial-arts techniques look and feel more real, constructive editing also made fantastic feats, such as the "weightless leap", appear more real as well. The Swallow was a pioneering movie in this regard, as it was the first film to feature the use of trampolines in its action choreography. As Han Yingjie relates...

[I first used trampolines] when Griffin Yue Feng made 'The Swallow' in 1961. I was the double for Linda Lin Dai and experimented with a seven by five feet trampoline. I did a somersault, the camera followed with a vertical pan, and the 'weightless leap' was born!

—from the HKIFF catalog A Tribute to Action Choreographers

The other benefit of constructive editing is that — in combination with coaching the actors in basic martial-arts moves and stances — it helps reduce excessive stunt doubling and hopefully makes the doubling less obvious to the viewer as well. Anyway, here is a great article (894KB PDF) from Southern Screen No. 35 (January 1961) showing Lin Dai practicing her stances and sparring with Han Yingjie in preparation for her role in The Swallow.

BTW, although The Swallow was not among the Shaw films restored and released by Celestial Pictures — leading me to believe that it is missing from the Shaw library or perhaps too damaged for restoration — a print of the film was shown at the 1981 Hong Kong International Film Festival. It's not clear whether the Hong Kong Film Archive has a copy, since whatever Shaw Brother holdings they have are not publicly disclosed in their online catalog.

I'm hoping (but not holding my breath) that this pioneering martial-arts film will be seen once again some day.

Lam Fung Loves the Sea

Here's a little piece from the June 1961 issue of Southern Screen:

Lam Fung Loves the Sea

Pretty Patricia Lam Fung, the bright young star of Shaw's Cantonese films, is a great lover of the sea.

She loves nothing more than taking a trip out to a secluded cove and sitting by the seaside watching the wide expanse of turquoise waters stretching as far as the eye can see.

"The sea has so many moods, that it intrigues and fascinates me. At times it is so quiet and serene, glistening in the bright sunlight. At other times it rages in an angry mood, with its huge waves pounding the seaside," Pat said without taking her eyes off the turquoise waters.

Glamorous Lam Fung

From the June 1961 issue of Southern Screen.

Sigh... what more needs be said...

Jue Quon Tai: Chinese Princess Says "Gee"

Allow me to introduce Jue Quon Tai, one of the fascinating Chinese American vaudeville performers featured in Krystyn R. Moon's Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s-1920s. I'm still trying to uncover a few more facts before I relate her colorful life and career, but I couldn't resist posting this teaser in the meantime.

Miss Jue made her stage debut in 1915 as a headliner on the Pantages vaudeville circuit and, in the accompanying publicity blitz, portrayed herself as a chain-smoking, slang-talking, 19-year-old princess on the lam from an arranged marriage in China. She was the original Chinese flapper, long before Anna May Wong — who was just ten years old at the time. Here's an article from the December 9, 1915 issue of the New York Times.

CHINESE PRINCESS HERE

She Says "Gee" to Reporters and
Smokes Sixty Cigarettes a Day

Miss Jue Quon Tai of Peking, China, who confesses to having been a Princess before the Celestial Empire became a prosaic republic with ballot boxes and suffragists, is staying at the Hotel Astor for a few days. Princess Jue Q. Tai arrived yesterday afternoon from San Francisco, where she had been seeing the fair for four months, and she has achieved her life-long ambition of seeing New York. The Princess is 19 years old and uses colloquial English.

"Gee," she said to a group of six surprised reporters yesterday, "but my father would certainly be wild if he knew I was here in New York all alone. He objected like everything to my coming, but I just came anyhow. You see, I have never been around very much alone. I learned to speak English from a tutor, and oh, yes, I went to a finishing school for girls near Canton. But all I learned there was to smoke cigarettes. I smoked fifty or sixty a day.

"When I first came here alone this time, I had a hard time to get used to newspaper men. I slammed the door in one's face in San Francisco, and he gave me the awfullest roast next day. His paper said I was the most up-stage royalty that had ever come to San Francisco."

"Do you think there is any chance of your country becoming a monarchy?" she was asked.

"All the chance in the world," was the prompt reply. "The royal party has all the money."

The Princess's father is named Jue But Hee. According to the Princess, he is of royal blood, and is a mandarin of the fourth rank.

Patricia Lam Fung on Facebook!

I was totally surprised to discover that someone has created a Facebook page for Lam Fung. You don't need to be signed up to take a look. There are lots of fantastic photos — like the one above — posted by Ricky, the site's owner, and other fans. There's also a really great homemade MV featuring one of Lam Fung's songs. If I weren't stubbornly avoiding joining Facebook, I would definitely add myself as a fan!