That Chinese Gong Show

It was a brief notice in an issue of the short-lived Chinese Digest — the first ever English-language magazine produced by and for Chinese Americans — that recently led me to watch my first Shirley Temple film. The news item said that the Chinese music class of St. Mary's Chinese School in San Francisco had been invited to perform in Stowaway (1936).


St. Mary's all-girl Chinese music orchestra (from the August 14, 1936 issue of Chinese Digest)

I had no idea what to expect from the movie and was quite surprised to see Shirley Temple playing a Chinese-speaking orphan named Ching Ching. Evidently, Little Miss Temple learned 500 words of Chinese for her role! Although the story opens in China, most of the film takes place on board a ship bound for San Francisco, with Shirley as the accidental stowaway who manages to charm herself into the lives of two passengers.

The appearance of the St. Mary's orchestra comes when Shirley and her new guardians disembark in Hong Kong for a little shopping and entertainment, which turns out to be a Chinese variety show featuring a young lady dressed in traditional Chinese finery tap dancing as the St. Mary's girls back her up on yangqin and erhu.

That would have been cool enough, but two more surprises were in store for me. The show is hosted by an emcee, introduced in the film as Li Ze Mon, the Major Bowes of China. "Major who?", you say. I didn't know either, but it turns out that Major Bowes was a popular American radio personality who hosted an amateur talent show on the airwaves from 1934 to 1952. He was famous for striking a gong whenever he couldn't stand a performer any longer. (Now I know where The Gong Show comes from!)

I could tell from the demeanor of this Chinese Major Bowes that I was witnessing a seasoned Chinese American stage performer. After a little digging around, I found out that he was none other than Harry Haw, a veteran vaudevillian known, among other titles, as "The Celestial Impressionist".

Harry Haw was born in 1897 in San Francisco Chinatown. He was encouraged to become a performer by the example of his friend Hugh Liang, who was a founding member of the Chung Wah Four, the world's first Chinese barbershop quartet. When the quartet decided to try their luck on Broadway in 1912, Harry begged Hugh to let him travel with them as an understudy. Harry never ended up performing with the Chung Wah Four, but he did start a dancing team with Minnie Don (Don Fung Gue), a sister of one of the quartet.


Newspaper advertisement for Harry Haw and Minnie Don (1913), and a newspaper photograph of Minnie Don (1916)

The duo were billed as "Petite Chinese Terpescorian Artists Presenting the very Latest Dance Crazes" and performed "Chinese Conceptions" of the Tango and the Texas Tommy, as well as sang in both English and Chinese. Around 1917, they started billing themselves as the "Children of Confucius". According to an article in the Fort Wayne Sentinel (June 1, 1917), they could "dance the syncopated steps of the American ballroom in a manner to put to the test the most skilled American exemplars of these dances" and closed their act "with an old-fashioned cake walk with some new fashioned steps interpolated."

By 1924, it appears that Harry was on his own, doing monologues and impressions of famous performers of the day — like Al Jolson — as they would appear on the "Celestial stage".


Harry Haw from the cover of the sheet music for "Yearning Just for You" (ca. 1925)

Sometime around 1926, Harry rechristened himself as the Honorable Wu and put together a revue of Chinese American performers. According to an advertisement in the Oxnard Daily Courier (December 14, 1926), the show featured "A carload of special scenery: Lighting Effects, Beautiful Costumes, Rare Oriental Properties. With 6 Musical Mandarins. The Honorable Wu's Revue. 7 Chinese Chorus Men. The Lotus Blossom Sisters. Harry Haw Impersonating Eddie Cantor. The New Black Bottom Dance. And What a Hula Dancer." By 1930, Harry's revue — billed as "Mr. Wu with his Chinese Show Boat" — featured 20 performers, including an all-girl jazz band. This was a full 75 years before 12 Girls Band charmed American audiences!

There is one more surprise to be found in Stowaway. After the tap dancer and St. Mary's all-girl Chinese music orchestra, Harry Haw introduces a Chinese Bing Crosby and lets him have a go at it before giving him the gong. The fellow impersonating Bing is Sammee Tong, an actor, comedian, and singer who is remembered today only for his role as the houseboy in the 1950s television series Bachelor Father (see TV Guide at left), and often cited in Multicultural and Ethnic Studies texts as an example of the demeaning and embarrassing Asian stereotypes perpetuated in American culture. But back in the 1940s, Sammee Tong was the master of ceremonies at Oakland herbalist Fong Wan's New Shanghai Cafe, where he was billed as "Chinatown's Playboy Songster". I've been unable to find any information about Sammee's career earlier than an uncredited role as a waiter in Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935). But since he was a San Francisco native, like Harry Haw, it's certainly possible that he was a member of Harry's Chinese revue.

Looked at today, the following clip from Stowaway is a very precious record of the ephemeral history of Chinese American vaudeville.



References

• Bridging the Pacific: San Francisco Chinatown and Its People by Thomas W. Chinn