Life Goes to the "Forbidden City"

Trina Robbin's new book Forbidden City: The Golden Age of Chinese Nightclubs has just been published and is available directly from the publisher (and also from Amazon). I'll post my thoughts about the book as soon as I get my hands on it, but in the meantime here's the Life magazine article (December 9, 1940) that brought Charlie Low's Forbidden City to national attention. A scan of the original is available here.

BTW, the two dancers with the lassos at top are Mary Mammon (left) and Dorothy Sun (right), who also appear in the photo just beneath. Closing this post is the inimitable Jadin Wong. I'll have more to share about these ladies in the coming weeks.

Finally, for an interesting and nuanced examination of the Orientalism served up at the Forbidden City nightclub, check out Anthony Lee's book Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco (2001). As he writes, "The acts played on the distinction between the race of the performer and the race being performed in ways that revealed the contingency and malleability of both."

As a matter of fact, this strategy harkened back to the early days of vaudeville when Chinese American entertainers, like Lee Tung Foo and Jue Quon Tai, carved out a niche for themselves on the stage and in the public eye by performing a unique blend of yellowface and whiteface.

As you can see in the article below, Chinese American performers in the 1940s were still navigating the conflicting expectations of what it meant to be a Chinese living in America.

Life Goes to the "Forbidden City"
San Franciscans pack Chinatown's No. 1 night club

At 363 Sutter Street in San Francisco stands "Forbidden City", the No. 1 all-Chinese night club in the U.S. Here each evening Californians flock to watch a talented floor show that ranges from slumberous oriental moods to hot Western swing. San Francisco is numerically ill-equipped with Broadway-style cabarets. Its citizenry eats at home, dances at hotels. When "Forbidden City" opened two years ago, it filled a local cultural need. It has prospered ever since.

In decor, "Forbidden City" blandly jumbles rice-paper screens, lighted fishbowls, college colors and football trophies. Somehow the net result is satisfactory. Its tri-nightly floor show as blandly scrambles congas, tangos, tap numbers and snaky stuff from the Far East. Chinese girls have an extraordinary aptitude for Western dance forms. As singers, not many achieve success according to occidental standards. But slim of body, trim of leg, they dance to any tempo with a fragile charm distinctive to their race. Opposite you see gracious Jadine Wong performing her chaste "Dance of the Moon Goddess".