Toy and Wing: Turning On the Heat

Lately I've been trying to track down the movie appearances of various Forbidden City performers. Needless to say, they are few and far between, and often not what they promise to be.

Noel Toy, the most famous exotic dancer of the Chinese nightclub era, is the headline act at a San Francisco strip club in the Betty Grable movie How To Be Very, Very Popular (1955). I wasn't exactly surprised when I read in the movie synopsis that she plays the murder victim who sets the plot in motion, but I was pretty disappointed when I finally saw the movie. Can you believe that she doesn't even get to dance before she gets killed?!

Chinese Skyroom owner Andy Wong and exotic dancer Barbara Yung are listed as appearing in the Frank Sinatra film Pal Joey (1957), but when I watched the movie, they were nowhere to be seen, at least not on the DVD.

Dance team Jadin Wong and Li Sun allegedly appear in Around the World (1944), a musical comedy showcasing Kay Kiser and his band as they trot the globe entertaining U.S. troops. When the band stops in Chungking, you'd think it would be the perfect opportunity for Jadin Wong and Li Sun to strut their steps — but what the eff?! Where did they go?

Is this some kind of conspiracy? In a color-blind industry, some of these talented folks could have been stars. But in Hollywood, they simply disappeared.

Lucky for us, there are two performers who, by comparison, are well represented on celluloid: Dorothy Toy and Paul Wing. I won't bother telling their story, since it's readily available elsewhere.

You can read about Dorothy in Aging Artfully by Amy Gorman (available here on Google Books).

And don't miss this wonderful documentary made by Rick Quan (the first Chinese American sports anchor in the United States and a familiar face on Bay Area television for more than 20 years).

Okay, enough sour grapes. Let's enjoy the sizzling Toy and Wing in the musical short Deviled Ham (1937).


* The entire film is available here.