Florence Hin Lowe: Chinese Wonder Girl

That's lovely contortionist Florence Hin Lowe on the cover of Billboard (January 8, 1944), an event which was probably the zenith of her twenty-odd-year career. Inside the magazine was the following account of how she got into show business.

FLORENCE HIN LOWE
'China's Sock Contortionist'

"You have to work pretty hard." These six words sum up a modest self-estimate of the talent which has made Florence Hin Lowe's contortion acts one of the socks of showbiz.

It took more than hard work to get Florence Hin Lowe near a stage at all. She is Chinese, and the Chinese view the theater with somewhat more than suspicion. There was a lot of determination involved before she got her Canton-born parents to let her attend acrobatic school at the age of seven. And there were a lot of raised eyebrows in the Los Angelese Chinese community when she went.

However, Flo fooled them all. At 8 she played the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles, at 11 she was on the stage at Grauman's Chinese Theater there. When she was 12, her parents gave up their dried goods business and moved Flo and her aerial somersaults to Chicago.

She's been a sock ever since. In Vancouver, B.C., the Chinese community declares a holiday when she hits town. In Washington, the Chinese ambassador's wife brought the whole embassy staff to see her.

However, being a regular show-stopper hasn't spoiled Florence in the least. If you try to talk to her about her act, she just blushes and says:

"Well, you have to work pretty hard."

And work hard she did. Although her career may not have been glamorous by Hollywood standards, Florence undoubtedly had plenty of great stories to tell after she retired.

That's her on the left when she was just 10 years old, performing at the commencement of a Los Angeles dancing program (Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, August 7, 1930).

In 1937 she was the lead act of Ted Mack's "Precision Rhythm Orchestra and Revue (The Ogden Standard-Examiner, October 12).

In 1941 Florence was traveling with veteran showman A.B. Marcus, "a sort of road show Ziegfeld", whose revues were "comprised of those sure fire staples of 'flesh' entertainment — plenty of beautiful girls, a good chorus line, an exotic dancer or two, a sprinkling of variety acts and some dependable comics" (Syracuse Herald-Journal, March 1). Evidently, the company of more than 60 performers had "recently returned from a three-year world tour, in which they visited many of the principal cities of Japan, China, the Philippine Islands, South Africa, East Africa, India, Burma, Federated Malay states, Straits settlements, Java, Hong Kong, Cuba, and a return run in Mexico" (The Charleston Gazette, August 17, 1941).

In 1942 Florence was performing in Reno at the State Line Country Club in a floor show headlined by an act called Chick and Lee, "Nitwits of Nonsense" (Reno Evening Gazette, July 30). Now that's show business for you!

In 1943 she was still doing her "rubber-body stuff", this time at New York's Folies Bergere Theater-Restaurant, in a Chinese production number that also included Forbidden City alumni Noel Toy, Jadine Wong, and Li Sun (Billboard, June 12).


Ad in Billboard magazine (August 8, 1943)

By 1949 Florence was performing at town fairs, like the Great Hagerstown Fair in Hagerstown, Maryland, and the Eastern Carolina Agricultural Fair in Florence, South Carolina (in 1950). The description of her act in the Hagerstown newspaper suggests that she had perhaps reached the bottom of the entertainment circuit: "The Lily Lady is pleasant, smiling and good to look at. There is no doubt but what the audience will shout for more when they see this charming performer go through her unusual routines in front of the grandstand" (The Daily Mail, September 16, 1949). Oh dear!

Thankfully, it seems that she climbed back up the ladder, at least to the theater-restaurants of Reno. In late 1951, she was performing at the Hotel Golden, and also with Tom Ball's China Doll Revue, headlined by "Chinese Hillbillies" Ming & Ling.


Well, that's all I know. I'm curious to find out the ending of her story. If anyone out there happens to know what happened to Florence Hin Lowe, the Chinese Wonder Girl, do let me know.