Da jia hao! I just stumbled on the following compilation of scenes from Diana Chang's 1959 movie Flaming Doll (噴火女郎) — aka The Blazing Charmer aka She Sets My Heart on Fire — and I couldn't in good conscience keep it selfishly to myself. If you're only familiar with Diana from the Shaw films released by Celestial, then you are in for a real surprise. Just press play and see for yourself why she was called "The Most Beautiful Creature in Free China". Warning: Diana Chang is extremely hot and may cause spontaneous eyeball combustion.
P.S. There are lots more Chinese movie clips — some quite rare — at the hosting site.
From the Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina comes an extraordinary piece of Chinese movie history: rare newsreel outtakes shot in January 1934 showing the production of a film at what is believed to be the Tianyi studio. Founded in Shanghai in 1925 by four brothers named Shaw (you may have heard of them), the Tianyi Film Company (天一影片公司) was a pillar of Chinese moviemaking during the 1920s and 30s (just like the family's Shaw Brothers studio some 30 years later). You can read more about the studio at The Chinese Mirror, my top one-stop shop for information about early Chinese cinema. But let me just point out that, as far as I know, none of the approximately 120 films made by Tianyi between 1925 and 1939 have survived, which makes this newsreel footage very precious indeed.
I've not had any luck in positively identifying the film or its stars. But I'm going to hazard a guess — even though I always fall on my ass whenever I go out on a limb — that the leading lady seen in the footage might be Fan Xuepeng (范雪朋), 1920s wuxia queen and star of Red Heroine / 红侠 (1929), one of the earliest surviving Chinese martial-arts movies. She worked at Tianyi from 1934 to 1937 and made a half-dozen or so films for the studio. One of them, Spring Dreams in the Dance Hall / 舞宫春梦 (1934), seems likes a possible match for the production shown in these outtakes.
Needless to say, I'm seeking the help of anyone who might be able to shed some light on this mystery film. Okay, enough talking. Click HERE to watch the clip.
Ever since I first laid eyes on Singapore songstress and Hokkien movie queen Zhuang Xue Fang (aka Chong Sit Fong), I was instantly mesmerized by her pixie charm. My buddy Dev Yang has already written an excellent overview of her career on his much missed blog The Golden Age of Chinese Language Cinema, so let me instead simply offer you a small assortment of treats: a pair of photos that exemplify Miss Zhuang's irresistible allure; a rare clip from one of her films; and a trio of 7-inch EPs. Enjoy!
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The following clip shows Zhuang Xue Fang singing her hit song "Making a Mark" (出人頭地) from the self-produced 1962 film Romance at Lung Shan Temple (龍山寺之戀). The film was shot in Taiwan and co-stars Tang Ching and Ling Yun, both of whom would later leave the Taiwan film industry to work for Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong. "Making a Mark" was adapted from the Indonesian song "Ayo Mama" with the lyrics changed to an inspirational (and typically Chinese) appeal to strive hard for success.
The film is available on DVD (sans English subtitles) at YesAsia.
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Last but not least, here are three 4-song EPs that Zhuang Xue Fang recorded for Ruby Records in (I believe) 1967. You can download the complete collection here.
Thanks again everybody for the huge outpouring of love and support! It's enough to make me feel all soft and chewy on the inside. Well, as fate would have it, my retro-buddy Dev Yang just posted a truly rare — and tasty — piece of Chinese movie history on his YouTube channel. It inspired me to come back on stage for an encore post. (And remember, good things come to those who click!)
The following clip is from On With the Show (万紫千红, also known as Myriad of Colors), a Chinese film made in Shanghai in 1943 during the period of total Japanese occupation. I talk a lot about lost films on this blog, but it is no exaggeration to say that On With the Show comes from the darkest of Chinese cinema's "lost continents". Those film workers who chose to remain and continue making movies in Shanghai during the occupation era (1941-45) were accused of treason by both the Communists and the Nationalists. Such was the shame and fear of retribution that many of them would never admit — even many years later — of ever taking part. I don't have the time right now to elaborate further, but for those who are interested, let me recommend Poshek Fu's Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Chinese Cinemas, a meticulously researched study that rescues this fascinating period from historical amnesia.
And now, On With the Show. This Hollywood-style musical was directed by Fang Peilin, who rose to fame with the box-office hit Girl in Disguise (1936), a cross-dressing gender-bender that spawned three sequels and can rightly be considered the spiritual ancestor of Hong Kong's He's a Woman, She's a Man (1994). And the leading lady of On With the Show is none other than the magnificent Li Lihua — only 19 years old at the time but already one of Shanghai's top stars.
As an extra treat, I've also transcribed a contemporaneous — and deliciously wry — review of the film written in English by renowned Chinese writer Eileen Chang for The XXth Century, a monthly journal published by the cosmopolitan Klaus Mehnert (and financed by the German Foreign Office) from 1941 to 1945.
Without further ado, here is Li Lihua performing "The Cake Song" with the Takarazuka dancers...
ON THE SCREEN
On With the Show. In the leading parts: Li Li-hwa, Yen Djuen, and Wang Tan-feng.
Much of the box-office appeal of On With the Show depends on its promises of sophisticated sensuality; yet the film is curiously naïve. Li Li-hwa (her photograph appeared in Vol. IV, p. 141, of this magazine) takes the part of a beautiful and oratorical waitress in a restaurant picturesquely old-fashioned in the European style. Making her first appearance on a cart loaded with hay and farm produce, Li Li-hwa sings and recklessly throws apples to street children. With her songs, her charms, and the aid of the Takarazuka dancers, she finally raises enough funds to found an orphanage.
Justifying the entertainment by the worthy cause of charity is one of those usual attempts to assuage the demand for an immediate purpose in art. However, On With the Show fails to please everybody all round. Mosquito papers, by far the most favored reading matter among certain urban sets, have contributors who suspect that they do not like On With the Show because of its moralizing. They cannot help complaining that Li Li-hwa shows her famous legs only once, and then half buried in furs.
In Chinese eyes, the Takarazuka dances are expressive only of the splendor of youth, health and intelligent discipline. To the average Chinese, the fascination of ballet lies chiefly in its difficulty. They also find the traditional Japanese dances hard to understand on the screen without the help of the symphonic colors of costumes and background. But on the other hand the audience laughs heartily at the practical jokes the hero and heroine play on each other — Li Li-hwa fries some bad eggs for her admirer and he sends her an empty cup of ice cream. Also well received are the Chinese Laurel and Hardy who mess about in the restaurant kitchen. On With the Show is a success with the public in spite of its banal situations, its structural weakness, and its apparent clashing of adult and infantile interests. The last-mentioned shortcoming may be disregarded, because modern Chinese of all ages are like children in their fondness for birthday cakes, with or without dancers swirling around one as in the charity performance in On With the Show. The whole picture is modeled on the Hollywood series of Gold Diggers and The Big Broadcast and is meant to "feed the eyes with ice cream and seat the heart in a sofa" [NOTE] — to quote the phrase a Chinese critic once applied to these American extravaganzas.
— Eileen Chang, from The XXth Century, Vol. V, No. 4 (October 1943). Original scan available here.
The Eileen Chang review is courtesy of the Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii at Manoa, which has generously scanned and made available on their website PDFs of the entire run of The XXth Century. Fans of Eileen Chang will want to root around the site for her other English-language essays and film reviews. A great big thanks to the Hamilton Library! Open access = cultural preservation.
Four months after her suicide on July 17, 1964, Shaw Brothers released Beyond the Great Wall, Lin Dai's final collaboration with director Li Han-hsiang. Production on the film had actually begun as early as 1960 (see the February issue of Southern Screen) and by the end of the year an advertising poster had even appeared on the back of Southern Screen (November), but because of interruptions from other Shaw productions, Beyond the Great Wall took a long time to complete and wasn't publicly shown until November 1964. By that time, Linda was dead and Li had already left Shaw to establish his own film company in Taiwan. It was eleven years earlier that the both of them had made their respective debuts as actress and director with Singing under the Moon (1953).
In 1951 Linda — just 16 years old — was discovered and offered a contract by Yuen Yang-an, co-founder of the progressive film company Great Wall. Unfortunately, she soon found herself in the midst of the political divide afflicting Hong Kong's movie industry. When it became known that Linda's father had been a big player in the recently defeated Nationalist government, she was blacklisted by Great Wall's communist faction. Although she was already estranged from her father (Linda's parents had divorced when she was a child), she was compelled to write a confession denouncing him. Even so, the studio's directors were still afraid to offer her a role in their films. When Linda subsequently refused to renew her contract, the hardliners threatened her with a large debt, citing the money already spent on her wardrobe and publicity photographs. She protested by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Linda was discovered in time, and ironically her attempted suicide might have helped catapult her to stardom. Her name was splashed all over the papers and magazines, alerting the public and the government to the revolutionary activism breeding in Hong Kong's film studios.
As a result of this incident, nearly a dozen leftist film workers were expelled from the colony in January 1952 and Linda was released from her obligation to the studio, as was fellow Great Wall star Yan Jun, who had recently begun an affair with her.
Yan Jun was determined to make Linda a star, and when he joined the Yung Hwa film company later that year he insisted on bringing her with him. Their first collaboration — and Linda's screen debut — was Singing under the Moon (1953), an adaptation of Shen Congwen's novel Border Town, a tragic coming-of-age story about an orphaned teenage girl and her elderly grandfather. Linda stars as the main character Cui Cui and Yan Jun plays dual roles as the grandfather and the younger of two brothers who both fall in love with her.
Although Yan Jun was ostensibly the director of the film, the novice screenwriter Li Han-hsiang, who had been hired as deputy director, ended up directing the film because Yan was so busy in front of the camera. In this way, Singing under the Moon also became Li's debut. The film proved to be a huge success and launched the career of one of Hong Kong's greatest actresses as well as one of its greatest directors.
Although Singing under the Moon is cited as no longer available by the Hong Kong Film Archive in the notes for their 2009 retrospective (The Legend & The Beauty — The Films of Lin Dai), clips from the film have miraculously shown up on YouTube, affording us a rare glimpse of the humble beginnings of Hong Kong's movie queen. Linda's performance in the scene below shows that her popularity was due not only to her natural charm but also to Chinese audiences' perennial love for the sassy girl-next-door type. Hopefully we will one day be able to see the entire film in a manner befitting its landmark status.
References
An Age of Idealism: Great Wall & Feng Huang Days (2001) by Hong Kong Film Archive
The Age of Shanghainese Pops (2001) by Wong Kee Chee
Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Twentieth Century (2003) by Lily Xiao Hong Lee
Li Han-hsiang, Storyteller (2007) by Hong Kong Film Archive
Fandancer Toy was christened Noel because she was born on Christmas Day 21 years ago. Competitors Sally Rand and Faith Bacon are frequent visitors at Leon and Eddie's, follow Noel's graceful movements with appraising eyes.
Here's another fab spread showcasing Noel Toy and her terpsichorean art that appeared in the cheesecake tabloid CO-EDS (May 1942). The photos are accompanied by their original captions.
U. OF C.'S NOEL TOY NOBODY'S PLAYTHING CHINA GIRL CAN DISH IT OUT
Broadway's most publicized Chinese (American-born) glamor girl is appropriately named California Co-ed Noel Toy. Tinytot Toy (five feet tall) was a sophomore language major at University of California when she received her first assignment in the chorus of a San Francisco World's Fair midway attraction. There she was discovered, signed up at Fair's close by Frisco's famed Forbidden City hotspot.
Less than a year later, with but five month's experience as a fandancer behind her, she arrived in New York, became Leon and Eddie's headliner.
A growing reputation for biting repartee and devastating treatment of Fifty-second Street wolves earned introduction to Dramaticritic George Jean Nathan, upon whose elegant arm she often attends First Nights. Lee Mortimer, too, finds her a dynamic supper companion, and, it is rumored, she once received a proposal of marriage from Tommy Manville, who explained wistfully that he "had never been married to a Chinese girl."
It must be noted that Noel detests chop suey, is highly allergic to rice.
Start of fandancer Toy's table routine resembles Tahitian grass hut.
She slowly straightens up, pokes head out.
Above, fans cover all but head and feet.
Her fans flash into action with Sally Rand–like skill.
West Coast's Forbidden City nightclub gave Noel start. Now, after 5-month apprenticeship, she ranks with best.
Having made her bow, she continues routine on floor. Noel attended University of California. A language major, she did right well by French, Spanish, German and Latin, flunked Chinese, paradoxically. She speaks English perfectly.
Noel has keen, thoroughly American, sense of humor. Her Christmas card contained tiny V-shaped G-string.
Finally, for a taste of Noel's sharp wit and hearty laugh check out this 2001 interview, taped when she was a spry 80-something-year-old!
In the same year that Hong Kong's Young Rock (青春樂 / Qingchun le) seduced Chinese youth with the spectacle of hula hoops and rock and roll, Red China's The Song of Youth (青春之歌 / Qingchun zhige) offered an equally intoxicating tale of personal transformation and national salvation. Adapted from the bestselling novel by Yang Mo, it was one of eighteen films released in 1959 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Unlike Lam Fung in Young Rock, the heroine of The Song of Youth (played by the radiant Xie Fang) would rather study Karl Marx than sing and dance. Nonetheless, the film's finale rocks loud and hard — even if it might have also served to drown out the grumbling of the starving masses.
As it was elsewhere in the world, "youth" (青春 / qingchun) was the watchword of the times in 1960s Hong Kong, and during that era nobody epitomized the spirit of youth better than Connie Chan and Josephine Siao. In 1966 they starred together in the teen musical Colourful Youth (彩色青春 / Caise qingchun), which broke box office records and helped set the trend for youth movies in Hong Kong cinema. Later that year, Shaw Brothers also jumped on the bandwagon with The Joy of Spring (歡樂青春 / Huanle qingchun). Throughout the remainder of the decade, the near-magical word qingchun was used frequently in film titles and song lyrics, including Connie's 1967 melodrama Waste Not Our Youth (莫負青春 / Mofu qingchun). Although the film is ultimately a cautionary tale for wayward teens, the irrepressible spirit of youth comes across loud and clear in its songs.
Let me end this post by sharing one of my favorite scenes from the movie. Here's the setup. Traumatized by an attempted rape, Connie has lost her marbles. Her parents and childhood boyfriend are trying to coax her back to sanity. See what happens when Connie's attacker comes to visit her at the hospital.
"Hollywood's first Chinese starlet since Anna May Wong"
No, Maylia was not the "first Chinese starlet since Anna May Wong", as claimed by Columbia Pictures, but she did join the ranks of earlier Chinese American actresses misused and undervalued by Hollywood: such as Lotus Liu, who was twice promised the featured role in The Good Earth (1937) that eventually went to Austrian dancer Tilly Losch; charming Iris Wong, who provided a bouquet of freshness to Charlie Chan in Reno (1939) and Charlie Chan in Rio (1941) before disappearing into the thin air of uncredited bit parts; and Marianne Quon, who, after showing great promise in China (1943) and Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944), moved to Hong Kong, where she became one of the colony's top stars.
Hailing from Detroit, Michigan, Maylia — real name: Gloria Chin — was just a 20-year-old coed vacationing in Hollywood when she was spotted in a restaurant by the wife of writer-producer Sidney Buchman. She was asked to audition for a role in Buchman's big-budget project, To the Ends of the Earth, and voilà! — a star was born. Of course, she would need to change her name to something more befitting the "first Chinese starlet since Anna May Wong", something a little more exotic. According to the studio publicity, "Maylia is her name, and in Cantonese it means beautiful" (The Huntingdon Daily News, March 3, 1947).* Around the same time, Gloria underwent another name change. Within days of signing her contract with Columbia Pictures, she had a fateful meeting with actor Benson Fong (best known at the time as Charlie Chan's "number three son"). It must have been love at first sight, because the two got hitched a few weeks later.
Although shooting for To the Ends of the Earth was completed in early 1947, the film wasn't released until the following year. In the meantime, Maylia played a small part in Universal's Singapore (1947), as Ava Gardner's servant. Unbeknownst to the public, she was also in "preproduction" for a role that would soon take her away from acting. Before her film debut even hit the screens that August, the "first Chinese starlet since Anna May Wong" was already pregnant with her first child and due for delivery in January of 1948 (which could have been why Columbia decided to delay the release of To the Ends of the Earth).
Maylia in Boston Blackie's Chinese Venture
Motherhood definitely threw a wrench in Columbia's plans for the "first Chinese starlet since Anna May Wong", and Maylia quietly rode out her contract with a couple of B-list Chinatown mysteries: Boston Blackie's Chinese Venture (1949) and Chinatown at Midnight (1949). In 1950, Maylia gave birth to her second child, which effectively marked the end of her brief film career (although she evidently made two uncredited appearances in the early 50s).
Luckily for us, we can at least glimpse the star that Maylia might have been in the following clip from To the Ends of the Earth. Let me set up the scene for you: Dick Powell plays an agent from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics who's been engaged in a round-the-world manhunt for the mysterious "Jean Hawks", leader of a global drug ring using opium as a "weapon to keep the world divided and its citizens slaves"; Swedish actress Signe Hasso plays an American philanthropist whom we are led to believe might actually be the nefarious "Jean Hawks"; and Maylia plays the Chinese war orphan who is unknowingly being used by "Jean Hawks" as part of her cover.
Talk about a twist! Who'd have thought that the leader of a global drug ring funding the Japanese war machine is a 19-year-old Chinese girl. I'm alternately wowed and appalled by the proposition. On the one hand, it makes for a pretty cool villain role, which Maylia clearly relished. On the other, such a blatant resurrection of "The Daughter of Fu Manchu" in a movie purporting to be "based on actual incidents from the files of the United States Department of Treasury" is, frankly, quite demented. But hey, that's Hollywood for you.
I must say that I found Dick Powell and his righteous speechifying quite annoying. In my fantasy version of the film, the pistol is loaded with real bullets instead of blanks, and Maylia has the last line. "Don't call me princess, gweilo."
* BTW, "beautiful" in Cantonese is more accurately rendered in English as "mei lai".
I wish I could tell you more about Chinese American singer Beatrice Fung Oye, but I've only found a few scraps of information, mostly from Billboard and some of the New York gossip columns of the day.
I can't confirm when she started to sing professionally, but by June of 1942 Beatrice was performing at Louise's Monte Carlo in New York City. "Fung Oye, Chinese, is a cute, young thing who sings pops in a pleasant enough voice and with vivacity. In her 15th week here, her popularity continues to grow" (Billboard, October 3). Billboard listings indicate that she stayed on at the Monte Carlo through the rest of '42.
The following year she performed for a few months at the Ubangi — where she was "the first non-Negro" to sing at the club (Billboard, February 20) — before moving on to Leon & Eddie's in May. Beatrice was still playing at Leon & Eddie's a year later, although I've found no proof whether she sang there exclusively.
During this time her name popped up occasionally in the New York gossip columns, which were syndicated in newspapers across the country. Walter Winchell mentioned her as "the cute little Chinese girl soliciting funds for China Relief at 57th and 5th" (October 31, 1942), and according to Dorothy Kilgallen, the "chanteuse at Leon & Eddie's is mad about Mexican chili con carne — and what's more, she eats it with chopsticks!" (May 5, 1943).
In 1945 Beatrice got a big break when she was selected as one of the winners of ABC's On Stage Everybody talent contest (The Abilene Reporter-News, April 7). The prize was a role in the Universal musical based on ABC's popular radio show. Here's a photo of her with five of the ten winners. The movie opened in July, and that fall Beatrice toured the country with a vaudeville unit composed of performers from the cast.
Newspaper ad from The Salt Lake Tribune (October 21, 1945)
After her brush with national fame, Beatrice returned to New York City and sang at the China Doll, the East Coast equivalent of San Francisco's Forbidden City. She was evidently still newsworthy enough to appear on the Broadway gossip radar. Columnist Danton Walker revealed this amusing bit of trivia: "When Beatrice Fung Oye, the Brooklyn-born Chinese prima donna, goes to Dodgers games she yells at the umpire in Chinese" (December 1, 1947).
Newspaper ad from The New York Times (April 15, 1947)
In 1951–52, she hit the road with Tom Ball's China Doll Revue, performing alongside "Chop Suey" veterans Ming & Ling and Florence Hin Lowe. And that's the last trace of Beatrice I can find.
Luckily, I was able to track down a copy of On Stage Everybody, so let's end this post with a rare glimpse of Brooklyn swing diva Beatrice Fung Oye!
Hong Kong singer Billie Tam (蓓蕾) started off singing traditional ditties and standard shi dai qu but eventually found her success with an image and style more in tune with the times. In 1964 she scored a huge hit with "Enjoy Yourself Tonight", which was subsequently featured in The Joy of Spring (1966). It's one of the "Missing Shaw Films" that I've been dying to see — even more so after getting a glimpse of my favorite tomgirl Allyson Chang Yen in the video below.
Next up is a song from the Cathay film Little Matchmaker (1967). The scene shows an annoyed Zhang Yang stuck on the dance floor with an eager Fanny Fan, but the real attraction is the vivacious and foxy Miss Tam, seen here in a rare on-screen appearance.
Let me offer another nicotine-stained post to all of you aficionados out there. My old time buddy Dev Yang "hand-rolled" the following video with choice clips from Miss Bai's classic film A Forgotten Woman (1949) wrapped in a sad song — "The Past is Like Smoke" — from her silver screen farewell, Love's Sad Ending (1959).
"Comrades in arms! Tell me that you love your country. Those who love China, raise your hands!"
If you find yourself irresistibly following the command of patriotic charmer Wang Renmei — shown above in a memorable scene from her debut film, Wild Rose (1932) — stop reading right now and order a copy of the recently released DVD of this silent classic. If you still need a little convincing, then read on.
Written and directed by Sun Yu, Wild Rose is an early example of the left-wing film movement that arose in response to Japan's aggression against China during the 1930s. According to the memoirs of Wang Renmei, Sun wrote the script in response to the September 18th Incident (1931) and subsequent occupation of Manchuria. Filming started at the end of the year and finished just as the Japanese army launched its attack on Shanghai on January 28th.
Knowing about these events definitely adds to the viewing of Wild Rose, but the heart of the film — a simple story of love and friendship — has a universal appeal which requires no familiarity with that turbulent era.
Korean Chinese actor Jin Yan plays an idealistic rich-kid artist who finds his muse in sassy village girl Wang Renmei. After she loses her father in a fire, he takes her to Shanghai, where they end up living in a tenement with his two buddies. Their makeshift family is broken apart by the trials of poverty, but they are finally reunited during a demonstration to save China.
Prior to her debut in Wild Rose, Wang Renmei was a member of the famous Ming Yue Song & Dance Troupe (founded by Li Jin-hui, the father of Chinese pop music). In 1931 after the group signed a contract with the Lianhua Film Company, Wang caught the eye of Sun Yu, who'd been scouting the group for new actresses. Sun wrote the script for Wild Rose with Wang in mind, and by her own admission, she essentially played herself in the film.
While Wang's ingenuous charm is enough to make her eminently watchable, she more than proves her acting chops by gracefully handling the film's many shifts from comedy to romance to drama.
She even performs a little slapstick in one of Wild Rose's funniest scenes, in which Jin Yan dresses her up and takes her home to meet his father. Unaccustomed to wearing heels and stockings, Wang makes a hilariously disastrous first impression.
It's easy to see why Sun Yu chose Wang Renmei as his own muse. She's the perfect embodiment of the vitality and optimism that characterized his films.
Known in his heyday as the "Poet Director" (and recognized nowadays as Chinese cinema's first auteur), Sun was also a meticulous craftsman who strove to raise the technical quality of Chinese filmmmaking to Hollywood standards. Wild Rose features the first crane shots to appear in a Chinese film. Wang Renmei recalls that Sun commissioned the construction of a "steel-framed, hand-operated camera crane over 13 metres high" to help him portray the crowded spaces of Shanghai's tenement buildings.
"Those kind of people don't know anything about art. They have no idea what you've achieved!"
All of these elements combine to make Wild Rose an indisputable classic of Chinese cinema. Until now the film has only been available on a poor quality VCD with untranslated intertitles and no music. But thanks to the efforts of Richard Meyer (Board President Emeritus of The San Francisco Silent Film Festival), Wild Rose can finally be seen in the manner it deserves.
Expertly translated English intertitles are presented alongside the original Chinese titles, and the film is accompanied by a beautiful score composed by pianist Donald Sosin, who has worked his music magic on such films as Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Donald's playing exhibits an extraordinary sensitivity that's perfectly attuned to the nuances and depths of Sun Yu's lyrical cinema.
The Wild Rose DVD can be ordered directly from The San Francisco Silent Film Festival. It's a must-buy not only for Chinese movie fans but also for connoisseurs of world cinema.
What... you're still not convinced? Then take a look — and listen — at the following clip.
Note: Translated excerpts from Wang Renmei's memoirs were published in Griffithiana 60/61 (October, 1997), which also includes several articles by and about Sun Yu.
Howdy, folks! It's good to be back. Here's a little bang bang to get us started again: two clips from Josephine Siao's 1967 action film The Professionals (金鷗).
First up are the opening credits — featuring Josephine dressed à la mode in a pirate's blouse and cravat and psychedelic print pants with white belt — followed by a scene in which she proves that she's way cooler than that British bloke... what was his name...
* Thanks to Todd at 4DK for the loaner! Available on VCD from YesAsia.com
I've been slowly making my way through the Charlie Chan DVD collection. After seeing Victor Sen Yung in a couple of other features, I decided to jump ahead a bit and check him out in the role that launched his career: as Jimmy Chan, the detective's number two son in the Sidney Toler films.
What a surprise it was to see him paired up with the equally charming Iris Wong in an all too brief romantic interlude in Charlie Chan in Reno (1939). I'll have more to say later about each of them, but for now just sit back and enjoy the wonderful chemistry between Victor and Iris. In this clip you can get a rare glimpse of regular Chinese Americans unburdened by the stereotypes of Hollywood.
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).
I recently managed to get my hands on the screener for a wonderful short film called Celestial Avenue (2009) that is currently making the festival rounds. Directed by Colin and Cameron Cairnes, it's a loving poke at Asiaphilia that reminded me of the equally charming Augustin, King of Kung-Fu (1999), which Maggie Cheung made when she moved to France.
I was quite surprised to see that Celestial Avenue was rated so poorly on IMDB. Out of 25 reviewers, 19 gave it a 1. Yikes! I'm not sure how anyone could hate it that much. Maybe it stirred up some violent PC reaction. At the other end of the scale, two gave it an 8, one gave it a 9, and three gave it a 10. I guess you either love it or you hate it. Well, I have no problem placing myself in the minority on this one. As a gweilo who watches mostly Chinese films — including unsubtitled Cantonese films from the 1960s that I can't understand! — I'm certainly accustomed to feeling out of touch with the majority.
Just for the record, Celestial Avenue has won a Silver Award from the Australian Cinematographers Society (the film is beautifully shot) and a Grand Prize for Best Short at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. And I was just informed by director Colin Cairnes that the film has also won the Madman Award for Best Australian Film at Sydney's Flickerfest.
Anyway, I don't want to spoil the story in case you do get a chance to see it. Let me just quote the PR synopsis to give you an idea of what Celestial Avenue is about.
Kath has been looking for love in all the wrong places. Then, she finds herself in Chinatown. In the middle of a less than successful blind date, she overhears the soulful Cantonese singing of kitchen-hand, Ah Gong. Kath is intrigued. But is there more to Ah Gong than meets the eye?
CELESTIAL AVENUE is an offbeat tale – part karaoke video, part cross-cultural comedy – about love, personal reinvention and startled pigeon.
This weekend the film is playing at Slamdance, so check it out if you're in Park City. Otherwise, look for it at your local film festival and keep your fingers crossed that it will be available for online viewing sometime in the not so distant future. Until then, here's the trailer.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the real Chinese players who appeared alongside the yellowface leads of The Good Earth (1937) and promised that I would profile some of these forgotten actors.
First up is Lotus Liu. Her story is a little sad. She was actually chosen to play Lotus, one of the film's featured roles, but in the end lost the part to a white actress. Let's follow her promising, but ill-fated, trajectory to stardom before it finally missed its mark.
LOTUS LIU OF SHANGHAI GETS SCREEN START Young Unknown Only Chinese-Born Lead in "Good Earth"
By BARBARA MILLER — HOLLYWOOD
Shanghai, which gave the world — and Hollywood — the impudent Lyda Roberti, has produced another potential prodigy.
Her name is Lotus Liu and she will play Lotus, the Soochow sing-song girl and home-wrecker, in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's "The Good Earth". The 19-year-old unknown is the only China-born principal in a cast headed by Paul Muni (Austria) and Luise Rainer (Germany).
Unlike Roberti, product of Shanghai's famous cabaret system, Lotus comes to Hollywood with a French convent, English school background. Her father is Chinese, her mother American.
Seen on a Bus
Oriental in appearance, pleasantly English in accent, Lotus is strictly American in aspirations. Arriving here two years ago as a student, she probably would be fluttering masculine hearts on Southern California campuses if M-G-M's astute Billy Grady hadn't glimpsed her one afternoon on a bus.
Waiting for a bus does have its compensations after all. For since then, everything has been easy for Lotus. Though the studio tested thousands of girls for the part — American and European, as well as Chinese and Eurasian — her youth and vitality won the battle.
It's a break of a lifetime, this part, and Lotus knows it. Talking nineteen to the dozen, the other afternoon on the "Good Earth" set, she looked like one of the better college freshman in her military-minded gray suit and absurd scarlet handkerchief perched on her black curls. But her ambitions are adult. China's famous passiveness is conspicuously absent.
Father Not Told
Lotus is living in Beverly Hills, with her mother and two brothers. But her father, long in the service of the national government of China, is in Nanking. He hasn't been informed of his daughter's good fortune.
"You know how things are in China," she reminded me, wrinkling her pretty nose. After we had reminisced about our last meeting — on a windy Nanking road corner the day the Liu family left Shanghai for California — she continued, "It's so different being in pictures here. And government people are so conservative."
Originally the Nanking government didn't care a great deal for the Buck masterpiece. The poverty of China's peasantry is not the angle the younger, foreign-educated officials strive to present to the world. And the story of Wang Lung and his stolid, homely wife is the story of the soil: of mud huts and famine and marauding war lords sickeningly familiar outside the treaty ports.
Deleted by Experts
The film version, however, has been operated on by experts — for something like three years. Removal or modification of all episodes dealing with opium traffic, famine and banditry so pleased the powers at Nanking that the ill-fated George Hill and his technical experts shot exteriors all over China two years ago.
But the character of the predatory Lotus escaped unscathed, according to the girl who will play the part. Lotus is her real name. And she has a sister called Blossom.
"I'm just a so-and-so," she explained, with a characteristic shrug of her slim shoulders. "I get into Wang Lung's house as his second wife and live there in luxury. I even snatch his poor wife's favorite pearl earrings. But when the lord and master discovers that I'm getting too fond of his good-looking young son he rises up in his wrath and shouts "Go!" And that — I'm afraid — is the end of poor Lotus."
Such an ignominious end is all very well for Lotus, the Soochow charmer, a quaint little figure in her short silk jacket and baggy trousers, lotus flowers in her hair. But for Lotus Liu — with an American mother, a Chinese father and her own ideas of getting on in the world — it's only the beginning.
— San Antonio Express, May 10, 1936
More like the beginning of the end: it was soon reported in The San Antonio Light (June 20, 1936) that Lotus Liu was being replaced by Sidney Fox, best remembered today for her role as the damsel in distress in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). But then, just two weeks later (July 1, 1936), the paper followed up with the news that Lotus was back again for the role.
After signing Lotus Liu (an Eurasian beauty) for the role of Lotus in the picture, the powers-that-be suddenly had a brain storm and decided that Sidney Fox would make a better Lotus than a real Chinese girl so Miss Liu was out and Miss Fox was in. At least, temporarily. After two weeks of testing, Miss Fox was found unsatisfactory for the role and now Miss Liu is right back again and this time — she'll stay."
Well, no — not this time. Lotus was replaced once again by a white actress. This time it was Austrian dancer Tilly Losch, who ended up shooting the role. And here's the real kicker: according to one source I've found (Award-Winning Films of the 1930s by John Reid), Lotus Liu dubbed the lines for thick-accented Tilly Losch. Talk about sucks!
Alas, the "break of a lifetime" for this "potential prodigy" just disappeared into thin air. Nevertheless, even though Lotus Liu lost her chance to star in The Good Earth, she does appear briefly in the film. She's not listed in the cast credits on IMDB or the TCM movie database, but thanks to the Chinese Digest article (which I transcribed in my previous post), I was clued in to her 10 seconds of fame.
Here she is folks, making the absolute most of her meager screen time — the charming Miss Lotus Liu!
Sixties actress Fang Ying passed away on Wednesday. While I've never followed her the way I have her fellow Shaw stars, I've always thought there was something special about her. I'm not sure how to describe it: she had the spunky innocence of Li Ching and the cool sophistication of Lily Ho — but in a way that was so understated and natural it was completely disarming.
While Fang Ying rose to fame in Shaw's huangmei opera films, I will always associate her with veteran director Yueh Feng's superb social melodrama Auntie Lan (1967), in which she plays a young woman who struggles with being a single mother after her fiance dies in a plane crash. She also starred in a movie that is tops on my list of still unavailable Shaw films that I'm dying to see: the tantalizing Trapeze Girl (1967).
Fang Ying in Trapeze Girl
One of Shaw's "Seven Fairies", the first crop of starlets from its actor training school, Fang Ying was — along with Allyson Chang Yen — the first to disappear from the silver screen. She married in 1968 and made a few more films before retiring in 1970.
In the mid-80s, however, Fang Ying returned to the movie business, this time as an art director and costume designer. She was nominated for Best Art Direction at the 10th Annual Hong Kong Film Awards for Kawashima Yoshiko (1990) but gets a special award from me for her work on two of my favorite films: Deception (1989), a stylish thriller about workplace blackmail spun out of control; and Naked Killer (1992), a lurid girls-with-guns film inspired by Shaw's erotic wuxia classic Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972).
Pauline Wong, Brigitte Lin, and Elizabeth Lee in Deception
Carrie Ng, Simon Yam, and Chingmy Yau in Naked Killer
Let me end with this brief tribute with a wonderful clip from Auntie Lan showing off Fang Ying's unaffected charm.
Here's a wonderful tribute to the recently deceased Wu Yingyin, one of the "Seven Great Singing Stars" of Old Shanghai. It's also a great way to ring in 2010, especially for Bay Area folks like myself who can look forward to Shanghai-related events and exhibits all year long.
The video starts off with Wu Yingyin's song "Drunk Night in Neon Light" accompanied by clips from Cosmetics Market (1933), featuring Shanghai movie queen Hu Die, and Orphan Island Paradise (1939), starring Li Lili. Following that is Wu Yingyin's song "Beautiful Spring Night" with clips from New Year's Coin (1937) and Scenes of City Life (1935).
Thanks to SHUESIK for the excellent video, and best wishes to all of my readers for a happy and healthy 2010!
