It really was not that long ago that Hollywood thought audiences would not pay to see a movie with an Asian lead. So producers would cast non- Asian actors with yellow face makeup in these roles. In fact, Luise Rainer won a best actress Oscar as a Chinese peasant in 1937s The Good Earth, while Katherine Hepburn created a Yankee- esque Chinese woman in 1944s Dragon Seed. And many people adored Charlie Chan, Mr Moto and Mr Wong mysteries in which title characters were played by such white actors as Warner Oland, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff (pictured far right in Frankenstein).
The casting of non-Asians is one of the many subjects explored in Arthur Dongs new documentary, Hollywood Chinese, which examines a little-known chapter in film history: the Chinese in American films.
I feel I have been researching this all my life, says Dong, because of my personal fascination with film history and personal interest in Chinese- American history.
Dong admits that he loves those old Charlie Chan movies. I love Boris Karloff in Mr Wong. Hes just so goofy, he says. Life would be boring if we didnt have our own guilty pleasures. I wanted to put [them] in a context that doesnt judge, but put it out there and say this is what it was like in this period it was made.
Featuring clips from more than 90 films the earliest from the 1890s Hollywood Chinese shines a light on the accomplishments of the Chinese, from the first American film produced in the United States by a Chinese-
American in 1917 to director Ang Lees winning the Academy Award two years ago for Brokeback Mountain.Among the Chinese and Chinese- Americans profiled in the film are Lee, Wayne Wang, Joan Chen, David Henry Hwang, BD Wong, James Hong and Nancy Kwan. Dong also talks with ninetysomething Rainer about playing an Asian, and to Christopher Lee, who played Fu Manchu in several British films.
During the films 10-year production, Dong discovered two nitrate reels of what is now acknowledged as the first Chinese-American film, 1917s The Curse of Quon Gwon, which was written and directed by the San Francisco- based Marion Wong and starred her sister, Violet Wong.
The surviving daughters of the actress heard about my film and looked me up and said: We have these reels of a film that my mother was in, Dong recounts. The reels were sitting in a closet and they were trying to find a home for it.
Dong, who happened to be working with the Academy Film Archive on documentary preservation projects, went to San Francisco to see what was on the reels. Much to his amazement, the film was in good shape.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
