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Daughter of the Dragon with King of Chinatown
Sat, Nov 5 | 2pm | TMT
Daughter of the Dragon
After Anna May Wong’s breakthrough romantic role in The Toll of the Sea (1922), Hollywood relegated her to mostly stereotypical villain- ous parts, including the sadistic daughter of the evil Fu Manchu in Daughter of the Dragon . Wong stars opposite silent film idol Sessue Hayakawa, both in their first sound film, with both speaking standard English at a time before Hollywood latched on to the common practice of directing Asian characters to de- liver dialogue in overblown, accented broken English.
DIRECTOR: Lloyd Corrigan.
ADAPTATION BY: Lloyd Corrigan, Monte M. Katterjohn.
DIALOGUE BY: Sidney Buchman.
CAST: Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Sessue Hayakawa, Bramwell Fletcher.
1931. 79 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm.
Print courtesy of UCLA Film & Television Archive.
King of Chinatown
Under contract with Paramount, Anna May Wong embarked on a series of films upon which she exercised more input, starting with Daughter of Shanghai (1938), about which Wong declared, “We have the sympathetic parts for a change.” King of Chinatown casts Wong as a prominent Chinese American doctor raising funds for the Red Cross in war-torn China, inspired by the real-life Chinese American physician Dr. Margaret Chung. This fictionalized crime drama features Korean American actor Philip Ahn as Wong’s romantic interest, playing a lawyer out to expose corruption in the underbelly of Chinatown.
DIRECTOR: Nick Grinde.
WRITTEN BY: Lillie Hayward, Irving Reis.
STORY BY: Herbert Biberman.
CAST: Anna May Wong, Akim Tamiroff, Sidney Toler, Philip Ahn.
1939. 60 min. USA. B&W. English. 35mm.
HOLLYWOOD CHINESE
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