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Daughter of Shanghai (1937)

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The first native-born Asian American movie star (she was preceded in the limelight by Japanese immigrants Sessue Hayakawa and Tsuru Aoki), Anna May Wong's Hollywood career was a bumpy ride. She started acting in Hollywood movies when she was still a teenager, and she soon moved into prominent roles opposite such established stars as Lon Chaney. Her big break came in 1922 when she landed the lead role in "The Toll of the Sea," a re-telling of "Madame Butterfly" transplanted to China and the first technologically successful Technicolor feature film. However, lead roles for Asian American actresses in 1920s Hollywood were especially scarce, and Wong went back to playing supporting parts opposite Caucasian stars, oftentimes finding herself cast as the inscrutable Asian villainess. She grew so tired of the meager opportunities Hollywood offered that in 1928, she left America for Europe, where she continued working in films and in the theater. Anna May Wong returned to Hollywood in the early 1930s, only to end up playing the daughter of Fu Manchu in "Daughter of the Dragon" (1931) and losing the sought-after lead Chinese role in "The Good Earth" (1937) to Austrian actress Luise Rainer. "Daughter of Shanghai" began a small spate of movies late in her career in which Paramount sought to make good use of her.

Directed by the French immigrant Robert Florey, "Daughter of Shanghai" tells the story of Lan Ying Lin (Wong), whose father, Kwan Lin (Ching Wah Lee), runs a high-end import business in San Francisco. However, Kwan Lin gathers evidence of a gangland ring that smuggles illegal immigrants from China into the U.S. The secret mastermind behind the ring finds out and has Kwan Lin killed. Lan Ying narrowly escapes death herself. Believing the authorities to be ineffectual, Lan Ying takes matters into her own hands. She travels to South America in an effort to learn the identity of the smuggling ring's leader, only to discover that it's someone she's known all along.

A low-budget B movie, "Daughter of Shanghai" was shot in only a month, and the film's rough edges reflect this. Although the look of the film captures the famous Paramount sheen of the 1930s, the story is routine and the acting clunky. Anna May Wong herself seems inhibited by the affected pseudo-British accent that she cultivated during her time in Europe. It's as though she's trying so hard to be stately and dignified that she never lets herself cut loose. Ironically, she displayed more depth and range of feeling in "Daughter of the Dragon." Despite these drawbacks, the sight of an Asian American star commanding the center of attention in a 1930s Hollywood movie still powerfully jolts the usual invisibility of Asian faces on the old silver screen.

However, what's especially curious about "Daughter of Shanghai" is just how relatively passive Lan Ying is for a movie's lead character, a character we would expect to be the driving force behind the story. After she gives her would-be assassins the slip, Lan Ying's most active moment comes after she travels to South America and gets a job as a dancer in a seedy night club. Billing herself as "the daughter of Shanghai," Lan Ying's dance in an Orientalist costume and setting (probably about as erotic as the Hollywood Production Code and a B-movie budget would allow at the time) emerges as the movie's highest highlight. After this, Lan Ying becomes little more than a damsel in distress, a woman in need of being rescued. What she does for the rest of the story hardly contributes at all to the resolution of the plot. In fact, instead of cracking the case (as we would expect a thriller's main character to do), she's the last one to figure out the criminal mastermind's identity. Lan Ying's passivity is driven home late in the story when her protectors slug it out with the bad guys — and Anna May Wong cowers in the corner, her look of terror registered unconvincingly on her face. Through Lan Ying's dance, the film seems to suggest that the most active, resolute thing an Asian American woman can do is to offer herself as an exotic object to be looked at.

But even more intriguing than Anna May Wong's constant need for protection is who her primary protector turns out to be: an Asian American federal agent, Kim Lee, played by Korean American actor Philip Ahn (1905-1978). (Ahn would become best known for his role as Master Kan in the 1972-75 TV series "Kung Fu," in which he spoke the immortal lines, "Take the pebble from my hand.") As an Asian man, Kim Lee stands as an unusual figure in a Hollywood movie, especially for the 1930s: he's a suave, dapper dresser who speaks English in complete sentences and with an unremarkable American accent. Through his profession as a federal agent, he also represents the United States government, and his loyalty to America is never once cast in doubt. Kim Lee's importance comes as a surprise because Ahn receives lowly ninth billing in the opening credits (while Larry "Buster" Crabbe, of "Flash Gordon" fame, who plays a henchman with few lines, gets an undeserved third billing), and his centrality to the story isn't made clear until almost halfway through the film.

After meeting Lan Ying early in the story, Kim Lee travels undercover to South America in search of the smugglers himself. He recognizes Lan Ying from her dance and orders her to take the first boat back to San Francisco. She stows away aboard the smugglers' ship while dressed as a man, but her identity as a woman is soon discovered when she's trapped in the hold with a dozen sex-starved men. Lee rescues her from that harrowing situation, proving that he's not afraid of a fist fight. He rescues her again when the bad guys try to drop them into the ocean from an airplane. And when the two of them unwittingly seek shelter at the mastermind's hideout, it's Kim Lee who cleverly tricks the bad guys into summoning the police. Finally, the primary villains behind the smuggling ring, including its leader, turn out to be Caucasians. Uncommon for a Hollywood movie, "Daughter of Shanghai" features an Asian American man, Kim Lee, as its ultimate enforcer of American justice.

In other words, it would have probably been much more logical to tell this story from the perspective of the active, resourceful Kim Lee than from that of passive, damsel-in-distress Lan Ying Lin. But it's Anna May Wong who was the known quantity among Hollywood movie-goers at the time, not Philip Ahn. Tellingly, "Daughter of Shanghai" features an urbane, acculturated Asian American male hero, but it can only get him into the story through the back door, as a supporting character to an unpromising — though very pretty — protagonist.

"Daughter of Shanghai" confirms Kim Lee's standing as the romantic hero in the last scene when he proposes marriage to Lan Ying. The promise of romantic union between an acculturated Asian American couple in a 1930s Hollywood movie is refreshing, but the scene is also rather startling. Why? Because before this final scene, the movie has done absolutely nothing to establish or build up the romance between Lee and Lan Ying. Although his concern for her safety throughout the story can easily be inferred as romantic interest, he never once mentions his feelings for her — nor she for him — before he pops the question. And the two never kiss during the entire movie. The moment comes off as an afterthought, not as the satisfying resolution to a love story. It's hard to believe that the romance between the characters would have remained so underdeveloped if the movie had been about a Caucasian couple. If these roles had been written instead for, say, Clark Gable and Joan Crawford, the film would have certainly shown them making flirtatious banter, locked in a clinch, and smooching before the final scene. I suppose that the sight of two Asian Americans in love (with the implication that they'll soon be making babies!) would have been too much for a 1930s America still living under prohibitive anti-Asian immigration laws.

Given all of the garbage available at the video store nowadays, it's a stinging injustice that such a historically significant portrayal of Asian Americans by Hollywood can only be viewed under such clandestine circumstances. "Daughter of Shanghai" is remarkable not only as a starring vehicle for Anna May Wong, Hollywood's first American-born Asian star, but also for its portrayal of an Asian American man as a suave, heroic character. With the film industry still resistant to Asians as romantic leading men, Philip Ahn's performance as Kim Lee still deserves attention for the rarity of what it portrays. But it's just too damn bad that the movie couldn't openly acknowledge him as Anna May Wong's romantic co-star.

Other resources:

"Daughter of Shanghai" cast and credits from the Internet Movie Data Base
[url=http://us.imdb.com/Title?0028770]http://us.imdb.com/Title?0028770[/url]

Brian Taves recommends "Daughter of Shanghai" for the National Film Registry
[url=http://www.loc.gov/film/taves10.html]http://www.loc.gov/film/taves10.html[/url]

"Daughter of Shanghai" on the Philip Ahn fan site
[url=http://www.philipahn.com/dos.html]http://www.philipahn.com/dos.html[/url]

Philip Liebfried's mini-bio of Anna May Wong
[url=http://www.silentsmajority.com/Guest/wong.htm]http://www.silentsmajority.com/Guest/wong.htm[/url]

An autobiographical article by Anna May Wong
[url=http://www.silentsmajority.com/FeaturedStar/star49e.htm]http://www.silentsmajority.com/FeaturedStar/star49e.htm[/url]

Anna May Wong filmography
[url=http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/Guest/braffc.htm]http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/Guest/braffc.htm[/url]