MORE 1001 MOVIES FROM THE 30's
(Post 17 of 20)
Marlene Dietrich looks for a way out
in Shanghai Express
Another exotic woman of the world aboard the train is Hui Fei. To the film's credit she is played by Chinese-American star Anna May Wong...but there seemed to be more of a trend of casting Caucasians in many of the Asian roles, which leads us to...
And the Elisha Cook Jr. supporting player award goes to..Warner Oland. It's interesting to see Oland as the Asian heavy General Chang in Shanghai Express, since he is best known as playing the Asian heroic detective Charlie Chan in sixteen films up until his death in 1938.
White actor Warner Oland as Charlie Chan...
...replaced by white actor Sidney Toler
as Charlie Chan...
as Charlie Chan...
...who was replaced by white actor
Roland Winters as Charlie Chan...
...or maybe you prefer the 70's TV Charlie Chan
played by white actor Ross Martin or...
...how about the silly Curse of the Dragon Queen
with Englishman Peter Ustinov as
Charlie Chan?
Oland also played Fu Manchu (below) in The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. There is also a long list of non-Asian actors that played Fu Manchu, including Boris Karloff, Peter Sellers and Christopher Lee..but so it goes (or at least use to go) in Hollywood.
Yellow face and black face was such an oddity of the first half of the century. But somehow I think that at the time people thought little of it, like today when actors color their hair.
ReplyDeleteRight. I've noticed a lot of pretty famous movies of that time have scenes that would never be done now...Yankee Doodle Dandy, Babes in Arms etc.
ReplyDelete