Daughter of Shanghai

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daughter of Shanghai
Directed by	Robert Florey
Produced by	Harold Hurley (uncredited) Edward T. Lowe Jr. (uncredited)
Written by	William J. Hurlbut (uncredited) Gladys Unger Garnett Weston
Starring	Anna May Wong Philip Ahn Charles Bickford Buster Crabbe Cecil Cunningham J. Carrol Naish Evelyn Brent Anthony Quinn John Patterson Fred Kohler
Cinematography	Charles Schoenbaum
Editing by	Ellsworth Hoagland
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	December 17, 1937
Running time	63 min.
Country
Language	English
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Daughter of Shanghai is a 1937 American motion picture directed by Robert Florey, written by Gladys Unger and Garnett Weston, and starring Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn. The film was unusual in that Asian American actors played the lead roles.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Analysis 4 Reception 5 References 5.1 Notes 5.2 Bibliogrpahy 6 External links

[edit] Plot

The plot finds Lan Ying Lin (Anna May Wong) and government agent Kim Lee (Philip Ahn) battling alien smugglers (played by Buster Crabbe and J. Carrol Naish). It was also one of the first films in which Anthony Quinn appeared.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Anna May Wong	Lan Ying Lin
Philip Ahn	Kim Lee
Charles Bickford	Otto Hartman
Buster Crabbe	Andrew Sleete
Cecil Cunningham	Mrs. Mary Hunt
J. Carrol Naish	Frank Barden
Evelyn Brent	Olga Derey
Anthony Quinn	Harry Morgan
John Patterson	James Lang
Fred Kohler	Captain Gulner

[edit] Analysis

Daughter of Shanghai is unique among 1930s Hollywood features for its portrayal of an Asian-focused theme with two prominent Asian-American performers as leads. This was truly unusual in a time when white actors typically played Asian characters in the cinema. At best, Hollywood assigned some Asian roles to Asian performers and some to whites stars in the same film, with results that seem discordant today even if widely accepted at the time. Daughter of Shanghai was prepared as a vehicle for Anna May Wong, the first Asian-American woman to become a star of the Hollywood cinema. Appearing in some 60 movies during her life, she was a top billed player for over twenty years, working not only in Hollywood, but also in England and Germany. In addition, she was a star of the stage and a frequent guest performer on radio, and would headline the first American television series concentrating on an Asian character, The Gallery of Mme. Liu-Tsong (Dumont, 1951).

[edit] Reception

On its release, The New York Times gave the film a generally positive review, commenting of its B-movie origins, "An unusually competent cast saves the film from the worst consequences of certain inevitable banalities. [The cast]... combine with effective sets to reduce the natural odds against any pictures in the Daughter of Shanghai tradition."^[1] In December 2006 the film was recognized as a culturally, historically and aesthetically significant film by the National Film Registry ^[2] In a press release, the Library of Congress said:

"B-films during the studio era often resonate decades later because they explore issues and themes not found in higher-budget pictures. Robert Florey, widely acclaimed as the best director working in major studio B-films during this period, crafted an intriguing, taut thriller. Anna May Wong overcame Hollywood’s practice at the time of casting white actors to play Asian roles and became its first, and a leading, Asian-American movie star in the 1920s through the late 1930s. Daughter of Shanghai was more truly Wong’s personal vehicle than any of her other films. In the story she uncovers the smuggling of illegal aliens through San Francisco’s Chinatown, cooperating with costar Philip Ahn as the first Asian G-man of the American cinema."

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliogrpahy

[edit] External links

• Daughter of Shanghai at the Internet Movie Database