A venal, spoiled stockbroker's wife impulsively embezzles $10,000 from the charity she chairs and desperately turns to a Burmese ivory trader to replace the stolen money.
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Writer: Hector Turnbull, Jeanie Macpherson
Stars: Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Dean
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Writer: Hector Turnbull, Jeanie Macpherson
Stars: Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Dean
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month,
00:03we're celebrating a trio of actors
00:04who fearlessly blaze trails in old Hollywood.
00:07If you work hard, you will be treated well.
00:12On this IMD Brief, we present just a few
00:14of the unsung Asian American Pacific Islander heroes
00:18of film history.
00:22Regardless of back-to-back Best Director
00:24and Best Picture Oscar wins for Asian filmmakers
00:27Bong Joon-ho and Chloe Zhao,
00:29Hollywood's representation for people of Asian descent
00:32has been fraught with problematic portrayals,
00:35caricatures, and a barely skin-deep perception
00:38of their inner lives.
00:39I must confess, I don't quite know the standard
00:42of respectability that you demand in your boarding house.
00:45Our first hero, Anna Mae Wong,
00:47was one of the very first Asian American actresses
00:50to ascend to stardom.
00:52Born in LA's Chinatown to second-generation
00:55Chinese American parents,
00:56Wong was taken by the glitz and glamour
00:58of Hollywood's silent era, and found extra work as a teen.
01:02She garnered notoriety after appearing
01:04with Douglas Fairbanks in the smash hit Swashbuckler,
01:07The Thief of Baghdad, in 1924.
01:09But this led to more stereotyped, seductress roles
01:12of the exotic dragon lady, a part she did not want to play
01:16in an industry that gave her no other options.
01:26Wong fought to play real people, but racial segregation prevented
01:31Wong from sharing an on-screen kiss with a white actor.
01:34After a decade of disappointment, she campaigned to play Olan,
01:38the lead of a big-screen adaptation of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, in 1937.
01:44But MGM offered her the deceitful concubine role instead,
01:48to which she told legendary producer Irving Thalberg,
01:51You're asking me, with Chinese blood,
01:54to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture featuring an all-American cast
01:59portraying Chinese characters.
02:01German actress Louise Reiner took the role of Olan instead,
02:04and won an Oscar for her performance.
02:06You must sell!
02:08Is it your land?
02:09And did you buy it bit by bit?
02:12In 1951, Wong blazed a new trail in television,
02:16becoming the first Asian-American star of a primetime series,
02:20on the gallery of Madame Lu Song, a role written just for her.
02:24But the show was canceled after one season,
02:27and all copies have been lost to time.
02:29One year before her untimely death in 1961,
02:32she became the first Asian-American actress
02:35to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, right near the intersection
02:39of Hollywood and Vine.
02:40In this wine, we pledge our troughs.
02:44He pledged his love.
02:46Our next unsung hero, Sessu Hayakawa,
02:49was one of the first Asian leading men,
02:52an early Hollywood heartthrob who was a contemporary of Anna May
02:56Wong, even portraying her romantic counterpart in 1931's
03:00Daughter of the Dragon.
03:01Born in Japan, Hayakawa was discovered by D.W. Griffith's
03:04producing partner Thomas H. Ince.
03:07This led to early roles in silent films like The Typhoon,
03:10The Wrath of the Gods, and 1915's The Chief.
03:18Hayakawa parlayed stardom into launching Haworth Pictures
03:22Corporation and producing 23 films in just a few years.
03:26But his success was short-lived, and he left Hollywood for Europe,
03:30stating that his early roles are false and give people
03:33a wrong idea of us.
03:35I wish to make a characterization which shall reveal us
03:38as we really are.
03:40My one ambition is to play a hero.
03:43Hayakawa may have never gotten that chance
03:45on the grand stage of Hollywood, but late in his career,
03:48he did play the honorable villain Colonel Saito in 1957's
03:53The Bridge on the River Kwai, a performance that earned him
03:55a much-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.
03:59It's against the rules.
04:00Do not speak to me of rules.
04:02This is war.
04:04Our final unsung hero, Merle Oberon, was the first Asian person
04:08to be nominated for any Academy Award, but she had to hide her
04:12heritage to find fortune and fame.
04:14Oberon was born in India in 1911 to a British father and a mother
04:18of Sri Lankan and Maori ancestry, but created the cover story
04:22that she was born in Tasmania, and all records were destroyed
04:26in a fire.
04:27She broke out in a small but memorable role as Anne Boleyn
04:30in 1933's The Private Life of Henry VIII.
04:34Among the queens of England, actually, Anne Sautet.
04:39That means Anne who lost her head.
04:42After the film was a sensation, Oberon became a leading lady in the
04:46Scarlet Pimpernel, Wuthering Heights opposite Laurence Olivier,
04:50and 1935's World War I drama with Frederick March, The Dark Angel.
04:55She received that Best Actress nomination for The Dark Angel,
04:58the only actress of Asian descent ever in the category.
05:01However, this milestone wasn't discovered until after her death
05:04in 1979, when the truth about her genealogy
05:07was ultimately revealed.
05:09Hey, wait a minute.
05:11No, goodbye.
05:12For more videos and interviews to celebrate Asian Pacific
05:15American Heritage Month, check out our special section
05:18at imdb.com slash imdbpicks.