The Daughter of the Dragon


Director: Lloyd Corrigan
Year: 1931
Rating: 7.0

The third film in the Fu Manchu series and the best – The Daughter of the Dragon (1931) is mainly fascinating for the two real Asian actors in the film – Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa. I have written before about Anna May Wong, the first great Asian actress in Hollywood – born in 1905 in Los Angeles – and sentenced for most of her acting career to playing stereotypical Chinese roles as the Dragon Lady or seductive or submissive roles. When the role of O-Lan in The Good Earth went to Luise Rainer she was crushed. Sessue Hayawaka, who plays a Chinese detective in the film, was born in Japan, almost committed seppuku at a young age after disappointing his father and came to the USA to study at the University of Chicago. That didn’t work out and he drifted into acting and became a huge star in the Cecile B DeMille film The Cheat in which he plays romantically opposite a white woman – quite shocking for the times. He went on to become a silent screen star, but once the talkies came along his star – like so many others – began to fade but he continued acting and no doubt some of us know him as Colonel Saito from The Bridge on the River Kwai (which you can visit in Thailand of course). He is the hero in this film as Nayland Smith makes no appearance.



This third film pretends that the first two in the series did not exist as it treads over the same territory and one major character killed in the first film is back as is Fu Manchu (played by Charlie Chan's Warner Oland). In The Daughter of the Dragon Anna plays Ling Moy an “Oriental dancer” of renown who has received word that the father she has not seen in 20 years is in London and wants to meet her. She is thrilled only to find out upon seeing him that he is dying and he has a small request. A favor for dear old dead dad. Kill the rest of the Petrie male line. Being a good Chinese girl she immediately agrees by saying “The Blood in mine. The Hate is mine. The Vengeance is Mine”. A promise is a promise. Her plan is a slow one – no quick death for the son – first she must make him love her but she says to him “Will my hair ever be blonde? Will my skin ever be white?”



Wong had just returned from her triumphal entrée into the European film industry and Paramount struck a three picture deal with her. This was the first one. Now one wonders what is worse – putting an Asian into a Dragon Lady role or as in the next Fu Manchu film having a Caucasian play Fu Manchu’s daughter. Wong was to be later harshly criticized by Chinese for taking these roles to which she replied “that is what was offered to me”.