King of Chinatown
Director: Nick
Grinde
Year: 1939
Rating: 4.5
This is a surprisingly dull B film from Paramount.
Usually they tuck in a load of plot twists and action in their 60 minute running
time to keep the audience engaged but this one just kind of moseys along
like a slow cattle drive. Just the title King of Chinatown gives you expectations
of a good gangster film and mysteries of the Orient! It starts off that way
but then goes on a vacation. The King of Chinatown is Mr. Baturin, an immigrant
who worked his way up from nothing to something; a beautiful home on top
of the hill. He runs a casino and has influence all over Chinatown. He is
trying to bring all the Chinese practitioners of traditional medicine under
one structure - which makes no sense. One of these Chinese practitioners is
not going for it and neither is his friend nor his daughter who is a doctor
in a western hospital. Baturin gets shot by a few betrayers but survives because
of the skills of the daughter and then he falls in love with her. One keeps
expecting the gang warfare to continue but it just becomes a domestic drama
of Baturin convalescing under the eye of the female doctor.
Kind of disappointing. But there are a few interesting aspects at least
looking back. The King is played by the wonderful Akim Tamiroff in as low-key
a performance as I have seen him, the nurse he falls in love with is played
by Anna May Wong - so the white-Asian taboo is almost crossed here and Wong
gets to play a positive non-stereotyped role. She is planning to leave for
China to help the Chinese against the invading Japanese and the friend is
played by Philip Ahn, the Korean-American actor of some renown. They have
a romantic undercurrent and at the time it was rumored that Wong and Ahn
would be married but she brushed this off by telling the press that they
had been friends since childhood and it would be like marrying her brother.
The two betrayers are played by Anthony Quinn and J. Carroll Naish - both
were to appear with Wong in her next film Island of Lost Men. And finally,
Wong's father in this is played by none other than Sidney Toler who had just
taken on the mantle of Charlie Chan after Warner Oland's death. And he borrows
a few of Chan's aphorisms here! But not much of this has anything to do with
the film itself which sits there like an egg waiting to be poached.
Anna May Wong is billed at the top of this film, so at least a bit of respect
from the studio. She had been criticized by Chinese-American organizations
at times for the Dragon Lady roles that she took but by this time that was
becoming less and less. Earlier she had said in response - "That is
all they offer me". And I would guess that Wong wanted the China angle in
this film. She had become very involved in the Chinese cause raising money
and publicizing it to Americans. She put her career on the back burner for
the next six years.
