Daughter of Shanghai

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. It was also one of the first films in which Anthony Quinn appeared.

Daughter of Shanghai is unique among 1930s Hollywood features for its portrayal of an Asianfocused theme with two prominent AsianAmerican 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 AsianAmerican 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 Madame LiuTsong DuMont, 1951.On its release, on the 17th of December 1937, The New York Times gave the film a generally positive review, commenting of its Bmovie 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. In 2006, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. In a press release, the Library of Congress said ........

Source: Wikipedia