A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.
The film traces the life and times of Esther Eng, a San Francisco native known as Hong Kong’s first “directress.” She directed 10 Cantonese talkies.
After surviving a murder attempt, an auto magnate goes into hiding so his wife can pay for the crime.
A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.
In London, a secret society led by lawyer Thaddeus Merrydew collects the assets of any of its deceased members and divides them among the remaining members. Society members start dropping like flies. Sherlock Holmes is approached by member James Murphy's widow, who is miffed at being left penniless by her husband. When Captain Pyke is shot, Holmes keys in on his mysterious Chinese widow as well as the shady Merrydew. Other members keep dying: Malcom Dearing first, then Mr. Baker. There is also an attempt on the life of young Eileen Forrester, who became a reluctant society member upon the death of her father. Holmes' uncanny observations and insights are put to the test.
Stan is a sailor whose girl gets kidnapped by a rough sea captain. Stan dresses in drag and seduces the captain but the captain's wife catches him. Stan and his girl beat a hasty retreat as the captain's wife fires off a parting shot.
A pair of lovers plot to kill the woman's rich husband.
Ventriloquist and world traveler Gordon Cobb is murdered by a gang of jewel thieves. Baffled by the contradictory clues, Inspector Queen asks his son, Ellery, to help out.
A young Chinese woman, working in the kitchen at a London dance club, is given the chance to become the club's main act.
The film tells the story of Chinese guerrillas fighting for the Allied cause in Burma during Early in World War II, Chungking schoolteacher Lin Yang is recruited to help with the dangerous mission of protecting the Allied supply line from Burma into China. In spite of the danger involved, her determination to help is strengthened when one of her young students is killed in a Japanese air raid. Some time later, she is part of a group of Allied representatives departing from Lashio, on a bus traveling the Burma Road back to China. A bridge outage forces them to spend the night in a monastery along the way, and during the night they watch in horror as a supply convoy of trucks is bombed by Japanese planes. The timing and accuracy of the raid brings them to realize that either one of their group, or perhaps the priest in the monastery, is really an enemy agent
A series of 19 musical and comedy "vaudeville" sketches presented in the form of a live television broadcast hosted by Tommy Handley (as himself).
A young Chinese woman saves an American man washed up onto the shore and the two fall in love, only for him to have second thoughts.
During World War II, Chinese guerrillas fight against the occupying Japanese forces. A young woman is the secret leader of the villagers, who plot to rescue two downed Flying Tigers pilots, who are currently in the custody of the Japanese. The rescue mission takes on even more importance with the arrival of a Japanese general, which signals a major offensive taking place in the area.
A Chinese-American woman tries to expose an illegal alien smuggling ring.
At her Chinese father's bidding, a woman goes to murder an enemy and meets a Scotland Yard detective.
When Mandarin Wu's unmarried daughter becomes pregnant by a young Englishman, he seeks vengeance.
Documentary of Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American woman who endured many hardships and heartaches to become an international star of film, stage and television.
Peter Pan enters the nursery of the Darling children and, with the help of fairy dust, leads them off to Never Never Land, where they meet the nefarious Captain Hook.
While Joel and his older ship's captain brother Mark are at sea, the latter is abandoned in Singapore by devious ship's mate Finch who, upon their return, convinces the townspeople that Joel abandoned his brother. Joel, determined to not only find Mark but to see justice done, returns the ship to Singapore.
Michael is a young Englishman abroad who deliberately visits a tough Chinese district of Tiger Bay to test his strength. He falls in love and battles a protection racket.
After committing a murder for his lover, Gloria, the famous painter Jack is forced to go underground. In the harbor district, he saves the poor Malaysian girl Song in front of two intrusive sailors. She loves him for it, and together Song and Jack appear in the tingle dungeon of the port, he as a knife artist, she as a dancer.
Musical retelling of the "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves" Arabian Nights tale.
Fresh from Chinatown in New York, Harry Young has taken over the illegal import business in the seamy Limehouse district of London, where he cold-bloodedly disposes of rivals and runs a smoky nightclub. He falls for a low-class, white pickpocket, diminishing his pride in the Chinese half of his heritage and sparking the jealousy of the nightclub's moody star performer.
An English explorer disturbed by the practices of an isolated tribe attempts to rescue a native girl he has become fascinated with. THE DEVIL DANCER was highly praised at time of release for its exquisite cinematography, especially in the use of light and shadow. The film received an Academy Award nomination in this category. Sadly, it is among the lost. No prints or negatives are known to survive.
A Chinese general's daughter tracks her father to a slave-labor tyrant's jungle empire.
A history of anti-Asian racism and yellowface in Hollywood after the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.
Eddie Kane wanders round the studio back-lot, opening various doors to see which stars pop out.
The port city of Bristol, England, in the 1800s is home to Java Head, a sailing ship line company. The owner has two sons. One, a handsome seafarer, is in love with a local girl, but cannot marry her due to a long-running feud between their fathers. After a lengthy voyage, he returns with a very exotic, noble Chinese wife, which scandalizes the conservative town. His other son, a "landlubber", seeks to convert to steamships, to the disgust of his father. Even worse, he is secretly dealing in contraband.
A San Francisco astrologer correctly predicts a ship passenger's death and then helps the police look for the murderer.
Elissa Landi and Charley Chase host an East Asian themed garden tea party in Hollywood. After introducing a few Hollywood luminaries who are attending the party, they present a number of musical and/or dance performances to entertain the crowd. This set of performances also includes ethnic Chinese actress Anna May Wong modeling some fashions she brought back from her first ever trip to China. Through it all, one of the guests, already inebriated, is having a few problems mixing and serving the cocktails he wants.
Racketeer Steve Recka, art patron and political power-maker, rules his town and Madame Lan Ying, his beautiful friend and hostess (read:mistress), with an iron hand. He meets Margaret Van Kase, a socialite not impressed by his power nor his wealth, having no money herself, and Steve makes frantic efforts to win her and turns away from the loyal Lin Yang.
A Chinese-American surgeon faces a moral dilemma after operating on the mob boss in charge of vice and protection rackets in her city's Chinatown.
Mahlee and Blanche Sackville are half-sisters, Blanche the daughter of an Englishman and his wife, Mahlee of the Englishman and his Chinese mistress. Mahlee rejects her people and attempts to find a life for herself among the Europeans. But she finds the color line impossible to pass and returns to lead her Chinese people in rebellion.
In San Francisco, a villainous landowner with underworld connections seeks to steal the property of an old Spanish family.
Silent Madden and his daughter Molly have left the criminal underworld of San Francisco thanks to the wise teachings of Chang Low, a Confucian master. But the evil Black Mike Sylva is determined to frame Madden to avenge a mistake from the past…
A short featuring many stars
An Alaskan defies robber barons intent on corrupting the new state.
The plot is motivated by a pearl necklace, which has caused the death and/or ruination of all its owners. The second screen appearance of detective Charlie Chan.
A Chinese troupe star and the Grand Duke's adjutant fall in love, to tensions from both sides' respective comrades.
A shy detergent factory employee unexpectedly finds his feet.
John Douglas, a down-on-his-luck engineer, takes his sweetheart, Sara Deeping, to a play starring Carla King, and he falls in love with the actress.
Dinty is a newsboy whose fight to care for his ailing mother leads him into conflicts with the other boys on the street and then with drug smugglers in Chinatown.
In this, her second silent film with Eichberg, Wong plays Princess Butterfly, an exotic Parisian fan dancer whose “death leap through a circle of naked swords” act goes tragically wrong. Blamed for the impalement of a fellow performer, she runs away and takes shelter with a handsome but starving painter who she brings luck.
In Shanghai, an American girl who helps run an opium ring meets an American agent disguised as a mining engineer. The two fall in love, and she has to determine where her loyalties lie.
An Eskimo who has had little contact with white men goes to a trading post where he accidentally kills a missionary and finds himself being pursued by the police.
Gregory Kent is on the run for a crime he did not commit.
French language version. A Chinese cabaret singer will do whatever it takes to save her brother when he is sentenced to death for trying to save her from a lecherous Duke.
Frank Darwin needs to convince Muriel he didn't kill her Father, as claimed by Jasper and Oneta.
When her cotton crop is burned, Barbara Pelham, a beautiful southern girl, comes to New York to find work as a fashion designer, staying with Mrs. Kemp, a woman she meets on the northbound train. In Mrs. Kemp's house, Barbara encounters Peter Heffner, a wealthy stockbroker, and discovers from him that she has taken up residence in a whorehouse. There is a police raid, but Barbara escapes arrest and returns home. Heffner's son, Neil, goes south to inspect some family property and there meets Barbara, with whom he falls in love. They decide to be married, and she accompanies him to New York, where she meets the elder Heffner for a second time. He denounces her as a whore, but Barbara goes to Mrs. Kemp, who explains the misunderstanding to everyone's satisfaction.
Mary's kid brother needs an operation and, in order to pay for it, Mary goes to a Hollywood studio and applies for a job as an actress. Mary is given a job as a waitress in the commissary, and gets to meet 40 actors, actresses and directors, none of whom tip big enough to enable Mary to earn enough money to pay for an operation. Will Mary become an actress and make some big money?
William Fielding, a young widower, is living in Shanghai with his little boy, David. A young Chinese woman looks after the child, and Foo Chang, a trader, lusts after her. Because he believes she is David's mother, he kills Fielding. Fielding's faithful secretary, Li Clung, takes the boy to San Francisco to be raised by his grandfather. As an adult, David (also played by Gilbert) fights against opium trafficking with Li Clung's help.
This film combines four short films under the title Bits Of Life. The Bad Samaritan is taken from a story in Popular Magazine in which the son of a Chinese father and a white mother is sold into slavery by his father. The boy becomes a criminal and a cunning but cruel thief. The one time he stops to help a lady in distress he is thrown in jail. Wesley Barry is the young boy and Lon Chaney the grown-up criminal.
A young hypochondriac who believes that he has only a week to live. His name, by the way, is Welland Strong. He decides to visit his uncle in the short amount of time he has left in the world. Eventually Strong winds up in Chinatown.
Aimee is a young girl betrothed to a rascal, Hamid Bey. An American archeologist, Jack Ryder, arrives to help the girl escape ending up in Bey's harem, but it takes the boy ten episodes to finally succeed.
The Butterworth family attorney Gaspar Le Sage, and a suitor for the hand of Eleanor Butterworth, persuades a beautiful adventuress, Annabelle Wu, to help him steal the official plans for the coastal defense of California from Eleanor's brother, Lieutenant Butterworth.
A father throws his daughter out of the house when she marries a man he doesn't approve of. In addition, she also finds herself being lusted after by the sinister owner of an opium den.
A likeable pickpocket happens to stumble onto a white slavery ring while plying his trade in Chinatown.
Mr. Buggs is an insect collector. A beautiful and mysterious Asian woman (the lovely Anna May Wong) brings him a rare specimen, but she is actually a wanted thief who has stolen a valuable brooch.
This obscure silent melodrama, directed by the veteran Harry J. Revier, was filmed entirely in San Francisco with an all-Asian cast that included Chinese-born Jimmy B. Leong and Hollywood's own Anna May Wong.
Loves of a ship's captain on the high seas!
A young mother, Mildred, doesn't know that her husband Walter is cheating on her. One night she attends a party with a friend of her husband's, and the man gets drunk and begins groping her when they get home. Her husband sees this and uses it as an excuse to sue his wife for divorce. In the ensuing trial he wins, due to fraudulent evidence, and gets custody of the child. Complications ensue.
Loey Tsing, the first love of Chan Wang, is sold into slavery by her father. Although Chan marries another, he still loves Loey; only the birth of a son relieves his unhappiness. He adores little Chan Toy even though he finds nothing to like about his wife.
Jack Standish feels responsible for the failure of the partnership with his father and goes to the South Seas where he falls prey to alcohol, is seduced by Lullaby Lou, a vamp, and tricked by a brutal plantation owner, Gordon Van Brock.
Sergeant Blake of the Northwest Mounted Police is sent to the border to break up a ring of smugglers who are bringing illegal Chinese immigrants into Canada. The ring is led by Ah Ming, a "half-breed" who goes by the name of Dr. Lawler. When Blake encounters Lawler, he is experimenting on a white mouse.
A white child is adopted and raised by a Chinese citizen and brought to San Francisco, where no one surmises that she is actually not Chinese.
Anna May Wong created “My China Film” as her response to not being cast in Metro Goldwyn Meyer’s award-winning film about Chinese peasants, The Good Earth (1937). Immediately after that casting rejection, Wong travelled to China for the first and only time in 1936 to see the real China, the “native land” of her parents where she arranged to have her experiences there filmed by Newsreel Wong. In contrast to The Good Earth, “My China Film” is the result of a Hollywood film studio actress seizing the means of production. Her film reveals her craftsmanship as an American actress learning to play a Chinese by equipping herself to perform the role of a transnational Chinese. In addition, rather than being a straightforward documentary travelogue, “My China Film” reflects differing agendas and multiple Chinas.
Josephine Little, an expatriate American importer-exporter of sometimes unscrupulous dealings, is recruited by Central Intellegence Agency operatives in Hong Kong to help recover an American born scientist away from the communists, holding him him in North Viet Nam. She goes through with the dangerous mission, in hopes of securing a scrap metal deal with the U.S. government.
With the help of popular movie stars, this documentary tells the coming-of-age story of a young Asian-American actress navigating the convoluted and narrow paths of Hollywood.
