Anna May Wong and Marlene Dietrich
February 12, 1932: Shanghai Express premieres. It was the 4th of 7 films that paired Austrian director Josef von Sternberg and German actress Marlene Dietrich.
von Sternberg is often credited with inventing the gangster film, with his 1927 silent film Underworld. In 1930, he first directed Dietrich in The Blue Angel, where the Dietrich persona was cemented forever: As one critic put it, she was "all sex, and no gender" -- making her, to borrow a later phrase, a gay icon. She was, herself, bisexual, and even had an affair with the other contender for the title of the greatest European actress of the initial sound era, Sweden's Greta Garbo.
The film is set in what was then the present day, as China was embroiled in a civil war. Clive Brook plays Donald "Doc" Harvey, a former Captain in Britain's Royal Navy, taking a train from Peiping (as Beijing was then known to the West) to Shanghai. Also on the train are a pair of "coasters," defined as "a woman who lives by her wits along the China coast": Madeleine (Dietrich), a.k.a. Shanghai Lily, Doc's former girlfriend; and Hui Fei (Wong).
Also on it is Henry Chang, a disguised warlord. He was played by Warner Oland, a Swedish actor who specialized in playing Chinese characters, both the villainous Dr. Fu Manchu and, later, the heroic Honolulu police detective Charlie Chan, a character specifically created to avoid "Yellow Peril" portrayals of Asians, but still spoke in "broken English."
von Sternberg would also direct Dietrich in Morocco and Dishonored, but Shanghai Express is considered, if not her masterpiece, then definitely his, due to its innovative lighting. It's also one of the few films of the era that depicted Asians without indulging in stereotypes now considered unacceptable. The performance of Los Angeles-born actress Anna May Wong was a big part of it.
Oland died in 1938, while making Charlie Chan at Ringside, investigating corruption in professional boxing. The script was rewritten to star Hungarian actor Peter Lorre as Japanese secret agent Mr. Moto, and it become Mr. Moto's Gamble.
von Sternberg went on to direct Dietrich in Blonde Venus, as Catherine the Great in The Scarlet Empress, and The Devil Is a Woman. He died in 1969.
Wong was largely stereotyped after Shanghai Express, and died in 1961. Dietrich raised money for war bonds, as her adopted country liberated Europe from the tyranny that had engulfed her homeland in World War II. She indulged her reputations for exoticism and eroticism, taking men and women, famous and not, to bed, until her retirement from performing in 1975. She died in 1992.
*
February 12, 1932 was a Friday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. And no games were scheduled for the NHL. So there were no scores on this historic day.
