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Chinese players welcome a film like "Eve's Leaves," for it offers many of them jobs.
in the center of the scene above.
May Louie, talented bit player, is
Our Chinese Movie Actors
The Orientals who take part in our movies are just as ambitious for screen success as any of our American players. This story reveals some interesting things about some of them.
By A. L. Wooldridge
THERE is something strangely fascinating about a city's Chinatown One unconsciously thinks of it in terms of shadows, dark passageways, quaint little red-and-yellow lanterns, funny little gods graven in ivory and ebony, and the pungent odor of burning joss sticks. Then there's the whine of the strange reed flute, the beat of tomtoms, the faint, mysterious shuffling one hears behind closed doors. It usually savors so of the Orient, and we don't know much about the. Orient. Perhaps that's why it fascinates.
I recall quite distinctly the eagerness with which I looked forward to my first trip into the famed Chinatown of San Francisco, that picturesque Oriental quarter reached by Grant Avenue slanting away from Market Street. I joined the throng of tourists there some years ago, and went into another world, one where great stone and granite buildings gave way to pagoda-shaped structures, done in gilt and ornamented with dragons, where glaring arc lights were displaced by multicolored lanterns, and where the streets were narrow. I wandered for hours, with the other rubber
neckers, amid the odd little shops and curio stores, and bought a good luck charm which I carried till sonic one stoic my overcoat. It was in one of the pockets.
I found the same alluring interest, though to a lesser degree, in Los Angeles, when I went in search of Tom Gubbins, the ''Boss of Chinatown" in that city. He supplies the Oriental characters for motion pictures in Hollywood. There, in Los Angeles, were the same little shops, the same little curio stores, and grocery cubby-holes, where strange fishes and foods were for sale midst the same Oriental setting. Chinatown everywhere is much the same. And there was Tom Gubbins, a highly educated, courteous, gentlemanly individual still in his thirties, who lived for eight years in China and who speaks that peculiar language. He has at his beck and call about a hundred and sixty Chinese men, women and children, who work in pictures and for whom he makes all contracts and engagements. He gave Anna May Wong her first work as atmosphere in a Hollywood production, and now has two of her sisters seeking careers. For the past decade, he has guided the destinies of these Chinese players, and understands their Oriental turn of mind. He acts as interpreter-director on the set.
"My Chinese are trying hard — very hard — to win the respect of Americans," Gubbins says. "They do not like to appear in roles which in any way seem degrading. Honor and honesty are characteristics of their race. For example :
"When we were working in the William Fox production 'Shame,' directed by
Lulu Wong, sister of Anna May Wong, is ambitious to equal her sister's fame.