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IT ALL STARTED WITH A DREAM
Douglas Fairbanks couldn't make up his mind. What to do about his next picture?
Pirates. It had to be pirates. Besides, he'd already begun growing out his hair in anticipation of such a role. And a pirate film, he was convinced, had to be in color. He'd attended a screening of the latest two-color Technicolor film and was itching to make use of their cutting-edge technology.
But what about Monsieur Beaucaire? He'd been sitting on the rights to Booth Tarkington's novella of the same name for years now-about a French prince who flees to England to escape an arranged marriage and disguises himself as a lowly barber so that he may find a wife who will love him for who he truly is. Think of the costumes. The romance. The countless opportunities to wrest hearty guffaws from moviegoers with a comedy of mistaken identities. Think of the money he'd already spent on it. At $30,000, the rights to the book had not come cheap.
Robin Hood, his most recent flick, had been a roaring success, one of the best and biggest films of 1922. Box office receipts raked in $2.2 million in revenues for the Douglas Fairbanks Pictures Corporation, well beyond the $961,129.12 he had spent to finance the film, resulting in a net profit of almost $1.24 million (more than $19 million in today's money). This payday surpassed even Fairbanks's wildest ambitions, and his ambitions were famously prodigious.
There was no question. His next film had to be bigger and better, a tall order, since not only had Robin Hood been a box office smash, but it had even charmed the critics. They called Douglas Fairbanks the King of Hollywood for a reason.
His queen, Mary Pickford, the baby-faced beauty next door, the indisputable doyenne of the silent film era, was the only woman in Hollywood who could be considered his equal, creatively and financially. From the time she made her debut in silent pictures for the Biograph Company in 1909, where she appeared in forty films, many directed by D. W. Griffith, audiences interchangeably hailed her as "the Biograph Girl," "the Girl with the Golden Curls," "Blondilocks," and the moniker that finally stuck: "America's Sweetheart." More than a decade later, Mary Pickford by any other name-except maybe Gladys Smith, her real name-was still the wholesome, cherubic ingénue whom women aspired to be and men longed to love and protect.
Both had been married to other people when they first met in 1915, and yet they were inexorably drawn to one another. For years, whispers about their illicit love affair circulated, which they adamantly denied. Finally, Doug filed for divorce from his socialite wife in the fall of 1918. Mary, not wanting to prove the gossipmongers right, bided her time until March 1920, when she quietly secured an expedited divorce in Nevada. A few weeks later the love-smitten couple stepped out into the sunlight and was wed in a private ceremony in Los Angeles.
Despite their fears of the stigma that terrible d-word still carried, the public readily embraced the pair who would be crowned king and queen, now and forever known as "Doug and Mary." They broke the mold and redefined Hollywood love for the Richard Burtons and Elizabeth Taylors of the world and the many other couples who would follow in their footsteps-Bogart and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, Brad and Angelina.
Mary loved to indulge Doug's numerous flights of fancy, and his growing obsession with swashbuckling buccaneers was no different. For Christmas 1922, she surprised Doug with an antique replica of a pirate ship's galley. But the man who never stood still was already onto the next idea: a Roman saga complete with togas, gladiators, and storied coliseums. His crackerjack team of researchers and scenario writers, headed by husband and wife Dr. Arthur Woods and Lotta Woods, and aided significantly by the talents of playwright Edward Knoblock, was presently at work on the script for this next project, if only he would pin down the concept.
"Last night I thought up a great story that happens during Caesar's time," Doug enthused one day to his foreign publicity director Robert Florey. "Can't you see the chariot races? The battles? That great old Roman architecture?"
The pirate paraphernalia and pictures of galleons that had multiplied on the walls of the director's office were taken down and replaced with images of Pompeii and the Roman Forum. Doug's team was used to this rigamarole and expected nothing less. Convinced they hadn't yet landed on the winning idea, one writer avowed to Florey: "You'll see. This devil will change his mind three times-if not more-before we start shooting."
It just so happened that Doug had recently been gifted a handsomely illustrated book of The Arabian Nights recalling the much-admired Art Nouveau-style renderings of artist Edmund Dulac. Doug rarely had the patience for books, but something in this particular tome gripped him and wouldn't let go. He'd picked it up one evening, hoping for some light reading before bed, not anticipating what happened next. Bewitched by the thrilling stories and quixotic illustrations brought to life on the pages of The Arabian Nights, he stayed up the whole night and continued reading into the next day. Soon after, the ever-chipper Fairbanks stepped into a staff meeting to interrupt: "Let's do an Arabian Nights story instead!"
The other shoe had finally dropped. "We looked at each other with a dazed expression," one of the writers recalled, "and retired to our respective shells to meditate on the form the story ought to take." Without protest, the books and pictures of Rome went the way of the pirates. Reference pictures were unpinned and boxes' worth of research materials were shuffled away to make room for the volumes that would soon replace them: translations of The Arabian Nights by Galland, Scott, Burton, Lane, and Forster; papers on Middle Eastern architecture and decor; new illustrations and "delightful old woodcuts and engravings."
The exotic intrigue was hard to ignore. The Arabian Nights had everything Doug looked for in a story: romance, adventure, reversal of fortunes, and plenty of opportunities for physical hijinks and camera tricks. It was decided then. These classic tales merited the feature-length film treatment. And they would get just that.
"Our hero," Doug explained to his writers, "must be Every Young Man-of this age or any age-who believes that happiness is a quantity that can be stolen; who is selfish-at odds with the world-rebellious toward conventions on which comfortable human relations are based."
The moral of the story was boiled down to one snappy phrase-"Happiness must be earned"-and inscribed in twinkling stars across a midnight sky in the opening scenes of The Thief of Bagdad, as the film would be titled.
When an eighteen-year-old Anna May Wong arrived at the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios one July day in 1923, setting foot on the silent era’s most extravagant set yet, she must have instantly felt the production’s galvanizing sense of purpose. A deeply tan, bare-chested Douglas Fairbanks sat up, alert in his director’s chair. With a megaphone in hand and wearing diaphanous pantaloons, he presided over the eighteen-acre lot bristling with activity like an ant colony humming with extras, carpenters, and camera assistants. A sign that read bagdad in all caps was installed atop the highest scaffolding lest a bypasser on Santa Monica Boulevard confuse the Moorish arches and silver minarets towering above the studio walls with some lesser production.
Anna May could feel it in her bones: this was going to be her big break. She had come to Doug's attention back when he was still attached to the idea of doing a pirate flick. He'd attended the premiere of The Toll of the Sea, the 1922 film in which she played her first leading role, to see whether Technicolor's newly reengineered two-color process used in it might work for his concept. Though his plans to make the pirate tale were ultimately shelved until a later date, the image of the anguished Chinese maiden lingered.
The Toll of the Sea was a somewhat unusual production. The men behind it were not filmmakers but scientists who had wanted to exhibit the possibilities of their color film. Their objective was to sell the technology, not box office tickets, which freed them in a way to cast an unknown actress like Anna May.
In her role as Lotus Flower, she rescues a man named Allen Carver, played by matinee idol Kenneth Harlan. Carver is an American cad who washes up on the rocky shores of Hong Kong. The script, written by Frances Marion, the highest-paid screenwriter, and loosely based on Madame Butterfly, follows Lotus as she nurses Carver back to health. She predictably falls in love with the handsome foreigner and he in turn becomes enchanted with her "exotic" beauty. Lotus strikes a pact with the ocean that has brought her this gift, vowing: "Ask of me anything in return, O Sea!" Their courtship ensues among the cherry blossoms until Carver is called back home to the United States. In his absence, Lotus Flower, who believes Carver to be her rightful husband, gives birth to a son. Several years pass before she spots him again from the shore, but she soon discovers he has returned with an American wife. Grasping the truth of her situation, Lotus Flower selflessly gives her son over to the care of Carver and his new bride so that the boy might live a better life. Having made the supreme sacrifice of a mother, Lotus throws herself into the sea.
The delicate, pink-hued face of Anna May Wong, only seventeen and virtually unknown at the time, framed in dramatic chiaroscuro, her eyes glistening pools of feeling, proved unforgettable. Doug's interest was piqued. The Thief of Bagdad was a different kind of film and a departure from the Westerns and romantic comedies Doug had become famous for. He understood that this film's "differentness" called for a unique cast. He wasn't looking for star power. He was looking for players with exotic flair, that whiff of otherness that would infuse the picture with ethereal charm and transport moviegoers to a place they'd never been before. And thus, Anna May Wong was plucked from her relative obscurity, an actress with only three credited roles to her name.
Amidst this fairy-tale world, Doug would play the mischievous thief, Ahmed, who, after fleecing his victims of their precious jewels and bags of gold coins, smiles broadly and laughs at his successful capers as if to say, "What fools!" Ahmed's carefree outlook changes in an instant, however, when he sets eyes on something he cannot steal: the heart of the caliph's daughter. In order to wed the princess, played by a willowy Julanne Johnston, Ahmed must outsmart her three princely suitors from the far-off lands of India, Persia, and Mongolia, and win the caliph's favor by presenting the most priceless gift.
No hero's journey is complete, though, without an outsized villain to defeat. The Mongol prince, played masterfully by Japanese actor Kamiyama Sôjin, is the calculating, diabolical foil to Ahmed, the earnest, lovestruck thief. Not only does Cham Shang the Great plan to marry the princess, by force if necessary, but he has secretly arranged for his Mongol army to surround the palace immediately after their alliance is consummated. If all goes to plan, the city of Bagdad will be his for the taking. But to achieve all this, the Mongol prince must rely on a strategically placed mole on the inside.
Enter Anna May Wong as the Mongol slave, the treacherous double agent who outwardly serves as lady-in-waiting to the princess of Bagdad while surreptitiously reporting to her true master. Anna May did not relish being cast as a villain. "I like roles that win sympathy," she told one reporter, "So-called 'sinister' roles-and I get plenty of them-I don't like so much."
So far in Anna May's fledgling career, she'd snatched at every conceivable opportunity, connection, and advantage that came her way. She'd modeled furs for a local furrier and leaned on relationships with Rob Wagner (a screenwriter and former customer of her father's laundry) and James Wang (a former pastor who regularly recruited Chinatown extras for Hollywood productions) for introductions to moviemakers. She had propelled her way onto sets during holiday breaks from school, where she took on her first uncredited roles.
She knew what a Douglas Fairbanks picture could do for her career and was willing to play her part, even a nefarious Mongol slave, in exchange for the international exposure it would surely bring her. The question, really, was who wouldn't be lining up to watch The Thief of Bagdad when it finally premiered.
Of course, Anna May was ethnically Chinese, not Mongolian, but in an era when Chinese and Mongol were racial types used interchangeably to describe anyone of the East Asian persuasion, not many people knew the difference. Anyhow, fudging ethnic lines was a minor deception, considering white actors were usually given a free pass to mimic the other races.
When Anna May looked around Hollywood, she rarely saw anyone who looked like her doing much more than extra work. Sure, Etta Lee, a fellow Asian American actress, would play a supporting part alongside her as one of the "slave girls" in the princess's escort, but her name would be left off the credits. At eighteen, Anna May had already made it further than other nonwhite actresses in Hollywood. In fact, she was hard-pressed to name any woman of color at all who possessed the title of movie star-the status she herself aspired to. Mexican actress Dolores del Rio was still two years away from making her motion picture debut; Lupe Velez and Merle Oberon would not emerge for another several years, though the latter hid her South Asian ancestry and passed for white.
As for Black people in the movies, their presence was felt only by proxy-through the white actors who painted their faces tar black using the ashes of burnt cork. Blackface minstrelsy predated the advent of cinema, so naturally the practice carried over into the flickers. In 1903, Edwin S. Porter's film adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin introduced the first Black character played by a white actor. Eleven years and four adaptations later, a Black actor was finally cast as Tom, but even that breakthrough proved to be an aberration. Thirteen more years would pass before a Black actor appeared in the role again.
Hollywood scripted Black characters for comic relief, to validate the white supremacist racial hierarchy, and "to entertain by stressing Negro inferiority." Just as Asian actors like Anna May and Sôjin were frequently asked to play exotic sirens and Oriental villains, Black characters were relegated to the stereotypes of coon, mammy, tragic mulatto, and brutal buck. Even so, the idea that a Black actor, male or female, might assume one of these dehumanized roles on the silver screen was virtually unheard-of at the time. Aside from a handful of Black child actors in a smattering of features like Hal Roach's Our Gang series, white actors in blackface dominated Black roles well into the 1920s.
Copyright © 2024 by Katie Gee Salisbury. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
