24SHANGHAI EXPRESS

WHILE THE SPECTERS of the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu and his diabolical daughter continued to resonate in the West, the “Yellow Peril” would soon find a more menacing manifestation in the real world.

On September 18, 1931, just days after the release of Daughter of the Dragon, Japanese troops, using the pretext of an explosion along the Southern Manchurian Railway, attacked the Chinese city of Mukden (Shenyang). With Fu Manchurian cunning, a cabal of renegade officers from the Imperial Japanese Army had concocted a plot to destroy the rail track and blame it on Chinese brigands, in much the same way that the Germans would invade Poland on a casus belli in 1939. Mukden fell in just one day, with the loss of five hundred Chinese lives. By January 1932, Japan’s military takeover of China’s three northeastern provinces was complete. In March, Japan established its puppet state of Manchukuo and installed Puyi, the former emperor of China, as the figurehead of state. Long before the official start of World War II, the Mukden Incident would provide the initial salvo for a protracted, fourteen-year world war in Asia.

The Japanese aggression sparked worldwide condemnation. After the League of Nations released the Lytton Report and exposed the Japanese deception, Japan found itself diplomatically isolated and withdrew from the league. The invasion of Manchuria was so barbaric that it prompted Anna May, not a political activist by any means, to pen an opinion piece entitled “Manchuria” for Rob Wagner’s Beverly Hills Script. In the article, echoing Bertrand Russell’s analysis, she drew a stark contrast between China’s ancient, patient wisdom and the modern, aggressive, and bellicose culture of Japan:

Anna May Wong and Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express, 1932 (Courtesy of Everett Collection)

Never has the world so felt the need of spiritual rejuvenation to relieve it of the weariness of the whirl and clock of machines and the nerve-strain of speed and crushing size. Thus we are witnessing the greatest renaissance in history, which will culminate in a new interest and happiness in the philosophy of life. Just as fate destined the exquisite lotus to bloom above polluted torrents, thus, despite the iron heel of Japan, will the endangered bud of Chinese culture bloom forth in its consummate moral purity and spiritual elegance above the mire of blood and destruction.¹

Expressing a wish that China could rise above this plane of blood and destruction, these words in some ways served as a philosophical manifesto for Anna May, who would now appear in a major film about war-torn China. Produced by Adolph Zukor and directed by Josef von Sternberg, Shanghai Express has a storyline full of brigands, train robbers, torture, rape, murder, and garden varieties of moral decay.

As a so-called China flick, Shanghai Express becomes part of the enduring Hollywood tradition of casting a white actress, yellowface or not, in the exotic setting of faraway China. Earlier we had Alla Nazimova in The Red Lantern, and the 1930s brought Myrna Loy in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), Barbara Stanwyck in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), and Luise Rainer in The Good Earth (1937), to name just a few. Likewise, Sternberg’s new film was a star vehicle—not for Anna May but for his own “discovery” and new German import, Marlene Dietrich.

Dietrich’s breakaway film, The Blue Angel (1930), made in Berlin and directed by Sternberg, had become in only a few years a rousing success and a cultural classic in its own time. But the rise of nationalism changed the social dynamics of Germany and Europe at large. In his memoir, Sternberg, a Vienna-born Jew, recalls the censorship of The Blue Angel in the Nazi era: “The Germans did not then consider the film to be German in essence. When he became Lord High Executioner, Adolf Hitler ordered the negative and all but one copy to be destroyed.” Curiously enough, Hitler would repeatedly screen the remaining copy and secretly considered it to be his favorite film.² This anecdote speaks not only to the lure of the film or the perversion of the Führer, but also to the irresistible charisma of the lead actress whose legs, as Peter Gay puts it, embody the Weimar Zeitgeist as palpably as the Bauhaus buildings, Kandinsky’s abstractions, and Rilke’s Duino Elegies.³

Fleeing Germany, Dietrich arrived in Los Angeles in 1931, beginning there her permanent exile in America. In the ensuing years, she would reject repeated overtures from the Führer, who tried to lure her back to make films for him, as her rival, Leni Riefenstahl, did. Dietrich would eventually renounce her German citizenship and become a naturalized citizen of the United States, while Riefenstahl ascended to infamy as “Hitler’s camerawoman.” Thus, two of the three women in that memorable Eisenstaedt portrait from the 1928 Berlin Press Ball were reunited in Hollywood. Renewing their friendship, they would make a major film for Sternberg, the quirky, imperious savant.

Like Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom, the exotic China of Sternberg’s Shanghai Express was created out of cardboard and fantasy. Borrowing some footage taken by James Howe during his trip to China in 1928, the film was mostly shot on a railway set built in California’s San Bernardino Valley. Haunted by the Mojave Desert just beyond the mountains and devastated by the hot dry Santa Ana winds, the valley was always, as Joan Didion termed it, “an alien place.”⁴ Recalling this supposedly halcyon era, Sternberg describes how the production team conjured up a Middle Kingdom in a harsh landscape: “A China was built of papier-mâché and into it we placed slant-eyed men, women, and children, who seemed to relish being part of it. We borrowed a train from the Santa Fe, painted it white, and added an armored car to carry Chinese soldiers with fixed bayonets.” Every detail was carefully thought out. They even raised a cow and had it give birth to a calf. When the camera was ready to roll, Sternberg had the cow nourish its calf near noisy railroad tracks, “so that it would be undisturbed by clanging bells and hooting whistles when my train came along through the crowded streets to be stopped by an animal suckling its young.”⁵

Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, only seven at the time, was allowed to accompany her mother to the film sets. In a biography about her diva mother—her “Mutti”—Riva gives us a close-up of how the famous opening scenes of Shanghai Express were manufactured in the San Bernardino Valley: “A dreary railroad yard, deserted except for a few lonely Pullman wagons and … suddenly, CHINA! Bustling, frantic, hot, dusty, crowded, milling, scurrying, overpopulated China. Chickens, goats, paper lanterns, straw-hatted coolies, ragged urchins, scrawny dogs, bags, trunks, crates, and boxes, roped parcels in all shapes and sizes. Above, a sea of banners, long, narrow white cloth panels painted with Chinese letters.” In the midst of this dramatic chaos, Maria saw a real train with its huge black locomotive belching steam, and high atop it appeared Sternberg, a little man who was busy painting white shadows onto the train. It seemed that Mother Nature had dealt Sternberg a personal affront by refusing to supply clouds that day, but, “undaunted, he was painting his own.”⁶

As usual, the several hundred Chinese extras were recruited from Los Angeles’s Chinatown; some of them were Anna May’s old friends or neighbors, including James Leong, who had continued acting to subsidize his dream of producing more Chinese films. Tom Gubbins, dubbed the “Mayor of Chinatown,” worked as the film’s interpreter to translate the director’s instructions for the Chinese extras and help Warner Oland, playing a half-caste character, to ad-lib a few singsong lines as the occasion demanded. After plenty of practice as Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu, Oland could now pass so easily that an old Chinese man who had never worked in a film thought Oland was genuinely Chinese. Through the interpreter, the old man asked Oland whether he was from Canton, because he looked like a boy he had known there many years earlier.⁷ Such a friendly rapport between total strangers was thematically perfect for a film that featured an eclectic group of globetrotting travelers boarding a train in Peking on what would be a harrowing and unforgettable journey to Shanghai.

Among these passengers is Shanghai Lily (Dietrich), a notorious “coaster” who lives by her wits along the China coast. Symbolizing the modern, decadent West, she arrives at the swarming train station in an automobile, sporting a vampish black gown, a veil, and a feather boa. In contrast, Hui Fei (Wong), a reformed Chinese prostitute on her way to Shanghai to live a respectable life, arrives at the scene in a palanquin, clad in a loose cheongsam. Their first glances at each other set up a dynamic between the two women that will enliven, like electrical currents, the film. As one reviewer wrote, “They look at each other, neither intently nor curiously, but in that look, the attitude each takes to life finds its perfect and complete expression.”⁸

The unusual chemistry between the two stars extended beyond the screen. Once again, through the innocent eyes of Dietrich’s seven-year-old daughter, we can sense their cozy intimacy—if not, as some have suggested, sapphic love. As Riva recalls, “Anna May Wong and my mother became chummy. Between takes, they talked, not rehearsing their scenes, just soft conversation, smoked, sipped cool coffee through their straws. My mother fussed over Miss Wong’s square bangs and had Travis redesign one of her kimonos so it would be more flattering. She liked Miss Wong much better than her leading man.”⁹ Sometimes the two would simply relax together in Dietrich’s grand dressing room, listening to Richard Tauber’s records on a gramophone—Dietrich had a sizable collection of work by Tauber, her favorite crooner—just as Shanghai Lily and Hui Fei would do in their shared compartment on the Shanghai Express.¹⁰ Such intimacy fed persistent speculations about Anna May’s sexual orientation, especially since the Blonde Venus was openly bisexual. As Donald Spoto describes it in his biography, “Dietrich openly discussed her casual amours, which included men from film studios with whom she spent an occasional night, actors from the theater who she thought required a little attention, and those like Anna May Wong and Tilly Losch, who were clever, amusing and exotic companions.”¹¹ In fact, Dietrich was not alone in counting Anna May as her lesbian lover. Dolores del Rio, the Hispanic actress who would one day be immortalized next to Anna May in a public-square shrine on Hollywood Boulevard, was also said to number Wong, besides Henry Fonda and Orson Welles, among her paramours.¹²

In Shanghai Express, Shanghai Lily’s love interest is Captain Donald Harvey (Clive Brook), a British medical officer, with whom she had a fling five years ago and who still burns a torch for her. In the midst of all the intrigues of civil war, espionage, kidnapping, and killing, the rapprochement of Shanghai Lily and her Doc constitutes a major thread of the plot. Off-screen, though, as Riva reveals, Dietrich was not fond of her leading man, who turned out to be a predictably wooden type: “a photogenic jaw, British, and little else.”¹³

Thrown into the mix was Warner Oland as Henry Chang, a Chinese warlord traveling incognito, a degenerate who covets both Shanghai Lily and Hui Fei. A half-caste, Chang was born of a white father and a Chinese mother. Later in the film, someone queries his ethnicity: “I can’t make head or tail out of you, Mr. Chang—are you Chinese or white or what are you?” Unlike Chris Buckwell, Oland’s other half-caste character in Old San Francisco, who hides his Chinese identity and passes for white, Chang admits, “I’m not proud of my white blood.” His racial self-hatred plays out in his hostility toward all of the white characters aboard the train: Sam Salt, an American peddler of knockoff jewelry; a Frenchman dishonorably discharged from the army but still wearing a uniform to disguise his disgraceful past; a German opium smuggler posing as a coal baron; a missionary with a hypocritical sense of morality; and Mrs. Haggerty, a querulous boardinghouse owner desperate to keep up her façade of respectability. It seems that everyone has a secret, giving credence to what David Selznick once said about Sternberg’s films: They all dealt with completely fake people in wholly fake situations. Only Shanghai Lily and Hui Fei, two women of apparent ill repute, live carefree by their charm, wits, and grit. The former speaks one line that encapsulates the disposition of a femme fatale: “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.” The latter, by giving the pompous, Cockney-accented Mrs. Haggerty a sardonic putdown, reveals a soul comfortable in her own skin: “I must confess I don’t quite know the standard of respectability that you demand in your boardinghouse, Mrs. Haggerty.”

Carrying such a motley cast of passengers, Sternberg’s hand-painted Shanghai Express chugs precariously through the maelstrom of wartime China. Using a Chinese-character clock as a timekeeper, the story unfolds like a murder mystery that has to be solved by a supersleuth before the train reaches its destination. Every time the train stops, the drama turns, comically at times and violently at others. Barely clearing Peking, the express is halted by a cow tethered to the tracks with a suckling calf, attended by a peasant vociferously bickering with the engineers while gently coaxing the animals out of the way. At the next stop, government troops order everyone off the train for inspection and they arrest a Chinese fellow, later identified as Chang’s right-hand man. In the midst of the commotion, Chang sends a telegram to his rebel forces, informing them of the arrest and ordering the hijack of the train. At midnight, rebels ambush the train at a remote station, killing all the government soldiers onboard. Chang now reveals his true identity and changes into a military outfit. After interrogating each of the foreign passengers, Chang decides to hold Captain Harvey hostage to exchange for his own lieutenant. He then makes advances to Shanghai Lily but is rebuffed. Frustrated, Chang satisfies his bestial craving by violating Hui Fei. In revenge, Hui Fei kills Chang with a dagger. With the rebel leader dead, the train rumbles on, arriving in Shanghai without further ado.

The railroad journey might have set a good tempo for the plot, but Sternberg was never known to be a zippy storyteller. He was far more interested in making love to his star with the camera. Every time Dietrich’s character appears on-screen, she is almost always shot full frame, as if every gesture, look, or word was loaded with significance. Under special lighting, Dietrich’s face glowed in the dark like a silver moon, and her “limp, wispy hair took on thickness, life, and incredible sheen.”¹⁴ It might have just been a rumor, but it was said that real gold dust, instead of Sternberg’s butterfly lights, was sprinkled in Dietrich’s hair to create those starry sparkles. But it was certainly true that Paramount had insured Dietrich’s legs with Lloyd’s of London for a million dollars.¹⁵ Such an obsession with megastars drew the ire of the critics. A reviewer for Vanity Fair wrote that Sternberg “traded his open style for fancy play, chiefly upon the legs in silk, and buttocks in lace, of Dietrich, of whom he has made a Paramount slut. By his own token, Sternberg is a man of meditation as well as a man of action; but instead of contemplating the navel of Buddha his umbilical perseverance is fixed on the navel of Venus.”¹⁶ Not everyone, however, was offended by Sternberg’s penchant for visual luxury and highly stylized performances. Ayn Rand, the patron saint of libertarianism, once told Sternberg that rarely had any film so impressed her as Shanghai Express. When pressed for a reason, Rand spoke of a scene that was unforgettable to her: “The way the wind blows through the fur-piece around Marlene’s shoulder when she sits on the back platform of the train!”¹⁷

Next to the aura of the Blonde Venus, Anna May held her ground quite well, as her character commands a force field of her own in the film. While Shanghai Lily prances around like a dressage mare in heat, Hui Fei plays solitaire and smokes cigarettes alone, minding her own business. Shanghai Lily may speak some clever lines, but it is Hui Fei who delivers the most hardboiled quips in the film. In fact, on the occasions of their bon mots, their respective roles as lead and support are often reversed, with Shanghai Lily setting things up for Hui Fei to deliver the punch. In one scene, when Captain Harvey is held hostage by Chang and Shanghai Lily despairs over his plight, Hui Fei asks, “When are we leaving?” Shanghai Lily has a proverbial blonde moment, as she replies, “I wish I knew. I suppose as soon as Captain Harvey comes down.”

“If he’s up there,” Hui Fei deadpans, “he may never come down.”

After Hui Fei kills Chang and saves everyone, Shanghai Lily says, “I don’t know if I ought to be grateful to you or not.” Hui Fei replies in a sultry voice, with the steely firmness of Fu Manchu’s daughter (or a gun moll in a classic noir film), “It’s of no consequence. I didn’t do it for you. Death canceled his debt to me.”

It is worth emphasizing that, in this saga, with all its guns, armies, and imperial powers, no one has the power or will to change the course of history, except for the lowly prostitute who has the courage to take down a supervillain to settle a personal account. In other words, Hui Fei is the real engine driving the Shanghai Express.

Released on February 17, 1932, the film received mixed reviews but did well at the box office, grossing more than $1.5 million worldwide. It was nominated for Academy Awards in three categories—Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography; Lee Garmes took home the Oscar in the last category. Most film historians agree that if there had been a category at that time for Best Supporting Actress, Anna May would have been the strongest contender that year.¹⁸ While Hui Fei collects the $20,000 bounty for Chang’s head, Anna May earned only $6,000 for the film, merely a fraction of Dietrich’s salary of $78,166. Paramount did not only lowball Anna May—for her top-billing role in Daughter of the Dragon a year earlier, her salary was also $6,000, whereas her costars Oland earned $12,000 and Hayakawa $10,000. More frustratingly, the studio also refused to give her a contract after her sparkling performance in Shanghai Express.

As Hollywood plunged into the Golden Age of the 1930s, Anna May’s Tinseltown fortune was merely chugging along, like a train without a destination.