Philip Ahn Movies
Though often cast as a Japanese or Chinese character, LA-born actor Philip Ahn was of Korean extraction. In films from 1936, Ahn spent the war years portraying dozens of heartless Japanese spies and military officers; ironically, the actor's father was a Korean diplomat who died in a Japanese concentration camp. After the war, Ahn was occasionally permitted to play a sympathetic role, minus stereotypical accent and mannerisms; cast as a lab technician in 1950's The Big Hangover, he has almost as much screen time as nominal star Van Johnson. One of his most substantial roles was as Chinese businessman Po Chang, foster father of young Caucasian tycoon Frank Garlund (Charles Quinlivan) on the brief 1960 TV weekly The Garlund Touch. At the time of his death from lung cancer at age 66, Philip Ahn was best known to American TV addicts as Master Kan on the TV series Kung Fu. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1937
Anna May Wong, who cornered the 1930s market in Eurasian heroines, stars in Daughter of Shanghai. Wong is on the trail of the criminals who murdered her father. The villains are running an illegal-alien operation, smuggling cheap Chinese and Mexican labor into San Francisco and killing those unlucky souls who prove "inconvenient". Wong takes a job as an exotic dancer in a Central American nitery, hoping to trap the murderers in the act. Though J. Carroll Naish and Buster Crabbe are top-billed, the actual hero of Daughter of Shanghai is Chinese actor Philip Ahn, playing an FBI agent protecting Wong from the bad guys. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anna May Wong, Philip Ahn, (more)
- 1937
Co-starring Troop 13 of the Los Angeles District Boy Scouts of America, this Tex Ritter music Western opens with footage from the 1936 Boy Scout Jamboree held in Washington, D.C. The Boy Scouts helps G-man Tex Ritter catch a gang of train robbers headed by the ever present Charles King. At first displeased with the idea of having the Boy Scouts appear as crime fighters in a B-Western, scout officials changed their minds after the October 1937 Broadway opening of the film, praising instead the boys for playing "their parts like real showmen." Marjorie Reynolds, later a popular Paramount ingenue, played Ritter's romantic interest but is billed below his horse White Flash, while veteran slapstick comic Snub Pollard and child actor Tommy Bupp added extra appeal for a mostly juvenile target audience. The grownups, meanwhile, could enjoy Ritter's singing of his own Girl of the Prairie and Frank Sanucci's Headin' for My Texas Home. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tex Ritter, Marjorie Reynolds, (more)
- 1937
A couple of American soldiers of fortune are hired by the wife of a Chinese general to deliver a priceless diamond to a shopkeeper in Shanghai in this low-budget whodunit from the RKO "B"-unit. Just as the gem reaches its destination all hell breaks lose. When the dust settles, the diamond is gone and Tom Baldwin (Vinton Haworth) and sidekick Joe Dugan (Gordon Jones) are left with a group of highly suspicious witnesses. The entire assembly, including pretty but mysterious Jane Dunn (Constance Worth), then boards a liner headed for San Francisco. After several shipboard murders and the revelation that Jane is a custom agent, the culprit is caught red-handed. A lady detective ought to have made a refreshing change but, sadly, China Passage delivers few surprises and the armchair detective is never truly tested. Usually a supporting player of little merit, Vinton Haworthproves a rather weak-chinned hero and is certainly no match for the ash-blonde Worth, an Australian actress turned Queen of Hollywood B-movies. The rest of the supporting cast perform their assignment in the expected manner, Dick Elliott being the standout as an eternally tipsy traveler. China Passage was directed by Edward Killy, who later helmed the studio's series of Tim Holt B-Westerns. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Constance Worth, Vinton Haworth, (more)
Based on Donald Davis and Owen Davis' stage-adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's sprawling novel, Sidney Franklin's The Good Earth is the story of a Chinese farming couple whose lives are torn apart by poverty, greed, and nature. Paul Muni stars as Wang Lung a hardworking, but poor, farmer who weds freed-slave O-Lan (Luise Rainer). They struggle to build a life together, but after finally finding success, a plague of locusts descends upon their land, bringing a true test of the couple's perseverance. For her performance, Luise Rainer won the second of back-to-back Best Actress Oscars, while cinematographer Karl Freund took home an Academy Award for his photography work. The Good Earth was the final film production of Irving Thalberg, who died before the film was completed. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, (more)
- 1937
The second of eight 1930s films based on J. P. Marquand's Japanese detective, Thank You, Mr. Moto finds Moto (Peter Lorre) coming to the aid of Chinese royalty. The last remaining members of an ancient Chinese clan (Pauline Frederick and Philip Ahn) have in their possession six of seven scrolls, which when put together reveal the secret hiding place of Genghis Kahn's treasure. Moto has the seventh scroll, which he sneaks into Peking in hopes of contacting the family. The villains torture and kill the Chinese royals, then lure Moto to a rendezvous on a Chinese river junk. Moto is aided in thwarting the villains by the quick thinking of ingenue Jayne Regan; then, rather than risk the scrolls falling into the wrong hands and thus disgracing the Chinese family who died for their sake, Moto burns all seven parchments. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Lorre, Thomas Beck, (more)
- 1937
In this outdoor drama, a plucky young woman inherits her father's logging business and decides to try running it, even though she knows nothing about it. In her innocence, she fires all her trustworthy workers and instead hires a band of slick talking hoods who immediately try to cheat her. Fortunately, a handsome logger and his trusty axe come to save her. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Holt, Grace Bradley, (more)
- 1936
Mae West butts heads with Victor McLaglen in Raoul Walsh's Klondike Annie, but the real victor was the Legion of Decency, whose censorship strictures transformed a saucy and spicy gumbo into something closer to chicken noodle soup. West plays Rose Carlton, the kept woman of Chan Lo (Harold Huber), who takes her from walking the streets to pacing the floors of her high rent apartment. Rose ends up killing Chan and beats it from San Francisco to the frozen north. She boards a ship where burly sea captain Bull Brackett (McLaglen) takes a shine to her; when he finds out she killed Chan, he blackmails her into coming up and seeing him sometime. Boarding the ship in Seattle is missionary Annie Alden (Helen Jerome Eddy), who dies on the way to Alaska. Rose assumes Annie's identity and, upon arrival in Alaska proceeds to preach the Good Book, saving sinners by unorthodox methods. Mountie Jack Forrest (Philip Reed) arrives in town searching for Chan's murderer and he falls in love with Rose, unaware that the woman he loves is the killer he seeks. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mae West, Victor McLaglen, (more)
Stranded in Shanghai, orphaned Ching-Ching (Shirley Temple), the ward of Chinese missionaries, is rescued from harm by playboy Tommy Randall (Robert Young). Through a series of unbelievable but entertaining circumstances, Ching-Ching inadvertently stows away on a boat bound for San Francisco, which happens to include Tommy on the passenger list. During the long voyage, our heroine plays little-miss-fixit for the shipboard romance between Tommy and Susan Parker (Alice Faye). The two marry to give Ching-Ching a proper home, but their clashing personalities lead inexorably to the divorce court. Once again, however, Ching-Ching saves the day, this time with the assistance of twinkly-eyed Judge Booth (J. Edward Bromberg). Stowaway is the one in which Shirley dispenses oriental aphorisms a la Charlie Chan, speaks Chinese, and offers imitations of Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson and Fred Astaire. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shirley Temple, Robert Young, (more)
- 1936
General Yang (Akim Tamiroff) is a politically ambitious Chinese bandit who holds the Northern districts in a grip of terror. Yang is opposed by O'Hara (Gary Cooper), an American mercenary who fights on behalf of the peasants. When he is entrusted with a large sum of money to buy guns, O'Hara becomes the target of Yang and his minions. Betrayed by a cowardly Caucasian (Porter Hall), O'Hara nonetheless falls in love with his betrayer's daughter Judy (Madeline Carroll). Yang captures both O'Hara and Judy and spirits them away on his junk, where the General intends to torture O'Hara so as to find out where the money is. A bizarre and gloomy ending caps this atmospheric thriller, adapted from Charles G. Booth's best-selling novel by Clifford Odets--who, along with director Lewis Milestone, novelist John O'Hara and Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky, appears as an extra in one scene. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, (more)
- 1936
Anything Goes is a fun-filled but hardly faithful adaptation of the same-named Cole Porter Broadway musical, with additional songs by Hoagy Carmichael, among many many others. Set on a luxury liner, the story gets under way when Moonface Mullins (Charlie Ruggles), Public Enemy No. 13, slips on board disguised as a bishop. As he weaves in and out of the story, Billy Crocker (Bing Crosby) romances Hope Harcourt (Ida Lupino), titled Englishman Evelyn Oakleigh (Arthur Treacher) also pursues Hope, and brassy entertainer Reno Sweeney (Ethel Merman) chases after Sir Evelyn. Critics in 1934 complained that the original Broadway production's Victor Moore was replaced by Charlie Ruggles, but none could fault Ethel Merman's rendition of "I Get a Kick Out of You", nor her duet with Bing Crosby, "You're the Top" (the only two songs retained from the Porter score!) Anything Goes was remade in 1956, again with Bing Crosby, and again with little fidelity to the original (this remake required MCA Television to retitle the 1936 version as Tops is the Limit). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bing Crosby, Ethel Merman, (more)
Battling Hoofer is the reissue title of the 1936 James Cagney vehicle Something to Sing About. Cagney plays Terry Rooney, a New York bandleader who heads to Hollywood when he is offered a movie contract. The down-to-Earth Rooney resists the "star treatment," an attitude misinterpreted by movie executive Bennett O. Regan (Gene Lockhart) as arrogance. When Terry's first film is a hit, Regan orders everyone involved to keep its success a secret from Terry, lest he develop a swelled head! (We don't believe it either.) The best sequence has Rooney chewing out his Asian houseboy, Ito (Philip Ahn), whereupon he drops his "So solly" pidgin English and begins talking like a Harvard professor! Terry gets to romance newcomer Evelyn Daw, as well as veteran vamp Mona Barrie; he also gets to participate in several lively dance numbers. Something to Sing About was the second of Jimmy Cagney's films for Poverty Row studio Grand National: the production values and snappy script work that he might have enjoyed at Warner Bros. are noticeably lacking, but Cagney is always fun to watch. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Cagney, Evelyn Daw, (more)
Although released after The Shadow of Silk Lennox, this ultra low-budget mystery thriller was the first film in which Creighton Chaney used the billing Lon Chaney, Jr. The actor was persuaded to change his name by producer Ray Kirkwood, who promised to make 24 action melodramas with him as the star. Only two were actually made, however, and Scream in the Night did not enjoy a wide release until 1943, when Chaney had become Universal's newest horror sensation. Detectives Jack Wilson (Chaney) and Wu Ting (Philip Ahn) are tracking the famous jewel thief Johnny Fly (Manuel Lopez) to Singapore, where Fly has stolen a priceless ruby belonging to lovely Edith Bentley (Sheila Terry). Wu Ting is murdered by one of Fly's underlings, the deformed Butch Curtain (also Chaney), and Edith gets herself kidnapped. Bearing some resemblance to the killer, Wilson manages to infiltrate the gang and free the girl. Kirkwood and director Fred Newmeyer obviously counted on Chaney, Jr. to deliver the goods as the deformed Butch Curtain, but Lon was not in a league with his legendary father no matter how hard he tried. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lon Chaney, Jr., Sheila Terry, (more)
