The Shame of "West of Shanghai"

 

by Daniel White

"I am Fang, I speak most dang bad English." With this dubious line, Boris Karloff introduces himself to the rest of the cast in West of Shanghai, a 1937 Warner Brothers action adventure flick that offers little of either. I am a huge fan of Karloff's, and like his fright film pal, Bela Lugosi, he could do little wrong in my book. Unfortunately in this movie, he gives such a bad performance it's impossible to overlook.

Yellowface, the practice of white actors playing Asian roles in film was common in Hollywood during the Golden Age. Probably the most famous case is The Good Earth, MGM's filming of the Pearl Buck novel, released the same year as West of Shanghai. I am not interested in debating the wrongness of yellowface. Like the way other minorities were treated in Tinseltown's hey day, it is embarrassing and unfortunate.

Mr. Karloff, wherever he is, might wish to have this movie removed from his oeuvre. The great man lays a great big egg here, astonishing in it's awfulness.

A group of Americans are traveling through China, eager to reach an isolated outpost where oil has been discovered. They reach the site, about the same time General Fang arrives, and that's when the sparks fly. Or are supposed to fly, but a lackluster script defeats everyone, and despite being helmed by the capable, competent, John Farrow the whole thing falls flat. Maybe that's why Karloff was over-acting so ridiculously. Trying to create a little fun where none was to be had.

West of Shanghai may have failed as entertainment, but it excels in another way: it shows us the illusion in movies, the trickery and artifice that existed in Hollywood during those years. William Henry Pratt, an Englishman, who was part Indian, is transformed into Boris Karloff, one of the original kings of horror. Ricardo Cortez, who also stars, started out life as Jacob Krantz, a Jewish kid from the Bronx. But Hollywood needed him to be a Latin Lover so he became Ricardo Cortez. Finally Beverly Roberts, the female lead, had a brief career as a leading lady at Warner Brothers in the late thirties, playing opposite, among others, Pat O''Brien and Humphrey Bogart. Dissatisfied with her film roles, she quit the movies, worked on stage, radio and TV, eventually becoming a union organizer in the theater. While at Warner's, she met actress Wynne Gibson, and began a 50 year love affair that ended only upon Gibson's death in 1987. Three individuals, who are not exactly what they seem, whose paths crossed while traveling, West of Shanghai.

With Sheila Bromley, Richard Loo, and Gordon Oliver (the poor man's Fred MacMurray), West of Shanghai is available on YouTube.