Paul Muni, Luise Rainer in The Good Earth
The ethnic controversy surrounding the casting of Gérard Depardieu as Alexandre Dumas in Safy Nebbou's The Other Dumas reminded me of Arthur Dong's 2007 documentary Hollywood Chinese, which discusses how Caucasian actors usually played major Chinese roles in American movies up to the not-too-distant past. Among those featured in Hollywood Chinese, whether in clips or as talking heads or both, are Paul Muni, Peter Sellers, Nancy Kwan, Luise Rainer, Katharine Hepburn, Turhan Bey, Joan Chen, Ang Lee, Christopher Lee, Sidney Toler, and, inevitably, Warner Oland, the most famous Dr. Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan (for those who know their film history).
At a panel discussion held after the Los Angeles' AFI FEST screening of Hollywood Chinese a couple of years ago, Nancy Kwan — who's part Scottish, part Chinese — told the crowd that she's an actress, and therefore should be cast in any sort of role she's able to play, be it a Chinese character or, say, a Hispanic character. She added that she ran into difficulties when auditioning for roles of other ethnicities, having to face hostility from contenders who resented the fact that a "Chinese" actress was trying to steal their parts.
Kwan's was my favorite remark — naysaying to a certain extent what Hollywood Chinese stands for. Two-time Oscar winner Luise Rainer's take on the matter was just as politically incorrect. In the film, Rainer says she is an actress and therefore should be able to play all sorts of roles as long as she can make the characters real, regardless of their ethnicity. That's what acting is all about. I fully agree — even while admitting that mostly that has been a one-way (white to non-white) road to thespian creativity.
Rainer, who won her second consecutive Academy Award for MGM's 1937 blockbuster The Good Earth, is simply superb as the long-suffering Chinese peasant O-Lan. (By the way, Rainer's first Oscar was for The Great Ziegfeld; and I should add that the London-based actress turned 100 a couple of weeks ago.)
Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer