The Thief Of Bagdad 1924

Arabian Heights

The Thief Of Bagdad 
USA 1924 Directed by Raoul Walsh
United Artists/Imprint Blu Ray Zone B

Five years after Douglas Fairbanks formed United Artists... with Mary Pickford (to whom he was married), Charlie Chaplin and D. W. Griffith... he got very enthusiastic about doing this huge, expensive epic of a film, The Thief Of Bagdad. This is the first film featured in Imprint’s new The Thief Of Bagdad three movie Blu Ray restoration boxed edition. A couple of weeks before he died, my dad expressed a more than passing interest in, when he got well enough again, rewatching his favourite movie, the 1940s Korda version of The Thief Of Bagdad. Unbeknownst to him, I’d already pre-ordered this set direct from Imprint in Australia (because the pound to Australian dollar rate is wonderful at the moment) for him as a Christmas present. Alas, my father passed away before it arrived and he was in no real state to watch it anyway but, my mother and I are now watching it for him, hoping that some kind of spirit of my dad is somehow watching it with us.

Now, I’ve not seen a movie with Fairbanks in it before and, while I can certainly admire his physical prowess and understand why he was so popular in his day, I found his acting to be a little more over-the-top than was maybe strictly necessary. It’s more what you think of as a stereotype of silent acting as opposed to what my actual experience of what silent movie acting can often be. Nevertheless, I also found him quite endearing and don’t begrudge him his popularity because... yeah... he’s still pretty entertaining to watch. However, another actor in the film does contrast with him in terms of style to his detriment... but more on her in a minute. 

I have to say, the prospect of sitting through over two and a half hours of this movie seemed daunting but, no, I was caught up in it straight away and it really didn’t seem that long at all. You can see why the film was so expensive to make... it looks truly epic and the sets are amazing. For example, the wonderful gate of Bagdad which splits open in four different directions, revealing giant teeth holding it together when locked, is absolutely marvellous and just one of many inventive moments in this movie (it certainly wouldn’t look out of place in the first Flash Gordon serial, reviewed here, made over a decade later). 

Fairbanks’ thief character (and his partner in crime, played wonderfully comically by Snitz Edwards) is set up in a long series of scenes highlighting his ingenious and skilled thievery (including some nice use of a magic rope in the early scenes which, honestly, the character shouldn’t have been so quick to throw away because it would have been useful on his later adventures in the movie). Anyhow, he becomes infatuated, in a series of incidents too convoluted to cover here, with the Sultan’s daughter, played by Julanne Johnston and, in the last hour of the film (with his character believed dead by all but his romantic interest), he competes with three princes to find and bring back the rarest treasure on Earth, to give to the lady and win her hand in mariage... specifically competing against the villainous Mongol prince, played by Sôjin Kamiyama (in a role which I can’t help but think may have influenced Alex Raymond on his newspaper strip creation of the Flash Gordon villain Ming The Merciless). 

The villain is also helped by the treacherous slave girl in the Sultan’s palace... who is played by Fairbanks’ big discovery and who is the actress I was talking about earlier, in a relatively small (spread out over the length of the movie) but pivotal role... 

So... when Fairbanks was trying to cast the film, he saw the film The Toll Of The Sea (reviewed by me here) and so he got in contact with the leading lady from that small production, Anna May Wong, to fulfil this role in his movie. And it pretty much shot her to fame and kickstarted her career properly. And she really does a great job here too. She also indulges in the essential style of silent movie acting where everything needs to be relayed with gestures and expressions but, she’s much more subtle and understated here than, for example, Fairbanks’ overuse of his hand making grabbing motions every time his character sees something he wants to steal. She’s pretty amazing in this, it has to be said and, yeah, a nice surprise because, when I pre-ordered this set, I hadn’t read her biography as yet and didn’t realise she was in this until I’d read that (my review of that book can be found here).

Anyway, back to the adventures... while his rivals pick up, respectively, a magic carpet, a magic eye/jewel and a magic, healing apple... Fairbank’s thief goes through several quests culminating in his recovery of a magic chest, which gives him pretty much anything he wishes for. So he braves The Valley Of Fire... timing his jumps over volcanic pits which pretty much pre-dates modern video game design... kills creatures in The Valley Of Monsters (slitting open the chest of one, we see the blood splash down in a moment that definitely marks this film out as a pre-code movie), braves The Cavern Of Enchanted Trees, meets The Old Man Of The Midnight Sea and then rides a pegasus-like horse from The Abode Of The Winged Horse to the Moon Kingdom to retrieve both his chest and a cloak of invisibility. All this before rushing back to Bagdad and conjuring a battalion of soldiers to defeat the secret army the Mongol Prince has raised in Bagdad for the conquest of the city. 

And it’s great stuff... some of the special effects such as the magic carpet, done practically by lifting a platform on cables and flying it over the heads of the people of the set of Bagdad, look absolutely amazing and put to shame effects done differently over the years since this one hit cinemas. And though some of the creatures look a little fake and the wings on the horse a little less powerful than you would expect, I was completely bowled over by the spectacle of this film and enjoyed every second of it. Carl Davis’ ‘new score’, which has recycled bits of Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, including lots of repetitive steals from Scheherazade, really upped the game too (I love that whole symphonic suite anyway) although, the use of The Flight Of The Bumblebee seemed a little too on the nose, it has to be said.

All in all, though... great film and a wonderful transfer from Imprint films. I will wholeheartedly recommend this version of The Thief Of Bagdad to anyone I know and I look forward now to revisiting the Korda version in this set, along with the Steve Reeves version which I haven’t yet seen. 

Not Your China Doll

Queen Wong

Not Your China Doll
The Wild And Shimmering 
Life Of Anna May Wong
By Katie Gee Salisbury
Faber
ISBN 9780571388677

I’ve seen just a few movies with Anna May Wong in them over the years but never really knew much about her. So sometime around a year and a half ago I bought this beautiful looking, new hardback of Not Your China Doll, subtitled The Wild And Shimmering Life Of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury. Well, because of the usual book accumulation problem, I only got around to cracking those attractive covers late 2025 but, alas, when I got to around about three quarters of the way through, a long drawn out personal tragedy hit my life, culminating in the passing of my father. As regular readers will know I shut down the blog for just over a month but I also stopped reading this tome at the same time, because I didn’t think a book this well written and illuminating was something I could fully concentrate on after his passing.

But, both the blog and my somewhat eclectic ‘book life’ are both back in action and so, it was time to finish what I started. Which proved to be an absolutely charming book about the Asian-American actress, born in Los Angeles in 1905 under the name Wong Liu Tsong... which apparently, translated from Chinese, means Frosted Yellow Willows.

And, I have to say, this book was teaching me new things from the start. I mean, beginning with the arrival of D. W. Griffith in LA in 1910, it’s the first time that I was made aware that the reason that the film people who flocked to what would become Hollywoodland in California decided to go there in the first place was because the area has a way more consistent light source to be able to make movies in. I’d never even thought of it before. And in a time when ‘No Jews, Actors or Dogs Allowed’ was a familiar sign hanging on doors, we have a young Anna May Wong who was obsessed by the movies and sneaking off to visit the sets/locations and also spend hours in her local nickelodeon shows.

Without going into all the details, she finally got some acting jobs in films (while working at her father’s laundry each day after wrapping on set) and her fourth role in The Toll Of The Sea (reviewed by me here) proved to be her big break because it was the film in which Douglas Fairbanks saw her and offered her the role in his silent version of The Thief Of Bagdad (as it’s spelled on the titles of that particular movie... review will hopefully be forthcoming at some time during this next year on this blog, it’s already written).

The book then charts her career on screen in such classics as Piccadilly (as part of her European tour to help give her career a boost and reviewed in my second ever post for this blog here) and Shanghai Express for Von Sternberg, opposite Marlene Dietrich (review coming soon) whom she posed with, along with Leni Riefenstahl, for a photo at a party in Paris years before (and yes, that photo is one of the pictures which dot the book as a start to each chapter). The book talks about an important playwright lover from London as well as her hanging out with famous friends such as Paul Robeson and Emil Jannings (and wife Gussy Holl). And even a brief romantic dalliance with her leading man in a stage show at one point, a young Vincent Price.

It also covers her reception in China and details her tour of that land in 1936 (also talking about the documentary on the Chinese people she filmed as one of her projects while she was there), noting such incidents as a native cantonese speaker asking her to go back to English because of her atrocious American accent.

If I had one small criticism of the book it’s that her later years of ill health are not covered in as lengthy a fashion as I might have wanted but, then again, I don’t blame the author as the book is so well researched that one assumes that not a lot of information was as forthcoming about this period of her life as others. Or, indeed, it just may have been a shade duller than what makes for good reading. And this is a good book, make no mistake. The writer’s words flow into the mind easily and even wax quite poetic at times. 

And I was there for it... I really enjoyed this one and want to read more about the subject matter if possible (I bought another tome on the lady towards the end of last year, while attending a film at the BFI’s Anna May Wong season). 

Also, thanks to Katie Gee Salisbury, I now know what a cheongsam is and realise that this is what the Anna May Wong Barbie doll I recently purchased is probably wearing (not my China doll perhaps but, maybe my plastic effigy). And, yes, I even bought a couple of Anna May Wong quarters from the US, which is just a small reminder of the cultural impact that the lady in question has had over many generations of cinema lovers over the years. I’m not sure what the other, perhaps more sensationalist, portrayals of Wong are like but, this one is certainly a great piece of biographical writing. So, if this particular Asian star of yesteryear, who was at one time receiving over 500 fan letters a week, is your thing, then I would wholeheartedly recommend you pick up a copy of Katie Gee Salisbury’s Not Your China Doll - The Wild And Shimmering Life Of Anna May Wong. It’s an absolute banger of a book and I wish I’d read it sooner. 

Daughter of Shanghai/King Of Chinatown

Anna-B

Daughter of Shanghai
aka Daughter Of The Orient
Directed by Robert Florey
USA 1937
Paramount Pictures
 
plus

King Of Chinatown
Directed by Nick Grinde
USA 1939
Paramount Pictures
Both screened in 35mm at NFT2 
on Saturday 20th September 2025

Warning: Some spoilers.

I’d booked three separate screenings of the Anna May Wong - The Art Of Reinvention* season at the NFT this year because I wanted to see her in more films and, honestly, three was all I could really afford, both in coin and time. And I was expecting this second visit, featuring a double bill of B movies from the late 1930s, to be a good chance to see Anna in a couple of talkies I’d not seen before, expecting her to really knock my socks off with her acting (which, to be fair, she did) and expecting not much else from them. 

What I got was so much more...

I mean, wow, these were both roughly an hour in length but they’ve got to be two of the most entertaining B movies I’ve seen in quite a while. These were rip roaringly paced aplenty and gave me an Anna May Wong I’d never seen, quite, like this before. 

For starters, she’s not talking in any stupid pidgin or broken English here... she’s fully playing a Chinese-American, born and bred in the US, just as she was in real life (the Daughter Of Shanghai title references her stage name when she goes undercover as an ‘exotic dancer’). So she just talks naturally and has a pretty amazing presence here... but in a slightly different way. Less mysterious but certainly still goddess-like. 

Also, she’s very much playing a woman of her own agency in both pictures and not some minor character or somebody doomed to die in the final act. Indeed, in Daughter Of Shanghai her part was greatly changed, tailored for her and made more important once she’d signed on the dotted line for Paramount. 

The casts in these are terrific too, for B movies. In both films, Wong’s romantic interest is played by Korean-American actor Philip Ahn, who does a really good job in both his roles... one as a police investigator and the other as a lawyer. In King Of Chinatown we have Akim Tamaroff playing a soon to be reformed, bad but getting good guy, heading up a protection racket. The real villains of both films, doubling up in tandem, are played by J. Carrol Naish and a very young Anthony Quinn. And that’s not all... in King Of Chinatown, Anna May’s father is played by Sidney Toler, just a year after he took over from the great Warner Oland as Charlie Chan. 

And, the real discovery for me... the chief henchman, a nasty piece of work... in Daughter Of Shanghai, with a moustache no less, was the great Larry ‘Buster’ Crabbe. Yep, Flash Gordon himself in the same year he played Buck Rogers (which featured Ahn’s brother as the diplomat for the Saturnians, reviewed here) and was about to shoot his third and final Flash Gordon serial, Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (reviewed here). I’d not seen him play a villain before so this was a bit of a revelation. He was obviously trying to not let himself get typecast in certain roles, I suspect... but he does it really well. 

Daughter of Shanghai, tells a story which could easily be ripped from today’s headlines in the UK because it deals with human traffickers bringing cheap labour from overseas and forcing people to take them on in employment for bed and board (while getting rich off the fee to get them safely into the US). We see how ruthless they are at the start because, on the plane crossing over to America, when a government aircraft starts following them, they pull a lever and, in the back of the plane, the floor opens and drops the hopeful people to their death. 

Anna May plays the daughter of a prosperous store in Chinatown but, her father is killed when he starts to investigate the people who are threatening him to take in illegal immigrants and... well, the villains think Anna May’s character Lan Ying Lin is dead also, but she outsmarts them and gets away without them even realising it (she manages to pull this trick off twice, when left for dead in this movie). Then, rather then wait for Ahn to find out who is behind the smuggling ring, she goes undercover and abroad, finding out for herself before being rescued by Ahn and then returning to America to find the real ring leader. At which point the film turns into shooting and fist fights which would not look out of place in the best of the Republic serials. It’s... as I said... rip roaring stuff.

In King Of Chinatown, Wong plays successful surgeon Dr. Mary Ling, who saves the life and, looks after, Akim Tamaroff’s character... partially because she thinks her dad might have been responsible for the shooting in the first place and partially because she wants the money he’s paying her privately to look after him to fund her hospital when she goes to China. And it’s another brilliant story with double crosses, a fixed boxing match and, surprisingly, a whole lot of heart coming from Tamaroff’s mob boss, who is inspired by the good doctor to change his ways and turn over a new leaf. So... of course he gets killed before the end... the reach of the Hays Code strikes again. No crime unpunished... and all that.

Both films were presented in 35mm prints on loan and, honestly, I was absolutely in love with these two movies as I watched them. These both deserve decent, UK Blu Ray releases, for sure. 

My one big disappointment of the day was what the BFI did at the start of the screening... which made my blood boil. On a notice outside the door they’d put up a so called ‘trigger warning’. It read, "DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI + KING OF CHINATOWN. King Of Chinatown contains racist attitudes, language and images including yellowface." This last, I suspect, referring to Sydney Toler’s make-up**. Honestly, these warnings really get under my skin. Are the woke brigade so unbelievably stupid that they can’t watch a movie in the context of its time. How crazy is this? I mean, if I was an ace surgeon and I went to that screening, would I be shocked that Anna May Wong was pretending to be a surgeon and maybe getting some stuff wrong? No. So why are people getting so sensitive when an actor is able to effectively pretend to be from another race. This stuff is crazy and these censors of public attitudes should be stopped. 

So, yeah, that put a slight krimp in my evening. But, honestly, Daughter Of Shanghai and King Of Chinatown were such good movies that my spirits soon lifted and I enjoyed the heck out of them (and I already want to see them again). So if you get the opportunity to check these ones out, do so is the advice I would give. 

*Alas, it was not to be. Real life stuff has caught up to me in the most unpleasant manner and I am now unable to attend that last screening, which was to be the day this blog post is published. To say I'm gutted would be an understatement.

**Also, I should probably point out here that Toler’s make-up, aphorisms and broken English further push the idea in the movie that the father is originally from China and is used to contrast Wong’s ‘born in America’ attitude towards the world... so yeah, not only effective but it serves a purpose.

The Toll Of The Sea

Sleepless In Sea Toll

The Toll Of The Sea
USA 1922
Directed by Chester M Franklin
Screened at NFT2 on Sunday 7th September 2025

“NOTE: The last sequence of THE TOLL OF THE SEA has not survived. In order to complete the film, new footage of the Pacific Ocean was shot in October 1985 with an authentic two-colour Technicolor camera. Titles for the closing sequence have been recreated from Frances Marion's original scenario.”

The Toll Of The Sea was considered lost for a long time before most of the original negative was rediscovered in the 1960s. Which would explain why the two strip technicolour presentation with live piano accompaniment, which I saw as part of the BFIs Anna May Wong - The Art Of Reinvention season at the NFT, included the disclaimer above. 

The film was introduced by Anna Wong, Anna May Wong’s niece (yeah, I’m not sure how that works since the great star was born in 1905), who gave the audience a quick crash course and said this was considered her breakout movie (although they were also showing Song that same afternoon and, if the tube strike hadn’t been looming within the next couple of hours, I would probably have tried to snag a ticket for that too). And, I guess that’s probably right... because Miss Wong was spotted by Douglas Fairbanks Jr when he was watching this movie at the cinema and he decided to cast her in a role in his lavish production of The Thief Of Bagdad (yeah, that’s how that version of the movie spells it folks... don’t moan at me, please). 

Miss Wong, the niece, also mentioned two American pieces of ephemera of the last couple of decades as proof that her legend and importance as an Asian actress (even though she was born in Los Angeles and never actually went to China for a few decades, wrongfooting the press in her early career with her ‘American as apple pie’ persona) has lived on (which it certainly has)... in the form of Mattel’s special Anna May Wong Barbie (which I coincidentally had on order from eBay from a few nights before) and the American quarters bearing her likeness (which... ditto!). 

And then they screened the film, which was a Chinese based spin on Madama Butterfly (this was also at least the third motion picture to be called The Toll Of The Sea but the other two didn’t make use of the same source material). Here, Anna May Wong plays Lotus Flower, who falls in love with American Allen Carver, played by Kenneth Harlan, who reminded me a lot of a young Colin Clive, truth be told. 

Now, the two strip technicolour on the 35mm print they were showing this on looked pretty good to me and not quite as rough around the edges as I remembered from other films using the process restored on DVD and Blu Ray. So that was fine. What surprised me a little is, even though the film runs for barely longer than 50 minutes, there really are not that many locations and, despite being in the days of pre-sound, the camera wasn’t moving a heck of a lot either. But it was good enough and had other things going for it.

Primarily the tragic figure of Lotus Blossom, who is played absolutely beautifully by Anna May Wong here. Now, it would be easy (and so true) to say she steals the show from everybody else in this film. I mean, she is the only person you are looking at when you have the choice... but it would also be true to say that she carries a lot of the movie almost solo because, I think on only two, maybe three occasions, does the camera ever leave her to switch to a scenario where she is not present. And even then, in at least one of those, the edit is continually cross cutting between what’s going on in one place and Anna May Wong performing solo, with her character waiting to find out what is going on in another. 

So, yeah, after witnessing her brilliance in both Piccadilly (reviewed here https://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2010/03/piccadilly.html in only my second post on this blog) and Shanghai Express (review coming soon, probably next year, it's written but I want to finish a box off before publishing the reviews) I finally got to see a film, however brief, where this leading lady dominated the picture and, she certainly does that with her emotive spates of intense misery interpolated with the innocent naivete of her character. If some wily company would get it into their head to put this thing out on Blu Ray (preferably as part of an Anna May Wong box set), then I’ll definitely be lining up for that one (I'm looking in your direction, Eureka Masters Of Cinema and the BFI labels). 

So I think that’s me pretty much done on The Toll Of The Sea but, its not a presentation I shall forget in a hurry. I’ll be seeing a few more of this lady’s films at the NFT later in the month and so I will report back here when that’s done.