Carmel Myers (1899-1980)

Carmel Myers was, famously, the daughter of a rabbi and as such, perhaps the best known Jewish actress in town – or at least the best known openly Jewish actress in town. Because as hard as that may be to understand at this day and age, Hollywood, whether wholly “invented” by Jewish merchants or not, was really quite anti-Semitic. Thus is should come as no surprise that Miss Myers didn't play daughters of rabbis so much as exotic vamps, a sort of flapper version of Theda Bara. She did that most famously, and with a white wig too boot, as Iras in Ben-Hur (1925), but she is frankly overshadowed in that by the overall spectacle of the chariot race and the overall spectacle of Ramon Novarro's physique. Myers career waned precipitously in the early years of sound – hence her appearance in Action Pictures' Chinatown After Dark – but she recovered somewhat in supporting roles and, much later, as a chatty guest on television talk shows. She even once peddled her own perfume.

Chinatown After Dark (Action Pictures, 1931) PD **

After having delivered a valuable Chinese dagger to San Francisco merchant Lee Fong (Edmund Breese), Frank Bonner (Frank Mayo) mysteriously ups and disappears. Shortly thereafter the lights at the Fong house go out and a shot is fired. Lee Fong is found very much the worse for wear – dead, in fact – and Frank's brother, Jim (Rex Lease), becomes the not too obvious suspect. But Fong's white ward, Lotus (Barbara Kent), believes in Jim, with whom she is falling in love, and together they decide to solve the case and clear Jim's name. The clues lead the two straight to the Chinatown lair of one Madame Ying Su (top-billed Carmel Myers).

Truth be told, Chinatown After Dark's Carmel Myers appears the least likely Asian this side of Katharine Hepburn in Dragon Seed (1944). In fact, Miss Myers not only doesn't look Asian but she rolls her consonants in a highly non-Chinese manner. But there you have it: she is darkly exotic, her eyes are mostly downcast and her hands are folded at all times. Plenty Chinese for early Hollywood. The problem, of course, as it nearly always was in those days, is that there are genuine Asian-American performers in the cast and the difference is rather stark. But Chinatown After Dark doesn't really belong to Carmel Myers, whose billing is only a sign of who she used to be, but to action hero Rex Lease who flails his arms wildly in every donnybrook without hardly ever connecting with anyone. Par for the course in the days before the Republic Pictures stuntmen re-wrote the movie fight manual. Chinatown is also typical of its day in that there is hardly a single door or window without someone lurking outside, most of the time for no discernible reason. This type of stuff had been done better in the silent era, where you at least had some movement, and Chinatown After Dark is enlivened solely by that scene-stealing marvel Billy Gilbert, complete with trademark sneeze and Brooklynese sayings that leave the denizens of San Francisco's Chinatown stymied.

Gilbert, as Sgt. Dooley, inquiring about the young man seen with Lee Fong's body soon after the murder: “Will you give me a full description of the bird?

Lotus: “What bird?”

Dooley: “You know the bird that did the Houdini!”

Lotus: ???

Incidentally, the lovely Lotus, Fong's white ward (no chance of miscegenation here!), is played by Barbara Kent, who when she died at the age of 103 in 2011 became the longest living adult silent screen performer in history.

Chinatown After Dark was produced at what today is public television KCET on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood by an enterprising little company named Action Pictures. Behind the moniker was Ralph M. Like, a sound engineer who had purchased the former Charles Ray Studio. Action Pictures later became Mayfair before closing shop in 1934. The lot was then purchased by Monogram Pictures and became famous for hosting everyone from Bela Lugosi to the Bowery Boys.