King of Chinatown

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

J. Carrol Naish, Akim Tamiroff, and Anna May Wong in King of Chinatown (1939)

Violence and death stalk the Chinese of a big American city, but one man, Dr. Chang Ling, and his daughter, Dr. Mary Ling, defy the racketeers who are responsible, and, against terrific odds... Read allViolence and death stalk the Chinese of a big American city, but one man, Dr. Chang Ling, and his daughter, Dr. Mary Ling, defy the racketeers who are responsible, and, against terrific odds, bring peace to their oppressed neighbors.Violence and death stalk the Chinese of a big American city, but one man, Dr. Chang Ling, and his daughter, Dr. Mary Ling, defy the racketeers who are responsible, and, against terrific odds, bring peace to their oppressed neighbors.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.2/10

295

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since. Its earliest documented telecast took place in Omaha Sunday 15 March 1959 on KETV (Channel 7); elsewhere, sponsor interest was minimal and so it was rarely taken off the shelf; it showed up in Milwaukee 6 February 1960 on WITI (Channel 6), in Los Angeles 11 November 1960 on KNXT (Channel 2), and in Cincinnati 27 November 1960 on WKRC (Channel 12).

Connections
Referenced in Anna May Wong, Frosted Yellow Willows: Her Life, Times and Legend (2007)

User reviews10

Review

Featured review

7/10

A B crime pic with very progressive values for the time

Frank Baturin (Akim Tamiroff) is the "king of Chinatown", a benevolent gangster (!) who runs a lucrative gambling house in the area. Most of the neighborhood likes him, but aged herbalist Dr. Chang Ling (Sidney Toler) still thinks he's just a crook. When Baturin is shot in an assassination attempt, Ling's gifted surgeon daughter Mary (Anna May Wong) saves his life. The two become friends, but the violent underworld threatens to bring them all down,

Running less than an hour long, this minor gangster effort could have been something special with a fleshed out script and some fine tuning. Seeing an Asian woman depicted as not only a medical doctor but a gifted surgeon was very unusual for the time, and Wong imbues her role with grace and dignity. Philip Ahn plays a lawyer, and his character is treated with respect, and there's no cringe-worthy racial stereotyping going on. You would think with Tamiroff, J. Carrol Naish, and Anthony Quinn in the cast that there wouldn't be a single piece of scenery left unchewed, but they keep the ham in check. Toler had already appeared as Charlie Chan once by this point, and he adds a long white beard to his standard Chinese characterization. The story gets resolved too neatly and too quickly, which is a shame as the film had a lot of potential.