Marion Evelyn Hong before and after the Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916)

Abstract

This article is a result of an invitation to share the authors’ knowledge and family stories and offer perspectives about Marion E. Hong (1895–1969, also known as Marion Evelyn Wong). The intent is to provide scholars and researchers with first-hand knowledge about Marion’s life milestones and experiences directly from her family. The main source for the content of this article comes from remembrances of Marion’s descendants and documents as well as photographs in the Kumaradjaja Family History Archive. As Marion’s direct descendants, the authors offer first-hand knowledge about her and insight into possible motivations for making the silent motion picture film The Curse of the Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West (dir. Marion E. Wong, Mandarin Film Company, US, 1916). Lisa Kumaradjaja is Marion’s granddaughter; Lisa’s mother, Arabella Hong Young, is Marion’s daughter who followed in Marion’s footsteps as a singer, performer, and entrepreneur. This article is written by the granddaughter and great-grandson of Marion E. Hong, Lisa Kumaradjaja and Chris Kumaradjaja, who now serve as the family historians. Information for this article has been gathered from the Kumaradjaja Family History Archive, family oral histories, as well as Lisa’s direct recollections of Marion.

Keywords:

• Marion Wong
• Chinese American identity
• Chinese diaspora
• Asian American cinema
• overseas Chinese

Introduction

This article is written in separate chapters by each of the authors; parts by Chris are denoted ‘Chris’ in the margin, while parts written by Lisa are ‘Lisa’. As family historians, Lisa and Chris provide their joint insight and reflections on Marion’s life. We begin with her ancestral roots.

Chris:

The Wong Family genealogy scroll goes back at least a millennium. As the numbering goes, Marion was part of the twenty-ninth generation. Patrilinear genealogy scrolls are an integral part of recording Chinese family histories. Family members write poems commemorating the lives and achievements of the clan’s heirs by generation. The poem written for Marion’s fifteenth generation ancestor describes him:

A good horse carried them all to different peaceful areas. With time, they became natives. We still hear our ancestors’ words. Morning and night, we burn incense for our ancestors. Each era, we want heaven to protect us.

Children and grandchildren should all be prosperous.

This theme of ‘becoming native in a different area with time, while still hearing “our” ancestors’ words’ persists in Marion’s life: with time, she became native, and her own path to prosperity followed generations of destiny. Marion, a third-generation American, has been considered ‘ahead of her time’. While that may be true given her efforts to subvert stereotypes that were commonplace at the time and to harness the newest film technology, there is a limit to the ‘ahead of her time’ trope; it individualizes and protagonizes her without placing her in the context of other overseas Chinese who produced new ideas, products, and entities based on their own unique experiences. Her motivation to combine ‘East and West’ is not unique to her. ‘Overseas Chinese’ has been widely used to describe people of Chinese ethnicity who reside outside Greater China. Multi-generational overseas Chinese have produced new cultural identities based on their adoptive lands.

Immigrant diasporas are always pinned at the juncture between their home culture and their adopted cultures, and often there is an intergenerational lag between the immigrant generation and the first native-born generation. Marion may have been exceptionally precocious, technically as well as conceptually, but in this regard the background that helped her conceive these ideas was no exception.

Diasporic identity is a mixture of their adoptive and native cultures. There is then a creative process of mixing cultural aspects. The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916) represents the mixing of aspects of Chinese and American culture, creating a new amalgamated culture. It is defined by Chinese Americans, who are a subset of overseas Chinese. The film, with western dress and Chinese themes, is a consequence of the diasporic condition of the overseas Chinese. The pervasive and timeless ingenuity of the diaspora defines overseas Chinese people, while The Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916) is the outcome of an enterprising and ambitious overseas Chinese.

Even as a third-generation American, Marion’s generation would have been committed to both American assimilation and the retention of traditional cultural customs. Newspapers consistently misidentified her as a ‘Chinese-born’, when she was a native English speaker and deeply aware of the manners of speaking, behaving, and dressing that were expected of an American woman in the Progressive Era (Stockton Daily Independent 1916). Although her mother too was American-born, her mother was raised in a deeply isolated corner of Chinatown, and relied on an interpreter to communicate with English-speaking officials. Speaking English as a native language began with Marion’s generation.

Marion’s generation represented a decisive turning point in American assimilation. In the early 1910s, as she was spurning a prospective arranged marriage, her husband to-be, Kim Seung Hong (熊錦湘), had cut off his queue, a required hairstyle for subjects of Qing China as landmark life decisions marking a point of irreversible assimilation and change. Although this kind of turning point was unique to their generation, turning points are to be expected as part of the diasporic condition of change.

We believe that Marion came up with the concept of her film in direct response to the racism and prejudice she experienced during her early career in performance. She was motivated to stage a background narrative that dramatized the complexities of living in two cultures, drawing on her own experience to mix two cultures in one production. In her time, Chinese Americans were seen as hard, silent workers. Their customs and habits were alien to others, and the language barrier further isolated them from other Americans. The Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916) was an appeal for visibility, a response to all the reductive tendencies of prejudice within the non-Chinese community. However, The Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916) failed to secure a film distributor. Given her attempt to secure wide distribution, we believe that she intended this film to be for the larger American public and hoped that it would be a commercial endeavor.

Her trip to China in 1911 was not her sole motivation to make the movie if at all. To say so would be to reduce a life experience to a plot device, as human lives are not necessarily literary narratives in themselves. Combining cultural background and technical knowledge required Marion to draw upon many aspects of her life, from arranged marriages and performances included. This film is, of course, neither Chinese nor American. It is Chinese American – from a Chinese America that has been frozen in time since 1917. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind that our contemporary perspectives may not be historical, but rather speculative. As we today consider Marion’s creative inspiration, it is important to understand the life experiences that shaped her values.

Marion Evelyn Wong Hong – Who she was

Lisa:

Marion Evelyn Wong Hong was my maternal grandmother (Figure 1). She married my grandfather, Kim Seung Hong in 1917. They had five children. The first four were all girls, my mother being the fourth daughter to my grandfather’s dismay, as he wanted a boy. By the time Henry was born, my mother was 7 years old. Mom said her mother, Marion, named the girls with word ‘bell’ in their names so they could be the ‘Bell Sisters’, Isabelle, Annabelle, Maybelle, and my mother, Arabella. They were my ‘Aunties’ and Marion was ‘Grandma’ while Henry was always known as Hank, or ‘Uncle Hank’ to me.

Figure 1. Marion E. Hong’s Family Tree. Authors’ relationships to Marion are shown.

My grandfather lived to be 101 years old and had a great memory up until he died. He had stored up many stories about our family’s life which he shared with us. My grandfather was very proud of being ethnic Chinese and he wanted us to be proud of being Chinese as well. His stories often reflected that pride. I also remember that as a child my grandparents would visit our family in New York. After my grandmother died, my grandfather – ‘Grandpa’ to me – would spend a month living with us during the summer.

My grandmother Marion was born in San Francisco in 1895, a third-generation American. She spoke perfect English and had an American accent even though she also spoke Cantonese, the Chinese dialect of my mother’s family. While they could speak Chinese, my grandparents spoke English at home and that was fortunate for me since I don’t speak Chinese. I am genetically 100% Chinese, born a fifth generation American. I consider myself part of a group specifically called overseas Chinese. This was also who my grandmother was – an American born overseas Chinese.

Marion lived in two worlds of culture – that of her Chinese American family’s and that of the land of her birth, the USA. By the time she was an adult, she, her husband, and her children wore Western clothes, went to American schools, and owned Western things proudly, including American made cars such as the Model T Ford. Grandpa often talked about driving their Model T Ford up to Yosemite National Park in 1919 (Figure 2). Grandpa, Kim Seung Hong, was also born in San Francisco and never had been to China. Although he could read and write beautiful Chinese calligraphy, he learned his Chinese here in America.

Figure 2. Marion and her family on road trip to Yosemite National Park, 1919. Courtesy of the Kumaradjaja family History Archive.

Marion sang Chinese Opera as well as Western ballads that were popular during her time. Some of her favorites were ‘I Love You Truly’ and ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’ which my mother sang at her funeral. That particular song became part of my mother’s own repertoire later when she, as a professional singer, migrated from singing opera to pop and cabaret music. While my mother was trained at Julliard, my grandmother was completely self-taught as a singer. ‘She was a natural; she never took any lessons’, my mother told me.

The women in our family

The women in our family are independent, strong in personality and probably even more so, strong willed. Mom says that I was, in her words, ‘indomitable’ as a child, but I don’t think it was just me. I’m just like her in that way, and she is like her mother. The women on my mother’s side have an inner sense of will that drives us to follow our dreams and desires – a knowing that we can achieve what we put our minds to. We own our dreams and what we do. We know what needs to be done to accomplish our goals and can skillfully direct others to assist us. I see this in my mother, and I felt it from my grandmother even as a young child when I was with her. As a five-year-old child, I remember feeling that my grandmother was often telling people what to do, even me. She had a soft, firm voice that was commanding, even though Americans today would not consider it forceful. But I strongly felt its presence. Then, you just followed what she said. I remember that it was a little intimidating.

When my grandmother was teaching me how to play the kam (known in Mandarin as a yangqin), a Chinese version of a dulcimer, it was a different voice – kind and loving. It soothed me. She carefully showed me how to hold the flexible bamboo hammers which you used to strike the strings. You held two hammers at the same time, one in each hand. With her fingers she guided my own to hold the hammers lightly with my thumb and forefinger in such a way that your fingers acted like a fulcrum so the hammer could naturally rock to strike the string. The bamboo flexed and was springy so the head would hit the string with a little force if you held it just right (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Marion teaching Lisa how to play the kam. Courtesy of the Kumaradjaja family History Archive.

She patiently showed me how to strike the head in just the perfect place on the string to make it ring clearly. I delighted in being able to make the string sing that way and my grandmother was so pleased that we accomplished it together. I wanted to do it the right way as much as she wanted to show me how. We seemed to share that temperament; if we do something, we want to do it the right way, every time.

This seems to be our family female trait – a forceful personality filled with tenacity in our visions, yet deep with heart in execution. Such tenacity fuels an independence as we take on projects in our lives. I imagine that my mother’s personality stems from her own mother’s through both genes and example. I see these personality aspects in myself. ‘You can do anything you want’, my mother would tell me, and that’s what her mother taught her. ‘You just have to go out and do it’, she would add. My mother also told me, ‘Do what you love’. I think that is what Marion did.

Background and parents

Chris:

Marion was the second-to-last child to be born to father Wong Sau Siu (黃秀兆, better known as Wong Jim Sing 黃針勝) and mother Chin Chew Lam (陳全蘭), who was a child bride.¹ Marion’s birth name was Wong Neui Tai (黃女娣), where ‘Neui’ (女) means ‘woman’ and ‘Tai’ (娣) means ‘sister’. Her married name was much more descriptive and emblematic: Mei King (美瓊), a ‘beautiful jade’. As her husband Kim explained, ‘think of “King” (瓊) as a magnificent jade palace, or the garden of Eden’.

Jim Sing and Chin See were married in Red Bluff, California (also known as Lakebrook at the time) in an arranged marriage. Their meeting was set up by a matchmaker who learned of Chin See from her family, which had been successful in the mercantile business and owned their own home in Alameda, California. The marriage was a traditional Chinese ceremony, but without many of the lavish affordances like jewelry. Instead, there were rolled tangerines and oranges, which are considered good luck. And once Jim Sing and Chin See raised children of their own, they too, pressured their children into arranged marriages for the same reason (Farkas 1998, 103). Perhaps the Wong Family’s 1911 trip to China was initiated at their behest.

Perhaps one of the best ways to see what Chinese traditions were embedded in Marion’s upbringing is to examine her parents’ backgrounds. The conflict in The Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916) is between old Chinese traditions and modern American ones, especially concerning marriage. Of course, a common trope through many diasporic cultures in which arranged marriage is customary, is the shift from joining in an arranged marriage for the sake of clout and alliance, towards a more organic process of marrying for ‘love’. Marion’s generation heralded the beginning of marriages for love that were nevertheless conducted in Chinese tradition. This tension was explored in nuanced detail in The Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916), with introductions of the on-screen bride and groom by means of a playful courtship, while Marion’s parents had not courted at all before being married. Marion herself followed suit with the former. As her spurning a prospective spouse in China was characteristically ‘modern’, her choice to marry an American-born person was a sign of her priorities that, too, were reflected in the film.

Early life

Marion was born on 743 Pacific Street where the family lived until around 1899. Afterward, the family moved to 1113 Dupont Street, which was a wooden shophouse that served as a cigar factory. Marion, her siblings, and her parents lived on the second floor of the shophouse along with two other families. Marion received her primary education at a Chinese Christian school in Oakland, where her teacher, Mrs. Lee, gave Marion her English name, Marion Evelyn. Marion was only educated up to the third-grade, after which she stayed at home with her siblings, some of whom were married. Her father, Jim Sing, did not believe in educating daughters.

Marion testified in the 1911 immigration interview that her older brother, Gam Dak, was ‘conducting a restaurant’. As mentioned earlier, Gam Dak’s western name was Edwin, which became the namesake of the restaurant that the Wong family operated as Edwin’s Oriental Café. Located across the street from a department store and close to many theaters, the restaurant had good business, and it was busiest on Saturdays. In fact, the restaurant was so successful that other businesses petitioned for it to be closed down! However, the restaurant continued to operate and boasted diverse musical programming. Marion would sing songs and perform operas, entertaining diners. According to an advertisement on the Oakland Orpheum Theatre program, ‘Edvin’s Oriental Cafe’ produced ‘Chinese and American Dishes’, which ‘experts pronounce Chinese cooking the most digestible on earth’ (‘Edvin’s Oriental Cafe, Advertisement’ 1914, 3). Her occupation was listed as ‘cashier’ and her listed address was 524 West 16th Street, Oakland, the address of Edwin’s Oriental Cafe.

Trip to China

Marion traveled to China with her parents and brother from August 1911 to July 1912. Whether or not she herself had the intention of finding a spouse along with her brother Albert is not mentioned in the immigration interview transcripts, which we secured from the files of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Of course, in the eyes of customs and immigration services of any country, records only show entrances and exits. Once the Wongs departed from the U.S., information about their whereabouts in China can now only be inferred from oral history and immigration interview transcripts held in the San Francisco District National Archives and Records Administration. With the passing of restrictive immigration acts, Chinese Americans left a highly informative imprint each time they left and returned to the U.S. Over the course of two months prior to their departure, from June to August 1911, the Wongs submitted applications and produced records to prove their status as native-born residents of the United States. Failing to do so would result in the elimination of any credibility when returning to the U.S. What bolstered credibility was to have testimony from white witnesses. Adolphus ‘Dolph’ Graupner, the son of Jim Sing’s former boss, was instrumental in providing testimony as a ‘credible white witness’ according to the 1911 immigration interview.²

The Wongs’ trip to China required detailed planning and vigilance. Chin See was made aware that since she had married someone born in China, she forfeited her citizenship due to the U.S. Expatriation Act of 1907, which was later declared unconstitutional. However, Chin See was also made aware that if her husband died she would regain her citizenship. In preparation for their departure and return, they were subject to a barrage of questions about their family, their whereabouts in general, where and how long they lived there, to ‘prove’ that they were truly the people listed, and that they were American citizens.

The pre-departure interrogations would have been extremely thorough, and the same questions were asked upon their return to make sure that the details squared up. Their stories had to be absolutely perfect. Once the affidavits from white witnesses were confirmed, they were clear to depart. And so, the Wong family departed on the S.S. Mongolia on 22 August 1911. With the exception of Jim Sing (Wong Sau Siu), this was the Wongs’ first time traveling to China, which is made clear in his 1911 immigration interview.

Marion’s brother Albert was successfully matched with Violet who later played the role of the bride in The Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916). Like the other Wong siblings, Albert and Violet, whose maiden name was Jung Mon Foo, had a traditional Chinese wedding ceremony and were married in his parents’ home at 25 Possession Street in Hong Kong on 25 October 1911 (Wong 1911). However, when it came time for Marion to accept a proposal from a prospective groom, she refused, and her mother Chin See supported her decision. Given that her parents were proponents of arranged marriage, this decision at least showed that Marion’s parents were not indifferent to their children’s wishes.

Marion and the rest of her family, including her father Jim Sing, returned from China on the S.S. Korea on 15 July 1912. Restrictive immigration acts also essentially prohibited the Wongs from returning any later, as even American-born people of Chinese descent would lose their citizenship if they remained abroad for more than a year. Upon her return, Marion was required to apply for an identification card as required by the 1892 Geary Act. Although these records seem antiquated, these documents were requested to verify Marion’s citizenship when she applied for a passport to travel to Canada in 1948, when restrictive quotas still existed but were in the process of being rolled back significantly. Furthermore, the Wongs went out of their way to prove that the marriage between Violet and Albert in Hong Kong was legitimate, procuring affidavits from family members to ensure that the marriage was recognized in the United States.

Marion’s film

Lisa:

One might think that when Marion was fifteen her family trip to China to find her a husband and her brother a wife inspired her to make a film based on witnessing the political turmoil of the 1911 Revolution in China (Math 2007). According to my mother, Marion was never interested in either politics or world events. She was always focused on her businesses. It was my grandfather who was interested in politics and Marion would attend meetings with her husband to keep him company. However, the assumption that Marion was interested in political affairs may have been instigated erroneously by a newspaper article that claimed an association between the film and the 1911 Revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty in China (‘The Curse of Quon Qwon (Mandarin)’ 1917, 113).³ We believe that the 1911 Revolution had minimal to no impact on Marion’s views, life, or her movie. She never was interested in these events.

Chris:

The two articles appearing in the 7 July 1917 issue of The Moving Picture World contain a more nuanced explanation of her film concept for that time. However, these articles have a few incorrect statements. For example, Marion had not produced any part of her film in China (‘Marion E. Wong, Chinese Film Producer’ 1917, 63). They also incorrectly state that the film ‘deals with the curse of a Chinese god that follows his people because of the influence of Western civilization. The first part was filmed in California and represents showing the intrigue of the Chinese who are in this the U.S. country in behalf of the Chinese monarchical government, and those who are working for the revolutionists (sic) in favor of a Chinese republic’ (‘The Curse of the Quon Qwon (Mandarin)’ 1917, 113). Yet, the ways in which media outlets at the time misrepresented her ideas and the concept for the film, and whether the plot description was consistent with Marion’s wishes remain to be seen. Marion was not remembered as being as politically active as Kim Seung Hong, the man she would later marry, who was a member of the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT). And so, it is not likely that Marion’s film incorporated complex political implications.

Lisa:

While we in Marion’s family didn’t hear much about my grandmother’s silent film, at one point, Grandpa Hong did share the story of what it was that gave her the idea to make the movie. In his stories, Grandpa said he met my grandmother through her father, Jim Sing, who suggested that she see if he might be a good fit to play a part in her film. That was Grandpa’s version of the story which was different from the romantic version her daughter (my mother) would tell of Marion singing in her mother’s restaurant, Edwin’s Café, and capturing the heart of young Kim Seung Hong who was sitting in the audience. Perhaps it is true that her singing captured his heart after they first met.

But before Grandpa met Marion, she was ‘discovered’ by Sid Grauman. The story I heard was that Grauman heard her singing in her mother’s restaurant and that’s how he found her. In our family, the story was often told with great pride. Marion was discovered by this entertainment mogul who then took her on the road to have her sing on tour in a show called, ‘Midnight Fresco’ [sic]. I remember beaming with pride and surprise about my grandmother when the adults mentioned it. But I also clearly remember one of the adults saying, ‘But, you know, Sid Grauman wasn’t a good man’. I was stunned. My grandmother was elevated to a new height of fame in my mind, which was torn down in an instant. It was so strange to me; I didn’t understand it. I recall asking them why was he a bad man? The response was, ‘Oh, it’s too complicated to explain to you. You’re too young’.

According to Grandpa, the roots of the road show in which Marion appeared began in 1915 at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE) World’s Fair in San Francisco. I had seen a museum exhibition about that particular World’s Fair that included photographs of the exposition displays themed to show what life was like in other countries featuring live people in sets that looked like living rooms in their homes in their native countries. It reminded me of looking at animals caged in a zoo. A separate area at the Fair was called the ‘Joy Zone’ where Grauman’s ‘Underground Chinatown’ show did extremely well, despite the outcry from the Chinese community that it was a racist attraction (Fahlstedt 2020, 132). He must have been playing to the American public fascination with the Chinese, who were seen as ‘alien’ foreign beings who worked like robots on the railroad, hardly ceasing to rest, and who later lived in Chinatown which rumors and newspaper articles described as a place of lawlessness and depravity. The ‘Underground Chinatown’ exploited that curiosity with sideshows depicting the most alluring of these mysterious attractions. Opium dens, prostitutes, hatchet men and singsong girls were part of the show. To see this concession, you only had to pay 10 cents for a ticket (Fahlstedt 2020, 129).

The ‘Underground Chinatown’ had its roots in Grauman’s prologues, which were popular pre-shows to the main motion picture attraction shown in his theaters, and that featured live performers. Grauman knew these shows drew a crowd and were just what audiences wanted to see. The official Chinese Commissioner General sent from China to the Exposition, Chen Chi, was outraged over the show’s content and sent a letter of protest to the President and Directors of the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition. Finally, however, Grauman was pressured into making changes to his ‘Underground Chinatown’ which he did superficially, reluctant as he was to take away the very things that people came to see. When the PPIE closed, Grauman took this show on the road, naming one ‘Midnight in Frisco’ (131).

According to Grandpa, Marion went on tour in the Sid Grauman ‘Midnight Fresco’ [sic] show which started for her in the old MacDonough Theater in Oakland, California. At that time the show was called, ‘A Night at the San Francisco’s World’s Fair’ and opened on August 27, 1916 (‘MacDonough Theatre’ 1916, 1). The show moved on to open in late September at the Victory in San Jose as ‘Midnight in Frisco’ which included the now famous music halls and still had opium dens in its scenes (Fahlstedt 2020, 130). Marion was billed as, ‘Princess Marian [sic] Wong, The Chinese Song Bird’ (1916, 6). The show was extremely successful. According to Grandpa, eventually, ‘Midnight in Frisco’ traveled to Los Angeles, California, where Marion met a cameraman, whom Grandpa recalled as Louis Air. Louis had his own studio in Hayward and in talking to her about making her own movie, Louis convinced her that she could do it. Marion stayed in the ‘Midnight in Frisco’ show for about a year. Then according to my mother’s words, ‘Mother left after she became featured and then received more applause than the star of the show’, my mother continued, ‘The star became jealous and had mother fired’. Grandpa continued his story that because Marion ‘made some money from her touring in the show’ she thought she’d branch out and make a silent film, saying of his wife that ‘She’s very enterprising’, and not afraid to ‘venture into the unknown’.

While Marion was bold enough to venture into the unknown, it is obvious that at twenty years old she had little to no experience with or knowledge about filmmaking. It is also conceivable that Marion, spurred on by Louis Air’s encouragement and assistance, may have relied on his expertise as a cameraman and needed the resources of his Hayward studio which would explain the technical and artistic skill exhibited in her film. Conveniently, Marion and her family lived in nearby Oakland during the film making. The fact that part of the production was filmed in Hayward is corroborated by a contemporary news article, ‘First Film Drama Written and Portrayed by Girl’, which we found in our archive. My mother mentioned that Charlie Chaplin’s crew visited Edwin’s Oriental Café during his own film-making in Oakland at the time and we could make a conjecture that he might have helped Marion. The contributions of Louis Air seem a much more plausible explanation as he was a key figure providing filmmaking expertise, and he should probably be given credit for some of the more experimental and innovative camera angles in the film.

Grandpa explained that the movie was about, in his words, ‘the brother that married the eldest brother’s girlfriend’. He continued that the title, in Cantonese, ‘Shee Ah Poy’ or ‘Chee Ah Go Poy’ (只下個配) means, ‘The brother married the wrong girl’. So, the core theme of the movie was a love story that was a triangle of love interests. He continued, with a chuckle, in reference to the name, ‘if you don’t listen closely it sounds like paper cup in Chinese (紙杯)’. Marion had experienced the heightened interest in the Chinese people through her touring throughout California in ‘Midnight in Frisco’. She also witnessed what Grauman was exploiting in his biased depictions of the Chinese, which she may have felt was not what Chinese Americans were truly like. This may have been the inspiration behind Marion’s wanting to show the world her version of the Chinese American culture. In her words quoted in a newspaper article, ‘I had never seen any Chinese movies, so I decided to introduce them to the world. I first wrote the love story. Then I decide that people who are interested in my people and my country would like to see some of the customs and manners of China. So, I added to the love drama many scenes depicting these things. I do hope it will be a success’ (‘First Film Drama Written and Portrayed by Girl’ 1916).

Her words show there was much more to her idea for the movie than just her visit to China at the age of fifteen from which she returned being inspired. Her production of the film followed quickly after she returned from her singing tour with Grauman and was more likely inspired by Louis Air’s suggestion that she could actually make her own movie (Figure 4). She combined all the resources of people she knew, her performing experience and her own innovative creativity to make a pioneering film.

Figure 4. The Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916) set. The man by the tripod may be Louis Air. Courtesy of the Kumaradjaja family History Archive.

Chris:

I was nine years old when the film was ‘rediscovered’ for the second time in 2007. I remember my eagerness as I asked my grandmother about The Curse of the Quon Gwon (1916). She was very proud and excited about its rekindled interest and told me that her mother wrote, directed, and produced this film. Thinking about my own grandmother’s experience in acting, I asked her ‘Did your mother act in her film?’ to which she replied ‘Of course! She played the villain’. Befuddled, I wondered. ‘Why would she play the villain on purpose?’ I asked. ‘You know, villains are very interesting characters. They’re complex’. Even with her ambitions of exposing this nuanced cultural conflict to the American public, there is a very personal component to this passion project.

Lisa:

Elements of Marion’s film, whose English title is, The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West, show this mix of Chinese and American culture, if not in the action, but in the costumes themselves. The actors wore the best formal wear from the West, men in suits and women in dresses, as well as Chinese opera costume. The story seems to reflect the ‘East meets West’ conflicts that arise from the integration of values and culture within a Chinese American family. My grandparents struggled to live in the old and new worlds simultaneously, and what emerged was a combination of those values and culture. Marion also wanted to make a film about who we are as Chinese Americans and that we are humans, not foreign odd alien creatures to be exploited for entertainment, or in life. The main characters in Marion’s film were depicted as well-to-do, and others who seemed to be secondary roles were cast as servants to these characters.

Our family’s life was very Western, very American. Marion’s life still had influences from her Chinese heritage, but in our family, we sought the American dream and worked hard to merge into the culture of the land of our birth – the United States of America. She was a Chinese Opera singer but also a performer of Western music as well. She, like many of the earlier generation American-born Chinese in my family felt a mix of both worlds.

Marion lived in a time when Chinese in America were experiencing tremendous racial oppression and prejudice. The Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted in 1882 and was in full force through 1943. Laws restricting Chinese immigrants were not fully repealed until 1965. Marion’s round trip to China and back in 1911–12 threatened her return to the United States even as an established native American-born citizen. Perhaps the influence her trip to China had on her film was not from her being in China but her treatment by her own country’s government to question, restrict and challenge her travels and citizenship when other American-born white citizens were free to leave and to enter the United States without question. Her entire family, except for her father, on that trip to China was American-born. The interrogation must have been an unsettling experience for Marion. What must it have been like for an independent, ‘self-made woman’ as my mother would call her, to feel restricted and misunderstood by her fellow white Americans? Her independent nature and can-do attitude would seem to fuel her desire to make a true Chinese American movie with a message of who we are and proof of what we can do. Her motivation may have been from an experience common to Asian Americans even today: being misunderstood, forever foreign and ‘not like the rest of us’.

Trip to New York

Chris:

The year 1917 was a critical year for Marion. She married Kim Seung Hong on May 23rd of that year, right after he graduated from University of California-Berkeley. With the film completed, she embarked on an ambitious trip to New York City with her mother. Although her husband may or may not have accompanied her on this particular trip, he had mentioned performing with her in New York City at some point during their young lives. One of the main purposes of this trip was to sell her film to exhibitors, in the hopes that one of them would distribute it on a larger scale. Her ambitious itinerary included photo shoots and performances as well.

Marion visited New York City with her mother and possibly her husband (Figure 5). They traveled from coast to coast by train, stopping in various cities across the country. Wherever Marion stopped, she spoke to any local newspaper that was willing to pick up her story. She sent press releases to newspapers which resulted in articles in at least ten local newspapers in six different states. Not only was she adventurous and ambitious, but she pursued any connection she could find. By July, she was in New York City. She was not alone in New York as her uncle Chun Dick owned a successful furniture business on Long Island. Along with Marion, Kim sang and danced, and even performed with her in New York. Although it is unclear what exact companies and exhibitors she talked to, it is certain that she talked to many while on her way to and in New York (‘Chinese Girl Is Author of Real Oriental Movie’ 1917, 10).

Figure 5. Marion in Central Park, 1917. Courtesy of the Kumaradjaja Family History Archive.

Marion’s ambitious itinerary also included performances in uptown and downtown Manhattan. She appeared in a variety of news outlets, including Moving Picture World. She and her husband Kim Hong had extensive experience performing in Vaudeville shows. One of these performances included a burlesque show at the Hurtig and Seamon Theater, which is now called the Apollo. In 1917, the Hurtig and Seamon Theater was a whites-only venue. A tabloid article announced this show in such a fashion:

Whisper – Lou Hurtig has hooked a find and a real, sure ‘nuff odd one, too. Do you recall seeing lately in and about the Great White Way a certain ingenue specimen of a pretty, dainty Celestial maid in native costume, chaperoned by round-faced ma, queue and all? Well, the pretty, dainty, almond-eyed maid is, to introduce her properly, Miss Marion Wong, 22 years old, speaks and reads English as fluently and as intelligently as she does Chinese, is a Pekin born, was educated liberally abroad, has traveled extensively and can sing and dance cutely and quaintly Americanese or Chinese.

This exoticizing, objectifying article is very revealing of the kind of atmosphere that Marion had entered. She was indeed experienced in vaudeville, but burlesque required an exaggeration and a strange new territory for her modes of performance. Burlesque was surely provocative at the time, and the article continues to sensationalize and stoke a thirst for her:

Recommended to Lou by an intimate Chinese merchant friend. Marion will henceforth be handled and agented exclusively by the gentleman seated at the managerial desk of Hurtig & Seamon’s theatre, who proposes to give his charge her first trial in a burlesque show when Sliding Watson’s hits Harlem. Marion, during that eventful engagement, will warble and wiggle in chop suey and Manhattan cocktail style, totally enveloped in a mandarin pajama suit of white silk. Harlemites are requested to book seats three weeks in advance to avoid the rush.⁴

This is the only example we have found of her performing burlesque. It was perhaps a novel learning experience for her and she perhaps figured that it was not a kind of performance she preferred, even if the show was hotly anticipated to be a full house. It must have been frustrating for Marion to continue to receive news coverage of this particular flavor. She came to New York in the hopes that audiences would take her intricate weaving of two cultures in a film seriously, rich with symbolism and conflict. However, even though she may have thought that she could draw a portion of Grauman or Hurtig’s audience base, they were perhaps only interested in sensational and deprecating spectacles.

Over the generations, American stereotypes of Asian people have evolved; Asian men shifted from being seen as predatory, sexual deviants, to shy, emasculated nerds, while Asian women shifted from mysterious, pretty objects, to overbearing tiger moms. We of course know that is not how Asian Americans would describe themselves. With her film, Marion took the tremendous step in introducing a genuine description of her life and cultures to a world that was not ready for her modern ideas. Importantly, Marion created her film in response to the deprecating stereotypes and racist tropes of the time. Her performances in Grauman’s ‘Midnight Frisco’, while degrading, were opportunities. She took the initiative to speak out against racism with a carefully crafted, intricate work of art, a masterpiece of plot, tradition, and costume.

The next venture

Lisa:

My mother always said, ‘You can go out and do whatever you want’. She said she learned this from her mother. Neither Marion, nor my mother were content to just stay at home. Marion loved music and to sing, she loved managing and directing. If she had an idea or an inspiration, she pursued it. She made the idea become a reality.

‘You can do anything you want’, Marion said. She fully believed and embraced this in her life. But doing anything you want doesn’t mean it will come easily. All around her was the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese, whether it was a tendency of an overseas Chinese to take on new things and be independent, or perhaps because they had no choice. Limited by opportunities given to white citizens but not available to them, like many Chinese, my grandmother had to find her own way. She turned to her friends and family for assistance.

In 1916, Marion had enlisted many family members and friends to make the movie. It seemed that her own family was heavily involved in supporting her film both financially as well as in different roles in the production such as making costumes as well as acting – her sister-in-law Violet she cast as the ‘Chinese American bride’. The family appeared to know many people in the Chinese community who they could draw upon for help.

I’m sure the tremendous disappointment of her film being a ‘failure’ in her eyes cut deeply, because who in the entertainment industry in America in 1917 would even consider an all-Asian cast movie for distribution, much less one made by a Chinese woman about Chinese Americans? I can only imagine what she was told in her attempts to have the film distributed and reviewed. It must have been humiliating. The film was never spoken about in our family. Her next venture may have been the only one at which she felt she could succeed – to open a restaurant. After all, isn’t this what Chinese do in America? That’s what her mother did. She didn’t stop there when it became successful. She kept going, opened a bakery and a second restaurant.

An independent woman

Chinese girls didn’t go to school, boys were favored. My grandmother only had a third-grade education. She was extremely intelligent and I’m sure would have welcomed an education. Grandpa, on the other hand, went to University of California at Berkeley and was the first Chinese American to receive a B.S. in Electrical Engineering degree from there. He was very proud of his education and highly prized learning in general, and for this accomplishment we are proud of him too. He was the educated one; she was not. In her and my grandfather’s Chinese family, education for girls was considered ‘a waste of money’. My grandmother was independent and self-taught in much of what she did. Grandpa had his own career as an Electrical Engineer straight out of college in 1918, eventually working for the Moore Dry Dock shipbuilding company where he became the first Chinese American Chief Engineer. While my grandfather went to work as an electrical engineer, my grandmother Marion ran the family businesses.

Mom used to tell me things her mother taught her, ‘You should always have your own money just in case’. Even though my grandparents owned restaurants, it was her restaurant, her bakery, her establishments that my mother spoke about, never ‘their restaurant’. It was ‘Mother’s restaurant’. Marion was described as the one directing everything about the business and how to run it. Mom also said her mother’s businesses were always successful. Nevertheless, when my grandfather sold their restaurant and bakery, Duck Inn, out from under her and gave all the money to his brothers, she was furious. Perhaps that was a painful lesson and reason for ‘having your own money’.

That didn’t stop Marion. She moved to Berkeley and opened Singapore Hut, a restaurant in Richmond that Marion started right after Duck Inn was sold in Stockton. The new restaurant was very successful, according to my mother. It opened during the war and many World War II soldiers stationed there would be patrons. Marion started Singapore Hut on her own, behind a bar but then it quickly grew to make a larger footprint. Marion’s children helped in the restaurant too. My aunt helped cook; my mother was a waitress along with other non-family workers. Mom said as a teenager that she would have nightmares about being in the restaurant waiting on tables and not being able to get to all of the customers in time. It must have been quite a busy restaurant in real life to stir up those bad dreams. My mother also remembers that my grandmother was always working in her establishments. Grandpa would come home after work from his engineering job and then go to the restaurant to have dinner. Marion would leave with him around 9:00pm to go to Oakland to play mahjong and stay as late as 2 or 3 am with her friends. Grandpa would leave earlier to go home get enough sleep to start his day job the next morning. She would have someone drive her home later and sometimes it was my mother who took her.

In Marion’s later years, after she retired, she took up knitting and knit a sweater and bonnet for me when I was a child which I still have. Marion always had dogs as loving pets and our many family photos of her often have her dogs with her. In her retirement, she still played mahjong late into the night. I have memories of the clack, clack, clack of the mahjong tiles as they were shuffled on the kitchen table while I tried to go to sleep in my bed. Gardening was a hobby of hers; she grew beautiful roses and gave my mother her favorite peony because it grew better where there was a winter. New York has winters and California doesn’t. Grandma loved peonies because they smelled like roses. In China, the peony symbolizes feminine beauty, honor, respect, wealth, and status. It is a resilient flower that comes back in the spring year after year after dying off during the winter months.

Mom is back out West now, and I have Grandma’s peony.

Conclusion

Chris:

The alluring combination of Marion’s personality and the historical climate and environments that formed her made her a hidden, but formidable figure in the early film industry. Given her background and the overwhelming isolation of the community to which her parents belonged, her push to cover new ground seemed difficult if not impossible. Instead, she had to take advantage of her reputation as a talented – and pretty – performer to make a production of her own. In that process, she was incredibly driven and strived to pursue as many contacts and leads as possible. From Marion’s experiences as a performer, a traveler, and a filmmaker, it is evident that The Curse stems from a deep-seated desire to enter the silent film scene in response to the stereotyping and prejudice she faced. Initially being forced to portray exoticizing and reductive character types Marion pushed back against societal prejudice and created this film in response to it. She entered a climate that was not progressive enough to embrace her ideas, not yet. As the years pass since her production of the film, Asian-Americans have made tremendous progress in representations of themselves in the media, and have been given more opportunities to bring their own genuine stories to the film scene.

I feel both frustrated by and thankful for being an Asian-American in this generation. I am frustrated that we still face the same wrong assumptions, disparagement, and stereotyping that Marion once faced, and that we still must confront issues of tokenism in on-screen appearances. However, I am thankful that I have many Asian friends with whom I am able to engage about my generation’s backgrounds, discourse, culture, and discussions about cultural identity. As the Asian-American population continues to grow and become more diverse, young Asian-Americans like me celebrate our uniqueness in the cultures that our ancestors brought to America. Most importantly I am thankful to be surrounded by strong and empathetic peers. I am still the only sixth-generation Chinese-American I know, but it is a big relief that there are now others, who are either Chinese American or those who appreciate and understand the Chinese American condition, and who can see us for who we are. If I look around me now, I am not alone. And especially, if I look at the generations and ancestors that have preceded me, I am definitely not alone.

Of course, my mother and I are very thankful for having this opportunity to reflect, reminisce, and reveal the stories that have been passed down through the generations. Sometimes, we felt like sleuths piecing hints of stories together, and other times, we could step back and marvel at our ancestors’ timelines as we worked together on this project.

Lisa:

In my own desire to discover my identity, since I was neither from China nor did I feel I fit into the Caucasian environment around me, I sought to know who I am through my family history. I spent years capturing the stories, researching, and collecting family history and artifacts in my quest. There wasn’t much detail on Chinese Americans in the history textbooks that I read in school. However, the family stories I heard gave me a peek into where I was from and the people who influenced my character. I found a commonality in my personality traits, my interests, and my internal drive shared with my family members. I discovered that, as Chinese Americans, we share a common struggle around identity formation even though our family has lived in America longer than most Americans. My revelation was that as overseas Chinese, we have our own culture and identity that feels right and fits who we are in our stories. Marion is not only a grandmother I love and am proud of, but also someone whom part of my identity was built upon.

Marion strived to attain success and recognition. Perhaps she had her own struggle with her personal identity or sought to create a new one. She fought to be seen and heard through her work and persevered through her ‘failures’. She finally achieved great success as a restaurant owner and posthumously as a pioneering filmmaker. I would imagine that from heaven she is finally looking down to see the recognition for her accomplishments that were ignored during her lifetime. While she felt that she failed in life, she truly didn’t. I hope that the important message of what she tried to share with the world is one that will live on as a success: to be accepted and valued for who we are.

Acknowledgements

First, we would like to extend our humblest gratitude for Professor Jane Gaines inviting us to write this article for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas. To Jane, for your excitement and passion in this topic, and your generosity. We would also like to thank Ailin Zhou and Xiaoyang Pan for their invaluable assistance in preparing this article for submission, and to Yingwen Huang for translation help. And lastly, we give our everlasting thanks and love to our mother and grandmother, Arabella Hong Young, Christopher’s Nanna. Thank you for your infinite love and the blessing of being your daughter, and grandson. We are happy and proud to have inherited Marion’s characteristics through you, and this article is one of our many exercises of thanks. We are grateful to have helped you learn about your own grandparents by reading our drafts and that this article has received your approval.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Kumaradjaja

Lisa Kumaradjaja is the founding owner and curator of the Kumaradjaja Family History Archive. She currently is an author and speaker on self-help topics after 17 years in managing software development and consulting services for large corporations. Following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather in study engineering and science, Lisa holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University SEAS and B.A. in Psychobiology from the State University of New York at Purchase.

Chris Kumaradjaja

Chris Kumaradjaja is a dual-degree candidate in the M.S. Historic Preservation and Master of Architecture programs at Columbia University GSAPP, and holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Columbia University SEAS. His professional experience includes optimization of building structures and the design of airport terminals. In preservation and architecture, his interests lie in the production and design of places dedicated to memory. His interests include urban history and development, architectural history, and applications of structural engineering in the preservation of historic buildings.

Notes

1 Sau Siu, also spelled as Sow Shu, was Marion’s father’s birth name, but on the censuses and in his work with the Sierra Lumber Company he was known as ‘Jim Sing’ (黃針勝) which Kim referred to as his Christian name. Jim Sing is not to be confused with ‘Big Jim’, a notorious gangster based in San Francisco whose Chinese name was ‘Chin Shin’. Although they both have the name ‘Jim’, transcriptions of Chinese names at the time were notoriously unreliable. Cross referencing and verifying require corroboration from other clues such as whether their Chinese names are transcribed similarly, if not identically, and if the places they lived and their family members are consistent from source to source. It is important that when conducting research on Chinese-Americans at the time, not to be misled by similar-sounding names (‘“Big Jim” Has Come Back Equipped for Defense’ 1902, 5).

2 Adolphus Graupner’s testimony is found in the casefile that includes Marion’s interrogation transcripts. Although he is not a traveler, he can be identified as an author providing such an affidavit.

3 Editors: See articles in this special issue by Kim K. Fahlstedt that deal with the social upheavals in this period before and after 1911 and their impact on the family and married life.

4 This article appears in a photo album in our family archive. We do not know the title of the publication or the date. However, there were many gossip/entertainment columns in New York City at the time.