![]() ![]() "This was quite a bold experiment and it shattered conceptions that people might have had about other people of color," Fong-Torres says. Still, Forbidden City attracted celebrities like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Duke Ellington. Otherwise, I wouldn't be in the business.'" And I think that was pretty difficult for most of these entertainers to take. racist remarks to your face, or shout it out from the audience. So even though you are the stars of the show, to which these paying customers have come to attend, they still feel superior to you and make. ![]() But that didn't shield performers from the mostly white audiences' racial taunts.Īccording to music writer and broadcaster Ben Fong-Torres, "Even while they were entertaining - not unlike the blacks who entertained in New York City at the Apollo and the Cotton Club - they would still be subjected to racism. It was even featured in major media outlets, including Life magazine. This 1964 Forbidden City ad features then-owner Coby Yee, who was billed as "China's Most Daring Dancing Doll."Ĭharlie Low opened Forbidden City in 1938, and from exotic dancers to comedians to acrobats, he made sure the club had it all. "She said, 'Honey, you out-Gypsyed Gypsy,'" Yee recalls. Billed as "China's Most Daring Dancing Doll," Yee says that when Louis Armstrong's wife saw her perform, she compared her to Gypsy Rose Lee. "Why? Because it's not a high-class job it's low-grade - dancing, showing your legs and everything."Ĭoby Yee also worked at Forbidden City in the mid-'40s. ![]() ![]() "My mother didn't want me to be in it," she says. Now 91 and living in Hawaii, Sing started out dancing as a chorus girl at Forbidden City in the early '40s. Mai Tai Sing was part of that generation. So I think the Chinese community, by and large, really wanted to forget about these clubs because they weren't proud of it."īack when the clubs were getting started, conservative Chinese parents didn't want their children to become entertainers, but a new generation still dared to try. He says, "The whole notion of women wearing scanty clothing, showing their legs in public was taboo for the conservative Chinese community at that time. When Dong first decided to make a film about the Chinese-American nightclub scene, few people wanted to talk about it. Mai Tai Sing dances with her husband, Wilbur Tai Sing, in 1942. Last year Dong turned his research for the film into the book Forbidden City, USA, and this week the Center for Asian American Media is honoring Dong at its annual film festival in San Francisco. The film, Forbidden City, USA, captured a little-known chapter of entertainment history: the Chinese-American nightclub scene that flourished in San Francisco in the 1940s and '50s. The club was called Forbidden City, after the Ming Dynasty imperial palace, and in 1989 Dong released a documentary about it. "And I had never seen Chinese dressed like that." "I remember distinctly looking at the marquee and looking at the glass display case all these wonderful black and white photos of Chinese people, but dressed in zoot suits and 1940s kind of gowns and tuxedos," he says. A mid-1940s postcard from San Francisco's Forbidden City nightclub, which opened in 1938.Īs a kid growing up in San Francisco, filmmaker Arthur Dong often walked by a nightclub just outside of Chinatown. ![]()
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