Frank Capra’s Eastern Horizons: American Identity and the Cinema of International Relations 9780755694808, 9781780768694

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For Mom

Published in 2015 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © 2015 Elizabeth Rawitsch The right of Elizabeth Rawitsch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. Cinema and Society ISBN: 978 1 78076 869 4 eISBN: 978 0 85773 707 6 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

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Illustrations 1 The “American Japanese” Itzkabashi family is a featured circus act in Rain or Shine. 2 White members of the circus troupe masquerade as the Itzkabashi family simply by donning its robes. 3 The man speaking Chinese in American Madness. 4 The man speaking Chinese in Broadway Bill. 5 In Ladies of Leisure, Kay and Dot discuss their romantic woes in a Chinatown restaurant. 6 The woman in front of Elaine in Arsenic and Old Lace. 7 The man in front of Mortimer in Arsenic and Old Lace. 8 Bob’s dreams of Cuba – represented by the souvenir photograph at lower right – haunt his relationship with Lulu in Forbidden. 9 The nightmare Yen in The Bitter Tea of General Yen. 10 The Westernized Yen in The Bitter Tea of General Yen. 11 At the conclusion of the suicide scene, both Yen and Megan are finally equal in ruin. 12 The lamas on high govern those in the valley below in Lost Horizon. 13 Lost Horizon’s natives silently (ob)serve the meals at Shangri-La. 14 Barnard tells Gloria that he is surprised by the valley’s absence of plumbing. 15 “Almond-Eyes” happily goes off with Jack and Bob in Submarine. 16 The United States – not the prime meridian – is at the centre of the map in Prelude to War.

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17 Prelude to War’s “free world” contains the Western Hemisphere. Behind the clouds, the “slave world” contains the Eastern Hemisphere. 18 Battle of China highlights individuals within the crowd. 19 The Japanese speak as one in Know Your Enemy: Japan. 20 The main attraction at The Strong Man’s Palace Theater has a Polynesian theme. 21 Rain or Shine’s Princess Dashimi: “The most gorgeous Oriental danger in the world today.” 22 Framed with a painting of three hula dancers, Susan Paine seduces Jefferson Smith away from his senatorial duties in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. 23 Mary decorates the Granville house with posters of “romantic places, beautiful places, places George wants to go” in It’s a Wonderful Life. 24 Polynesia is still a gendered spectacle in Hemo the Magnificent’s documentary footage of Tahiti. 25 The staircase mural in A Hole in the Head’s Garden of Eden hotel contains an exotic Adam and Eve. 26 Shirl as the Eve in the Garden of Eden.

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General Editor’s Introduction Frank Capra has long been seen as the quintessential American director, the man who captured better than anyone the identity and core values of the United States in a series of classic films of the 1930s and 1940s: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, You Can’t Take It With You, and supremely It’s A Wonderful Life. But Elizabeth Rawitsch, pointing out that many of his films are set in or include sequences set in China, Latin America, the Philippines and the South Seas, argues that Capra’s view of what constituted America changed over time, extending its boundaries to embrace countries often far from the United States. She expounds her theory in a series of detailed case studies. In her essay on The Bitter Tea of General Yen, which Capra often claimed was his favourite film, she challenges Edward Said’s celebrated theory of Orientalism as a strict binary in which the West constructs the East as an inferior ‘other’. In a careful analysis, she demonstrates that East and West interpenetrated in General Yen and crucially influenced each other equally. Lost Horizon, with its multi-national vision of Shangri-La, she posits as Capra’s version of a global community, albeit one with undertones of British and American imperialism. Capra had to confront the East again in his famous Why We Fight series of orientation documentaries for American servicemen. She interprets The Battle of China episode as valuing China as one of the Allies because of the similarity of the country and the people to America. Know Your Enemy: Japan depicts Japan as the opposite of America – militarist, anti-individualist and anti-democratic. Finally ix

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she traces allusions to Polynesia in seven of Capra’s films, tracing the process by which tropical exoticism went from being viewed in terms of fear and desire to being integrated in Capra’s national community. This innovative and stimulating study adds a whole new dimension to our understanding of Capra’s evolving thought and cinematic achievement. Jeffrey Richards

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Acknowledgements I was little, it was winter, and there was a movie on television. “You have to see this,” both Lesley Grapka and her mother told me. “This is a classic.” As snow fell outside the window we sat on the carpet, and George Bailey ran shouting through the streets of Bedford Falls. Yet what stayed with me about It’s a Wonderful Life after that first viewing was not the nightmare of Pottersville or the angelic ringing of bells or how George was the richest man in town; it was how very long it took for Clarence to show up. I sat there fidgeting in Lesley’s living room, dreaming about the adventures waiting outside in the snowy landscape – adventures that I felt were temporarily being denied to me – and I wondered why just so much of the movie was devoted to the repeated denial of young George’s hopes of adventure. More than two and a half decades later, I have an answer. This book began at the School of Film, Television, and Media Studies at the University of East Anglia, and the research was funded in part by a Humanities Scholarship from the University of East Anglia and an American Scholarship from the Memorial Trust of the 2nd Air Division USAAF. Thank you to Melanie Williams and Rayna Denison for their support and supervision through all of the project’s ups and downs and to Mark Jancovich, Robert Burgoyne, and Jeffrey Richards for their insightful feedback on the completed draft. Thank you to the helpful staff at the Wesleyan Cinema Archives (particularly to Joan Miller); the National Archives at College Park, Maryland; the Library of Congress; and the Margaret Herrick Library. xi

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Thank you to Sebastian Manley for bravely copyediting the work of a former copy editor and to Philippa Brewster, Anna Coatman, and everyone at I.B.Tauris. Thank you to the amazing network of family, friends, and colleagues who never believed that this was a lost cause. I want to extend particular thanks to Shane Brown for facilitating access to Frank Capra’s early films and assisting with the digital art; Phyll Smith for voluntarily undertaking research on Toshia Mori’s family history; Francis Dyson for making three years in a basement computer lab an absolute joy; Anna Martonfi and Rebecca Wigmore for the tea and gossip; and Jeff Bukowski and Phyllis Deutsch for always being there when I needed them, even on the other side of the Atlantic. Finally, thank you to Peter Rawitsch and Emily Rawitsch for tolerantly listening to me speak non-stop about Capra for over ten years. I love you, and – although I know you may not get the reference – you are both, as Clarissa Saunders and Grandpa Vanderhof would say, “good eggs.”

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Introduction: Mr. Capra Goes to China?: The Far East, Authorship, and National Ideology Perhaps more than any other classical Hollywood director, Frank Capra is perceived to celebrate uniquely American ideology in his films. According to Andrew Bergman, “to see the Capra films from 1934 to 1941 is to learn more about a nation’s image of itself than one has any right to expect.”1 Robert Sklar contends that Capra “was the only Hollywood director who tried to construct a large-scale model of American society in his films.”2 Jeffrey Richards even asserts that Capra “distilled the quintessence of the American Dream.”3 The strongest advocate of the position that Capra’s films are uniquely American is undoubtedly Ray Carney, whose book American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra linked Capra’s ideology to the tradition of American modernism.4 Innate Americanness is seen to be so central to Capra’s films that the subject of “America” is not indexed; indeed, it is not indexed in any existing auteur study of Capra.5 Yet, as Sklar and Vito Zagarrio observed in 1992, “Capra occupies a unique place in American culture. His name has become an instantly recognizable signifier, loosely defined but clearly understood, standing for a particular strain of national self-conception.”6 It is precisely this loose definition of “America” and “American culture” within the nearly forty-year span of films directed and/or produced by Capra between 1922 and 1961 that this book seeks to challenge through a 1

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re-examination of the geography that Capra’s films covered and how “America” was constructed within them. While the majority of Capra’s feature-length fiction films were set within the geographical confines of the United States, seven were located (at least in part) outside its borders: Submarine (1928) begins in the Philippines, Flight (1929) travels to Nicaragua, Dirigible (1931) voyages to Antarctica, Forbidden (1932) has an interlude in Cuba, The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) and Lost Horizon (1937) are entirely set in China, and Here Comes the Groom (1951) begins in France. Capra also produced an extensive collection of nonfiction orientation films for the U.S. Army during World War II – including the “Why We Fight” series (1942–1945) – that examined America’s relationship with both Allied and Axis countries. Even in the fiction films set inside the United States, Capra’s characters repeatedly discussed, fantasized about, and interacted with representatives from other nations. Capra’s heroes were regularly confronted with a choice between the “American” and the “exotic.” Therefore, although the majority of Capra’s films were set in the United States, they were engaged in global dialogues. This book will argue that Capra’s construction of national identity was not established within an exclusively national context. Indeed, upon re-examination, Capra appears to be a filmmaker who was consistently preoccupied with the global. The Capra films set outside the United States – The Bitter Tea of General Yen and Lost Horizon in particular – have generally been seen as anomalies within Capra’s oeuvre. Most famously, Andrew Sarris used Lost Horizon to demonstrate the inconsistency of Capra’s personal vision and hence his problematic auteur status.7 Yet, as Eric Smoodin noted in 2004, “for a director known for his ‘American’ themes, Capra made more movies about Far Eastern locales than did most other Hollywood directors from the period.”8 Although Capra’s films engaged with a wealth of nations beyond America, it was the Far East that particularly captured his attention. Therefore, although the following chapters will acknowledge and consider all of Capra’s interactions with global geographies – including Europe, South America, and the South Seas – the primary focus will be on Capra’s interaction with the East and shifting notions of Eastern otherness. How is the Far East represented in Capra’s oeuvre? When is it presented as redemptive, and when is it presented as corruptive? How

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INTRODUCTION

do issues of gender relate to those of Orientalism, particularly given the frequent presence of the figures of “woman as home” and “man as traveller”? How is Capra’s central preoccupation with American identity structured around its relationship to an Oriental “other”?

Frank Capra and National Identity That Capra’s films are currently perceived to be exclusively American in focus is hardly a surprise, because Capra himself appeared to endorse such a position. In 1972, shortly after declaring in his autobiography The Name Above the Title that he made “films about America and its people; films that would be my way of saying, ‘Thanks, America,’”9 Capra told interviewer Colin Shindler: I have never made a picture overseas, because I like to know what I’m talking about. [. . . ] I couldn’t see myself making a picture about Frenchmen because I don’t know any Frenchmen. I would be ill at ease with Frenchmen. I wouldn’t know the little mannerisms. . . . I was completely engrossed with my own surroundings – American surroundings, Americans as people – in my own time.10

This is a candidly critical self-assessment, but it is also, as already noted, untrue. Capra did make a picture (in part) overseas – Tunisian Victory (1944), a World War II orientation film, for which Capra traveled to England to coordinate the coproduction11 – and he did make a film that was about Frenchmen, or at least about French children: Here Comes the Groom dramatizes Pete Garvey’s attempts to woo back his estranged sweetheart so that they can adopt two French orphans who Pete brings back to America from postwar France. In fact, the action begins in Paris, where, for the first 29 minutes of the 114-minute film, Pete interacts with French men and women as he makes arrangements for their trip. Here Comes the Groom is a film that is very concerned with – in fact, entirely motivated by – French citizens. In other words, despite Capra’s claims to the contrary, he was a director who was interested in more than just American surroundings and Americans as people. Indeed, he had been from the very beginning: The opening intertitle from Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House (1922),12 the first one-reeler that Capra ever directed, borrowed its 3

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wording from Rudyard Kipling’s source poem ‘The Ballad of Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House’ (1886) to set the scene: That night when through the mooring chains The wide-eyed corpse rolled free To blunder down by Garden Reach And rot at Kedgeree The tale the Hughli told the shoal The lean shoal told to me.

Garden Reach was an area of Calcutta, and the Hughli River ran north of the city, locating the film’s action in India. This could have been an easy point to miss, however, if a viewer was unfamiliar with either Kipling’s work or with Indian geography, because the boarding house interior contained a generic-looking saloon.13 The only identifiably exotic aspect of the boarding house is its clientele: “Russ, German, English, Halfbreed, Finn, Yank, Dane, and Portugee,” plus Austrian, Spanish, Malaysian, and Papua New Guinean. The boarding house therefore is not only located overseas; it also is full of representatives from multiple nations. Americans are in the minority. (The lone “Bostonian” Salem Hardeiker is the villain.) The boarding house accommodates an international group of people who drink and sleep together: a global – not national – community. Furthermore, Capra’s interest in projects that dealt with international aspects extended beyond those that eventually made it to the screen. In his autobiography, Capra discussed multiple films that fell apart in pre-production: Soviet (1937), about an American engineer building a dam in Russia; The Life of Chopin (1938), about the Polish composer; The Flying Yorkshireman (1945), about a British tall-tale teller; Roman Holiday (1948), about a runaway princess of undefined nationality in Italy; and Anna Karenina (1962), a Russian romance.14 Although the reasons given for abandoning these projects vary, there are indications that it was often not Capra’s decision; if his previous film had not done well enough at the box office, the studio that he was working for had no choice but to sell off existing properties to raise funding for his current movie.15 This is an under-studied facet of Capra’s career – one that deserves in-depth attention in the future – but what little information has been uncovered so far about these 4

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never-filmed projects suggests that Capra frequently intended to turn his sights across both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Across Capra’s body of work there is a tension between the national and the global. In Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House, representatives from multiple nations coexist in relative harmony, but there is also the potential for lethal violence – a situation shown in India but equally possible in multiethnic (and multinational) immigrant America. In the abandoned project Soviet, the American engineer must choose between returning to his country or staying with a Russian woman who “hates anything American.”16 In Here Comes the Groom, Pete must choose between a new assignment in the Far East (specifically Burma, Indochina, and Hong Kong) or starting a family with his fianc´ee and the French orphans in America. The Capra hero is repeatedly torn between the exotic allure of the foreign and the domestic obligations of the national. Why then would Capra have repeatedly downplayed his interest in the international? Capra’s biographer Joseph McBride argues that the director – an emigrant from Sicily – never completely felt that his American citizenship was secure: “His memory of the ship crossing always remained extraordinarily vivid, so much so that he would speak of it often in the present tense, as if for the rest of his life he was, in some profound sense, always on that ship, always in the process of becoming an American.”17 Indeed, Capra had been shocked to discover when he attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army during World War I that he was not yet a citizen; the paperwork only came through in 1920, long after his discharge.18 According to McBride, the start of the McCarthy witch hunt for Communists put the director further on edge, to the point that beginning in 1947, “he set about purging his work of any elements he could anticipate that anyone, anywhere, present or future, might find ‘un-American.’”19 It is therefore possible that it was in Capra’s interest to actively endorse the idea that his films were American, because his films’ being American would mean he himself was unquestionably American.

Nationalism, National Identity, and National Cinema However, it is also possible that it is the definition of “American” itself that is faulty. Must it always be opposed to the global, or is 5

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a more complex relationship possible? Before beginning to unpack what it means to be “American,” what it means to belong to a nation in general must be considered. According to Benedict Anderson, a nation is “an imagined political community” that exists only when a significant number of people consider themselves to be part of a nation or behave as if they have formed one.20 For example, “an American will never meet, or even know the names of more than a handful of his 240,000,000-odd fellow-Americans. He has no idea of what they are up to at any one time. But he has complete confidence in their steady, anonymous, simultaneous activity.”21 In other words, nations do not exist organically; they are constructed through communal imagining, and, as a result, the formulation of nationhood is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. A nation continues to imagine itself into existence centuries after its founding, and the way in which it imagines itself can change over time. While the process of nationalism often creates the imagined community from the top down, national identity usually functions from the bottom up: it is a social grouping through which individuals can locate themselves in the world. Because the personal is often political, nationalism and national identity are inherently interlinked: nationalism generates national identity, and national identity sustains nationalism. (As we shall see in the following chapters, Capra was interested in both concepts, and which of the two took precedence in his films varied throughout his career.) As Anthony Smith argues, “A national identity is fundamentally multi-dimensional; it can never be reduced to a single element, even by particular factions of nationalists, nor can it be easily or swiftly induced in a population by artificial means.”22 Indeed, national identity is often connected to other types of identity, such as class, religion, and race. Ultimately, in a way familiar to other kinds of identity politics, members of a nation can define themselves by their similarities to one another – Anderson argues that the key is shared language,23 Ernest Gellner contends that it is shared culture (signs, ideas, and associations),24 and Smith claims that it is shared history and homeland25 – and/or by their differences to people who do not meet the perceived requirements of nationality, who do not share language, culture, or homeland. As Thomas Eriksen notes, “the very idea of the nation presupposes that there are other nations, or at

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least other peoples, who are not members of the nation.”26 It is tempting to view this process as a simple binary opposition, one that establishes a relationship of the “self” versus the “other.” But theoretical binaries are oversimplifications of complex cultural practices, and an essentialized “self”/“other” opposition becomes problematic when considering the United States of America. America is today and was between 1922 and 1961 inhabited by citizens speaking multiple languages, coming from varied cultures, and originating in numerous homelands. The United States imagines itself based not only on its external differences (the way that it compares with other nations), but also on its internal differences, which are either celebrated (as multiculturalism) or condemned (as requiring assimilation). As Michael Walzer has noted, “one can be an American patriot without believing in the mutual responsibilities of American citizens – indeed, for some Americans disbelief is a measure of one’s patriotism.”27 Dissent, in other words, can be a marker of national belonging and a celebration of individualism within the still-unified collective. Precisely which heritages and ethnicities qualify for Americanness and the degree to which American identity is implicitly synonymous with “whiteness” changes over time as the nation (re)constructs itself.28 An unambiguous “self”/“other” opposition does not easily work in regard to American nationality, because the “self” is composed of “others.” Andrew Higson argues that the discursive construction of national cinema is similar to the discursive construction of nationhood: it can follow an inward-looking process that highlights similarities within a nation’s industrial output, or it can follow an outwardlooking process that compares and contrasts a nation’s cinema to other national cinemas.29 Stephen Crofts notes that while national cinemas are often defined against Hollywood, “this extends to such a point that in Western discussions, Hollywood is hardly ever spoken of as a national cinema, perhaps indicating its transnational reach.”30 American cinema is perceived to be normative to the point where its national characteristics no longer require definition. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, however, famously did define the formal qualities of classical Hollywood cinema in relation to historical and industrial factors, concluding that Hollywood’s narrative style (unobtrusive three-point lighting, continuity editing, centred

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framings, etc.) was intentionally invisible, facilitating the communication of the narrative.31 Therefore, not only does Hollywood’s global economic dominance efface its distinguishing characteristics, but its visual style does as well. The American identity of Capra’s films (versus American identity in Capra’s films) is therefore largely invisible but also highly normative. Presumably it does not require the use of the adjective “American” to draw attention to itself, suggesting that the term as it is used in relation to Capra’s output typically refers to the director’s ideology, not to the production process. Both national identity and national cinema are therefore constructed through inward- and outward-looking processes that cannot necessarily be read as binary opposites. Furthermore, neither process can be read as completely uniform, because there will always be dissenting attitudes present within the dominant discourse. Since both processes are continual, repeatedly (re)negotiating the terms for inclusion or exclusion, they must be examined within specific historical contexts.

The Far East and Orientalism While this book is concerned with only one national cinema (American), it is concerned with multiple nationalities. As already noted, Capra was preoccupied with shifting representations of Eastern otherness, and therefore what the “Far East” means requires further definition. Several Asian nations took centre stage over the course of Capra’s career: India, the Philippines, China, and Japan, as well as the (potentially Asian) South Seas. Between 1922 and 1961 India was generally classified as part of the Near East, and China, Japan, and the Philippines were considered part of the Far East. While the “Orient” meant the “Near East” within a European context, it meant the “Far East” within an American context; the two terms – “Orient” and “Far East” – were used interchangeably in the United States. The South Seas was composed of Macronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia, but popular American perceptions of the region centred almost exclusively on Polynesia: the triangular area between Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand.32 The South Seas was generally considered part of Oceania rather than as belonging in whole or in part to any of the continents that surrounded it; likewise, although it was further 8

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east than China, Japan, or the Philippines, it was often considered a separate cultural region from the Far East. As Ella Shohat and Robert Stam clearly demonstrate in Unthinking Eurocentrism, geography is political.33 To describe parts of the world as “East” and “West” is to locate Europe – and, by extension, the Western world – at the centre of the map, but the spherical Earth has no centre except at its core. Cardinal directions are therefore relative: the “Far East” also lies to the west of Hollywood and the American West Coast. Furthermore, cultures permeate, rarely halting at geographic boundaries; as Shohat and Stam caution, “The ‘West’ and the ‘non-West’ cannot [. . . ] be posited as antonyms, for in fact the two worlds interpenetrate in an unstable space of creolization and syncretism.”34 And, of course, within every country there are varying degrees of ethnic and cultural diversity, so the very act of nationalism (as discussed in the section above) is itself political, whether it occurs in the East or the West. As the following chapters will demonstrate, Capra’s geography was more imaginative than cartographic. The degree to which Capra attempted to distinguish between national cultures and regions varied over time and for numerous reasons: genuine confusion, laziness, political pressure, and so on. Rain or Shine (1930), for example, seems to indicate that Capra may have considered the South Seas to be part of the Orient in 1930: The circus performer Princess Dashimi – a woman who performs the hula in a grass skirt – is introduced as “the most gorgeous Oriental danger in the world today.”35 Yet by the World War II orientation films, the two geographic regions were clearly delineated: the attack on Pearl Harbor was different to the fighting on the Pacific front. Just as with nationalism, Capra’s representations of national identity will need to be discussed within specific historical contexts. Investigations of how Capra represented both Asian and American national identities could, of course, consider an intersection with a broad range of subjects, spanning from class to religion,36 all of which can – depending upon the historical context – constitute forms of “otherness” within American culture. While other potential categories of “otherness” – or what we might call “other ‘others’” – like sexuality and age are underrepresented in Capra studies and undoubtedly deserve further investigation, it is the often-gendered

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intersection between national identity, race, and ethnicity that will be a focus of this book, because this has yet to be analyzed in any serious depth outside of an exclusively American context, particularly with regard to Capra’s shifting representations of Eastern otherness.37 When discussing the way that one culture represents another – and particularly when discussing the way that a Western culture represents the East – the elephant in the room is Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism.38 According to Said, Orientalism is “the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage – and even produce – the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively.”39 The West establishes the Orient as its “other” in order to reinforce the West’s sense of self: “The Orient is irrational, depraved, childlike, [and] ‘different’; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, [and] ‘normal.’”40 Therefore, because the Western representation of the Orient is a construction – one that does not depict the “real” or authentic Orient, only the Orient as the West imagines it – according to Said, the Western representation of the Orient actually tells us more about the West than it does about the East. Said notes that “once we begin to think of Orientalism as a kind of Western projection onto and will to govern over the Orient, we will encounter few surprises.”41 The West’s projection onto the Orient reveals the West’s own fantasies and fears. While Said was particularly interested in how this East/West binary functioned in relation to the Arab world (the “Near East”) and Europe, it has since been extrapolated – with varying degrees of success – to other parts of the world, including the Far East and North America.42 In its early stages, this book was an examination of the Orientalist discourse within Capra’s films, because the idea that the West’s representation of the East actually reflected the West seemed at first glance like it would neatly map itself onto Capra’s imaginative geography, which made few (if any) claims to authenticity. Orientalism also seemed like a useful method for unpacking the power structures at work in Capra’s representation of international relations. However, Orientalism was quickly abandoned as an overarching structure, because the theory – and particularly its Orient/Occident binary opposition – unexpectedly began to fall apart when it was applied

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to Capra’s body of work. It became readily apparent that this was not because Capra espoused a unique or subversive approach to global politics; it was simply because Orientalism is flawed as a theory and even more flawed in practice. Indeed, over the last 30 years, the theory of Orientalism has come under intense scrutiny on a number of levels. For example, Said has been criticized for essentializing Orientalism: overemphasizing the binary opposition of East versus West rather than allowing room for complexity or ambivalence of attitudes. The East can resist the West’s attempts to discursively control it – for example by attempting to discursively control the West (through Occidentalism)43 or by actively participating in the way that the West discursively constructs it (through self-Orientalism or auto-Orientalism)44 – or the West can empathize with the East,45 complicating the binary division between the two worlds. The dividing line between East and West is nowhere near as clear-cut as Said first claimed. Further criticisms against Orientalism are that the West is (as noted in the above section on nationalism) just as much of a construction as the East is. There is no “real” or “true” West and no “real” or “true” America. (This, of course, raises questions about precisely what Capra’s reputed “American” ideology is supposed to be, which will be examined throughout the following chapters.) Moreover, Orientalism is inherently patriarchal in its structure46 and also largely ahistorical, assuming that East/West power relations have always been and will always be imbalanced in the West’s favor.47 Even worse, the very way in which Orientalism is constructed guarantees that this imbalance will continue. Put another way, Orientalism itself is Orientalist. Daniel Martin Varisco, for example, criticizes how “Said’s failure to consider indigenous resistance to imperialism and colonial policy forecloses the very agency of the people he assumes cannot represent themselves.”48 Short of leaving work on the East’s representation to Eastern scholars, there seems to be no easy solution to the imbalance of power created when the West writes about the East, and therefore – as a Westerner writing about the East myself – I can only endeavor to be as aware of and cautious about my subject positioning as possible, to aim for a more nuanced approach to representation: one guided by historical context rather than by the politics of geography.

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In other words, it is rare that film simply “reflects” history or culture, whether it is the history or culture of the East or the West. The interactions between East and West have undeniably involved exertions of power, but use of or resistance to that power is complex and often involves ambiguous non-binary positions that Said failed to take into account. This is true not only of Capra’s films, but of any Hollywood film from the period; the more that the East/West binary is investigated, the more gray areas begin to emerge. Therefore, while this book is interested in the power relations between the East and the West, and particularly the way that Capra, as a Westerner, represents the East, it will not take Orientalism as a structuring mechanism.

Frank Capra and Authorship Instead, this book will be structured around an investigation of authorship. By its very focus – films directed and/or produced by Frank Capra – this book is an auteur study, but it is one that is more interested in themes than in practice. Therefore what “a Capra film” means requires further clarification, particularly given the long and heavily contested discourse surrounding Capra and authorship. During the nearly forty years in which Capra was making movies, the treatment of him as an author varied. Feature articles on the director often identified Capra as the guiding force behind the films he worked on, but they just as frequently emphasized the role of the studio or of the films’ stars. For example, although Time magazine featured Capra on its cover in 1938, the accompanying story explains to readers that Hollywood directors are subordinate to producers, and it discusses the important contributions made to Capra’s previous films by Columbia producer Harry Cohn, screenwriters Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin, and actors Harry Langdon and Clark Gable.49 A 1941 feature on Capra in Theatre Arts notes that “he is seldom to be found in the chair marked director,” because he is busy checking on the actors, the positioning of props, the camera movement, and the lighting, but it also notes the contributions of actors Barbara Stanwyck and James Gleason and screenwriter (and by-then Frank Capra Productions coowner) Riskin.50 Otis Ferguson recorded patterns in Capra’s work over a seven-year period through his reviews in the New Republic – patterns that he explicitly credits to Capra as director – but he was 12

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increasingly disparaging about how Capra’s films were becoming more about ideas than about people: a trend that Graham Greene was also recording across the Atlantic in the British Spectator.51 Indeed, while Capra boasted in his autobiography that he was one of the first Hollywood directors to have his name listed above the title of his films,52 this was true only of the movies’ title screens. Capra’s authorship sometimes was foregrounded in the discourse surrounding his films, but it was not always interpreted positively, and it just as frequently was overshadowed by other factors. Then, in the 1950s, the way that scholars conceptualized the role of directors started to shift. Beginning with Franc¸ois Truffaut’s 1954 manifesto “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,” the French journal Cahiers du Cin´ema began to champion auteurs: European writer-directors who took a personal approach to filmmaking.53 The journal also embraced select Hollywood filmmakers (Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and Vincente Minnelli, for example) who, it argued, had transcended the restrictions imposed upon them by the studio system. Capra, however, was not among its pet causes. As Zagarrio has noted, Capra’s name rarely appeared in Cahiers during its heyday and, in a retrospective symposium on la politique des auteurs, Jean-Louis Comolli conceded that Capra was a director for whom “the battle still has to be fought.”54 In other words, the rise of auteurism did not immediately lead to increased academic interest in either Capra or Capra’s work. There are a number of possible explanations why Capra did not interest Cahiers: he was a commercial success, which supposedly precluded his being a critical success or an artist; the quality of his filmmaking supposedly declined during the late 1950s and early 1960s, resulting in his “worst movies”; and his output for most of the 1950s was primarily in television (the Bell Laboratory Science series), a medium in which Cahiers was uninterested. John Raeburn even speculated in 1975 that the innate Americanness of Capra’s films simply did not translate into French: “Much of the world of a Mr. Deeds or a Mr. Smith or a John Doe was simply culturally unavailable to non-Americans.”55 Also, the impetus of the auteur movement was largely to “rescue” neglected and overlooked talents,56 but Capra had received recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (including three Oscars for Best Director – a record beaten

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only by John Ford) and had earned enormous revenues at the box office. Simply put, Capra did not need “rescuing,” because he was already a celebrated figure within the industry. Whatever the reasons for the oversight, by the time Andrew Sarris imported auteurism to America in 1962, Capra had already made his final feature film and, although he would go on trying to get various projects off the ground for another three years, had effectively retired from filmmaking. Famously mistranslating Cahiers’s “tendency” into a “theory,” Sarris established three qualifications for auteurism that a director had to meet – technical competency, distinguishable personality, and interior meaning – visualized like the concentric circles of a bull’s-eye.57 When Sarris published The American Cinema – his hierarchical ranking of Hollywood directors – in 1968 he, unlike the Cahiers critics, included Capra, but he relegated the director to the second-tier “Far Side of Paradise” rather than placing him in the vaunted “Pantheon.” Although Sarris declared that “Capra is a genuine auteur, and there is no mistaking his point of view,” he also perceived fragmentation in Capra’s personal vision, specifically in Lost Horizon: “At that point, Capra stopped the world and got off.”58 Capra, meanwhile, was far from idle in his retirement. His autobiography The Name Above the Title was begun in 1966, fully drafted by 1968, and published in 1971.59 In it, he repeatedly advocated what he called the “one man, one film” approach to filmmaking (“in art it is ‘one man, one painting – one statue – one book – one film’”) and vehemently argued that he himself was a practitioner firmly committed to this method: “Regardless of the origin of a film idea – I made it mine; regardless of differences with studio heads, screenwriters, or actors – the thought, heart, and substance of a film were mine.”60 Appearing three years after Sarris’s canon was published, Capra’s autobiography can be viewed as an attempt by Capra to champion himself as an auteur. He provides evidence of his technical ability (filming in sub-zero temperatures, innovations in men’s make-up, pioneering usage of teleprompters, etc.), style (montage, soft-focus photography, and pacing of dialogue), and thematic consistency (the individual versus the masses), placing himself within all three concentric circles of Sarris’s criteria for authorship. His films are

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literally defined by their director: Capra identifies and interprets his own authorial trademarks. Regardless of whether Capra’s intent was actually to guide and shape the discourse surrounding his films, that is precisely what the autobiography accomplished. The scholarship that followed in the next two decades tended to draw heavily upon Capra’s personal account of events – regardless of whether or not it foregrounded Capra as the films’ guiding figure – largely taking his word at face value. To highlight just a few projects, Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn’s edited collection on Capra included two interviews with the director as well as a 1939 New York Times letter to the Editor written by Capra himself; Charles Wolfe’s book-length bibliography of sources on Capra thanked the director in its acknowledgments; and Lee Lourdeaux’s examination of supposedly Italian themes in Capra’s films drew extensively on Capra’s autobiographical narrative. 61 As Jeanine Basinger noted in her new introduction to The Name Above the Title, “It was a renaissance and Capra’s autobiography was like the Rosetta Stone,” and as a result Capra began a second career, touring university campuses as “an ambassador for himself and his work.”62 In the meantime, there was the rise of post-structuralism within media studies, which decentred the director as an author. Peter Wollen, for example, argued that “Fuller or Hawks or Hitchcock, the directors, are quite separate from ‘Fuller’ or ‘Hawks’ or ‘Hitchcock,’ the structures named after them.”63 In other words, men (and they almost always were men) and their movies were two different things. Post-structuralism therefore allowed for the possibility that patterns and meanings existed in a text that the director did not intend; the director’s word was no longer taken as gospel. This watershed moment happened quite late within Capra studies, however: Joseph McBride’s biography Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success was published in 1992, after the director’s death, in agreement with the Capra family.64 Denying the myth of authorship while at the same time building a case for screenwriter Riskin as the genius behind Capra, it violently toppled the director from his pedestal. Capra himself had cautioned in his autobiography’s preface that “this is not truly an autobiography – a recording of doings and happenings historically documented,”65 but McBride further declared

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The Name Above the Title to be “largely a work of fiction” and a self-mythologizing work of egotism wherein Capra willfully and maliciously revised his personal history to deny credit to his closest collaborators, many of whom could not contradict his version of events because Capra had been blessed with the good fortune to outlive them.66 (Indeed Capra lists a whopping 29 deceased “fellow riders” of cinema’s magic carpet in his dedication to The Name Above the Title.67 ) McBride’s manifesto was followed by a wave of scholarship shaped by the biography: for example Sam Girgus drew upon McBride’s account of Capra’s life in his analysis of the construction of masculinity in Capra’s films, while Pat McGilligan and Ian Scott both published McBride-heavy biographical investigations of Capra’s collaborator Riskin.68 It is clear that both Capra’s autobiography and McBride’s biography had agendas.69 Whereas the autobiography sought to construct Capra as a Horatio Alger–style hero, the biography sought to construct him as an egomaniacal villain. Capra’s account of his career needs to be taken with a grain of salt, McBride’s account needs to be taken with a grain of sugar, and neither account should be taken as a completely impartial – or, indeed, reliable – source. (McBride’s lack of footnotes linking claims to specific sources is problematic; the bibliographic essays leave much to be desired.) Furthermore, there is an inherent problem with biographical approaches to authorship: Capra was by no means the only individual working on his films. Why assume that it is exclusively his biography that can be traced onto them? The films could – and do – also reflect their screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, and so on.70 Victor Perkins argued that directing was a collaborative endeavor but that the director was the one individual who brought coherent meaning to a film by virtue of what he accepted or rejected, an idea that Capra himself endorsed, explaining that his films were made by “collaboration, but not committee.”71 Capra therefore links his films together through his supervision of them, whether acting as a director, producer, or producer-director. But there is no reason to assume that if an aspect of one of his films was personal to one of his collaborators and furthered the story that Capra wanted to tell that it would be rejected because it did not coincide with Capra’s biography. It is for

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this reason that this study seeks to move away from a biographical approach to authorship and will not foreground either the man or his nationality. There is, as Wollen would agree, a difference between Capra the director and “Capra” the structures in his films, and the focus will be on the latter. Yet it is precisely that difference between Capra and “Capra” that is the focal point of the second key debate in Capra studies: the particular nature and extent of his collaboration. One camp argues that Capra exemplified the studio system: he was a highly collaborative filmmaker and one who also needed restrictions in place in order to transcend them;72 the other camp argues that Capra was an exceptional figure who occupied the rare role of producer-director rather than simply director.73 The problem with both approaches is that they generally focus on a very small period in Capra’s career. Capra did not just make films in the studio system. He also had a collaborative stardirector system of production with Harry Langdon during the silent era, he worked as an “in-house independent” producer-director at Warner Bros., he served in the extremely hierarchical U.S. Army, he had his own production company Liberty Films, he worked as a producer in television, and he made co-productions with star-led production companies. An auteur study that is interested in “Capra” must take all of these systems of production – and all of the films and television programs that they produced – into account. And yet, what we mean by “Capra” is not restricted solely to the films themselves. Capra is also an early example of Timothy Corrigan’s industrial model of authorship, whereby authorial voice is established through marketing and publicity rather than through production.74 Even when Capra was at Columbia, the studio enthusiastically promoted Capra as the guiding force behind his films because, in the absence of a star system, it was a way to brand its product. Smoodin has shown that Capra was used as a marketing device as early as 1928,75 and Capra’s name on a film alone was believed to increase revenue, as demonstrated by the debacle when Columbia falsely marketed William A. Seiter’s If You Could Only Cook (1935) as a “Frank Capra production” in the United Kingdom.76 Capra’s name is still widely used as a posthumous branding device: In 2006, Sony Pictures Entertainment (which acquired Columbia

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Pictures in 1989) released “The Premiere Frank Capra Collection,” a digitally remastered DVD box set of Capra’s studio system films, complete with the feature-length documentary Frank Capra’s American Dream (1997), interviews with Frank Capra Jr., and a 96-page collectible movie scrapbook.77 The Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley launched the major film retrospective “Before ‘Capraesque’: Early Frank Capra” in 2010, which the British Film Institute borrowed later that year for an extended two-month season, entitled “Rediscovering Frank Capra.”78 Marketing and publicity has helped to define what a “Capra” film is just as much as the films themselves. Furthermore, the scholarly discourse surrounding the films equally contributes to the way a “Capra” film is defined. Barbara Klinger and Robert Kapsis have both proven through their respective work on Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock that authorship is not ahistorical; the way in which it is understood changes over time.79 All of the various models of Capra – as studio director, as rogue independent, as fairy tale hero, as egomaniacal liar – influence the way that his films are understood. Wollen’s distinction between Hawks and “Hawks” therefore does not go far enough, because authorship extends beyond a series of structures. What we mean by “Capra” conflates the films, their extratextual contexts, and the academic discourse surrounding them. “Capra” will therefore be taken out of quotation marks within this book, but in doing so I do not mean to imply that these films are exclusively Capra’s. In many cases, they are not: the montage in American Madness (1932) that will be analyzed in Chapter 2 was reportedly initially sketched by Riskin for director Allan Dwan;80 Lost Horizon, which will be discussed in Chapter 4, was heavily (and repeatedly) cut by Cohn against Capra’s wishes;81 and Capra’s longtime collaborations with cinematographer Joseph Walker, editor Slavko Vorkapich, composer Dmitri Tiomkin, and set designer Stephen Goosson should not be underestimated. This book is interested, rather, in how the discourse reasserts Capra as the author, how these films remain an established body of work by consensus despite all the evidence to the contrary. It is interested in how authorship can transcend the textual or extratextual and exist in multiple areas simultaneously through an institutional construction.

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More specifically, this book is a study of representation that is embedded within the larger discourse of the relationship between Frank Capra and “nation.” It examines Capra’s shifting representations of Eastern otherness primarily through historically contextualized close textual analysis, with particular emphasis on scenes that rarely (if ever) make it into synopses of the films82 but which indicate a clear and recurring pattern when considered across a nearly four-decade-long body of work. The focus of the textual analysis – mise-en-sc`ene, editing, and/or narrative – will vary by chapter and within chapters depending on the research questions under consideration and the kinds of texts being investigated. Indeed, this book will examine Capra’s entire body of work, not just his studio productions and not just his features. It will include the short films, the silent films, the non-fiction films, the colour films, and even (in Chapter 6) Capra’s brief foray into television. Its scope is limited, however, to Capra’s role as director and/or producer, because that is the capacity through which he was able to guide and shape the projects with which he was involved. (It is also primarily around the films that he directed and/or produced that the Capra discourse functions.) As a result, this book is not concerned with Capra’s role as film cutter, gag man, or consultant – unless, of course, he took on those jobs in addition to directing or producing duties – but these are all areas deserving of further investigation. Recognizing that representation, authorship, and national identity are all far from ahistorical (as demonstrated above), this study will be situated within historical, cultural, and industrial contexts, particularly in the case studies – of which there is at least one per chapter – which will always have extremely specific historical timeframes, spanning from one week to five years.83 The close textual analysis will also be placed in conversation with a variety of archival texts (including Capra’s personal correspondence, production memos, film reviews, censorship reports, industrial policies, and publicity materials), which will be used in lieu of Capra’s (auto)biographical testimony to substantiate claims wherever possible. The chapters are not (and never could be) exhaustive in their consideration of extratextual material,

INTRODUCTION

Methodology and Overview

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but they will all consider at least one kind of extratextual source in addition to the textual analysis. Both political and cultural histories of America (from those published in Capra’s time to those published recently) will be drawn upon to contextualize the textual and extratextual material and to demonstrate how America’s attitude toward the Far East vacillated between fear and friendship throughout the 1920s and 1950s, often influenced by America’s varied models of imperialism, which ranged from colonial possession of the Philippines to informal economic dominance in China to post–World War II occupation of Japan. Existing analyses of the representation of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the media (again, from those published within Capra’s time to those published recently) will be drawn upon to examine how Hollywood’s representation of Far Eastern identities responded to these political shifts. Yet I take heed of Klinger’s warning that there can be multiple readings of a film even within particular historical moments.84 I certainly do not mean to imply that any of my close readings of Capra films are the only way to read Capra, simply that they are one way among many and, generally, one that has been largely unconsidered until now. The following chapters will be organized chronologically rather than geographically in order to take account of the changing historical, cultural, and industrial contexts. Patterns between geographic areas will be cross-referenced as they occur. Such a structure will, I hope, avoid establishing – and therefore creating – an oppositional relationship between geographic areas, which, as demonstrated above, would have been one of the pitfalls of an Orientalist approach. Previous investigations of Capra’s construction of national identity have almost exclusively taken inward-looking approaches, attempting to demonstrate what is American about the films’ ideology by comparing them to other American reference points. The following chapters attempt to reshape this discourse by taking a primarily outward-looking approach to national identity, seeking to understand how Capra used what was foreign – and particularly what represented Eastern otherness – to define the national. However, what I hope to demonstrate is that the relationship between Capra’s West and East was far from a simple binary: the East was not always positioned in opposition to the West; it was not always negative in comparison; and

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it also was not always constructed as an “other.” There was no “real” East, no “true” East, only shifting representations of Easternness. Unsurprisingly, the same was true of Capra’s America. Chapter 1 investigates the problematic definition of “American” identity in Capra’s discursive canonization as an auteur. Beginning with a case study of tribute pieces and obituaries written about Capra immediately following his death, I analyse how the adjective “American” was repeatedly used to indicate a recurrent tension between the individual and the community in Capra’s films, a trend that extends to definitions of Capra’s “American” ideology in auteur studies of the director. Yet Capra’s communities came in different sizes, ranging from two-person family units to local neighborhoods to the nation at large. And, crucially, the nation in question was not always the United States. Throughout his career, Capra was preoccupied with shifting conceptualizations of Eastern otherness, and his American heroes (both male and female) repeatedly faced a choice between the domestic and the foreign. Yet the definition of what “America” meant within Capra’s films shifted as well, as demonstrated by Capra’s rhetorical construction of the American nation in You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Prelude to War (1942), and State of the Union (1948). Capra’s qualifications for “American” identity ultimately broadened into a tentative campaign for a global community, albeit one that placed the United States firmly at its centre. However, given Capra’s preoccupation with the global and particularly with shifting representations of Eastern otherness, we cannot understand what Capra meant as “American” without understanding what it meant to be or to become “Asian/American” within his films. Capra’s engagement with the Far East (and with the tension between the national and the international) began at home, with the racial and ethnic diversity that existed in America. Drawing upon David Palumbo-Liu’s construction of “Asian/American” identity,85 Chapter 2 situates case studies of extremely brief representations of Asian/Americans in Rain or Shine (1930), Ladies of Leisure (1930), American Madness (1932), Broadway Bill (1934), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) – as well as white masquerades of Asian/American identity in Rain or Shine, Lady for a Day (1933), and Pocketful of Miracles (1961) – within evolving cultural, political, and industrial attitudes toward race and ethnicity between the 1920s and 1950s. While Capra’s America

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has generally been perceived as a celebration of the melting pot, his representations of Asian/Americans reveal a complex negotiation of assimilationist and pluralist attitudes, simultaneously emphasizing Asian/Americans’ inherent foreignness and difference and arguing in favor of global diversity within the national community. Chapter 3 investigates Capra’s first feature film set entirely overseas, The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Beginning with a case study of how Capra had previously romanticized the exotic and the foreign in Forbidden – where Cuba was intensely desirable and yet needed to be rejected – I examine American missionary Megan Davis’s romance with the Chinese warlord General Yen and with China. Returning to debates around Orientalism, and particularly the way in which Orientalism is a patriarchal and inherently gendered discourse, this chapter investigates how the practice of “yellowface” made the performance of racial and ethnic identity within the film transparent, blurring the boundaries between East and West. Indeed, Bitter Tea’s East/West binary is quite complicated; throughout its story of a crosscultural and cross-racial romance, the embodied East and West trade off positions of power, and ultimately neither can claim dominance. The reverse side of Sino-American power relations – in which the West does dominate – is examined in Chapter 4. Lost Horizon is one of Capra’s most derided films and also one of his most unstable – it was gradually cut and reassembled over seven decades – but it is also his first clear articulation of the possibility of a global community, specifically in High Lama’s dream that after a coming apocalypse humanity will finally be able to “Love Thy Neighbor” – all of its neighbours. Yet Lost Horizon’s utopian society of Shangri-La, located in the unexplored Tibetan mountains, manages to raise questions about American imperialism in the Far East. Beginning with a case study of conflicting interpretations of Shangri-La’s nationality in contemporary reviews of the film’s set design, I examine whether Shangri-La really is a utopia – and for whom – and compare the structure of its society to both British India (as articulated by the British hero Robert Conway) and the American Philippines (as represented in Capra’s Submarine). Chapter 5 examines how World War II forced Capra to reexamine his construction of national communities, specifically the tension between the individual and the community that had characterized

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his prewar output. Beginning with a case study of U.S. Army correspondence debating the accuracy of China’s depiction in The Battle of China (1944) and the subsequent decision to pull the film from circulation, I examine how Chinese and Japanese nationality are constructed and differentiated within The Battle of China and Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945). My examination exposes how, in the midst of a moment when global community was an impossibility and was denied to America’s enemies like Japan, the qualifications for entry into Capra’s national community began to extend past America’s borders to its allies: to Britain, to Russia, and (crucially) to China. Shifting emphasis onto the role of individualism within the community rather than documenting the struggle between the individual and the community, Capra’s orientation films argued that China was a nation that believed in an American model of individualism, while Japan shunned individualism in any form, producing a population that was supposedly, in essence, a dehumanized mob. Yet after World War II, the rise of Communism meant that China was no longer an appropriate foil for America, especially in the escalating Cold War environment; Japan became an American ally, but it too was an inappropriate foil owing to America’s postwar occupation there. As a result, Capra’s focus on an exotic “other” began shifting even further East, returning to the South Seas (an already-established fascination) and more specifically to Polynesia. Using a chronological structure, Chapter 6 examines Capra’s engagement with the South Seas throughout his body of work, focusing on a series of seven case studies – The Strong Man (1926), Rain or Shine, It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Hemo the Magnificent (1957), and A Hole in the Head (1959) – tracing how they fit into broader discourses regarding America and the South Seas and dissecting how tropical exoticism (as opposed to Far Eastern exoticism) became increasingly internalized over the course of Capra’s career. The conclusion examines how Capra’s quest for global community led him to gradually circumnavigate the globe in an eastward direction, traveling from India to the Philippines to China to Japan to Polynesia, only to arrive back at America. I return to a consideration of the discourses of nationalism and authorship, asking whether Capra’s preoccupation with the global should be considered as important in

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its own right or if it only serves to supplement Capra’s construction of American identity. If the global only serves the national, what are the hegemonic implications of this? Does an outward-looking construction of national identity mean that Capra is still the “American” filmmaker that popular discourse claims he always has been, or does it raise new questions about transnationalism in classical Hollywood?

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1 “Give Her Americanism”: Frank Capra, National Ideology, and the Global Community Faced with the task of summarizing the life and career of classical Hollywood director Frank Capra upon his death on September 3, 1991, newspaper obituaries repeatedly relied on the adjective “American.” The Associated Press claimed that the Sicilian-born Capra “was gifted with an outsider’s special vision of the American psyche.”1 The Washington Times argued that Capra “achieved international fame by celebrating the common man and American values” and that he “considered his own rags-to-eminence story a ringing affirmation of American opportunity.”2 The London Times contended that “the best of his films were concerned with a background which he thoroughly understood – that of commonplace everyday American life.”3 The Toronto Star called Capra “the most American director of his time.”4 The San Diego Union-Tribune coined the word “Capramerica” to describe the setting of Capra’s movies.5 There are two discourses at work here. The first characterizes Capra’s films as American. The second characterizes Capra himself as American.6 While the first discourse is unsurprising in British and Canadian newspapers – where qualifications for Americanness may have been unfamiliar to the local readership – its simultaneous presence in the American press is intriguing. Why label something as “American” if American is the assumed norm? The second discourse suggests that what it means to be “an American” is just as contentious 25

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as what it means to be “American.” It is the problematic nature of American identity that will be analysed in this chapter, both in relation to Capra’s discursive canonization as an auteur and the ideology within his films. Beginning with a case study of notions of Americanness in Capra’s obituaries, I will analyse the rhetorical construction of American identity in Capra studies and Capra’s films, arguing that while Capra has traditionally been seen as an ideologically “American” filmmaker, his films increasingly broadened the notion of what qualified as American, ultimately campaigning for a global – not simply national – community, albeit one that frequently privileged the United States.

Case Study: The Posthumous Construction of American Nationality in Frank Capra’s Obituaries (September 3, 1991, to September 10, 1991) Obituaries are a useful source for examining the perceived “Americanness” of Capra’s oeuvre for two key reasons. First, the purpose of obituaries is to summarize a person’s life and career, meaning that they reliably provide overviews of the perceived themes within Capra’s body of work. A review of a particular Capra film, in comparison, does not always go on to generalize about the director’s oeuvre. While it is important to keep in mind that obituaries are often consciously laudatory in tone – celebrating a life rather than speaking ill of the dead – they are not always exclusively so, and the instances where they break with this convention of social nicety are particularly noteworthy. Second, obituaries have an extremely specific historical context; they allow an examination of how Capra’s key themes were perceived during a concise window of time. In comparison, reviews of a specific Capra film were often still appearing years after the premiere as a result of rolling openings, multiple runs, and delayed releases in foreign countries. This case study will examine 28 obituaries and tribute pieces written in English-language newspapers and magazines within a week of Capra’s death: 16 from the United States, six from Great Britain, five from Canada, and one from Australia. As already noted, although the adjective “American” is used repeatedly in Capra’s obituaries, precisely what constitutes Americanness is far from clear. A disagreement arises owing to the recognition that 26

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American identity depends upon, and indeed requires, a historical context. Capra’s depiction of America between 1922 and 1961 is perceived by his obituary writers to no longer reflect America in 1991 and, consequently, Capra’s America is seen either as dated or as possessing nostalgic appeal. For example, one view holds that Capra’s films are specifically linked to 1930s America. The London Times claims that Capra “caught the mood of an America emerging from the Depression,” and the Toronto Star contends that Capra “fit his times perfectly. His are the quintessential Thirties movies.”7 Indeed, the Capra films that receive the most frequent references in his obituaries are (in descending order) It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and You Can’t Take It With You (1938), which, with the exception of It’s a Wonderful Life, are all Depression-era films. There are two key points to highlight here. First, within the small sample of surveyed obituaries, the notion that Capra’s films were connected to the Great Depression was only verbalized within the foreign press.8 Second, the wording of these accolades about how Capra “fit his times” or “caught the mood” of Depression audiences is very specific. It does not claim that Capra authentically captured Depression America on screen, just that he presented Depression-era viewers with the kind of films that they wanted to see. It was the tone of Capra’s films that supposedly suited 1930s American audiences, not necessarily the films’ content. Even so, this discourse is generally coupled with the observation that because Capra’s films were intrinsically linked to the Depression era, they quickly fell out of fashion. For example, the Observer claims that “something approaching vilification followed in the 1970s when reference books took to denouncing [Capra] as dated, politically na¨ıve, [and] anti-intellectual.”9 The New York Times claims that “by the late 1940’s [. . . ] the director’s optimism no longer coincided with the mood of Americans and his movies were described by some reviewers as na¨ıve, sentimental and sanctimonious ‘Capra-corn’” – a view that the obituary writer himself seems to possess as, just sentences earlier, he describes Capra’s movies as “idealistic, sentimental and patriotic” and the typical Capra hero as “an honest and na¨ıve idealist.”10 When viewed in hindsight, Capra’s representation of America potentially appears full of na¨ıvet´e.11 The usage of the term

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“American” to define Capra’s work therefore often implies a bygone sort of Americanness, one that carries both positive (“honest” and “idealistic”) and negative (“na¨ıve” and “sanctimonious”) connotations. As The Observer summarized, “To talk about Capra is to talk about the American Dream he embodied. The way Americans react to his films reflects their current feelings about themselves.”12 Yet there is also the notion that the sense of a bygone era exists not just because Capra’s films are being viewed from a historical perspective, but also because this sense always existed within the films themselves. In other words, to some of his obituary writers, not only was Capra’s America not an authentic representation of America at the time, but it was also itself nostalgic for an earlier period of American history, one that possibly never existed. The Associated Press quotes director Steven Spielberg as saying “Frank Capra made old-fashioned American values and crying in the movies a national pastime,”13 and while the values that Capra celebrated are presumably old-fashioned to Spielberg and his contemporaries, there is also the implication that Capra’s values were potentially old-fashioned even when his movies were at the height of their popularity and were first a national pastime in the 1930s. As the New York Times mused in a “think piece” five days after Capra’s death, the setting of Capra’s movies “was, perhaps, an America that never was: this place where the little guy was the truly big guy, and where good – in the form of honesty and innocence and self-sacrifice – invariably triumphed over evil.”14 There is the suspicion that America as depicted by Capra is not really America at all (if a “real” America can even be claimed to exist) but a mythologized version of America, hence the need to coin a new word (“Capramerica”) to describe it.15 Capra’s films are therefore perceived to portray not America as it was or as it was perceived at the time, but rather America as Capra and his audience wished it was. In addition to engaging in a discourse about Capra’s ideological construction of nationality and patriotism, Capra’s obituaries attempt to succinctly summarize the director’s career, thereby highlighting popular perceptions of Capra as an auteur in 1991 and particularly what his personal vision was perceived to be. The themes that are emphasized repeatedly centre on Capra’s 1930s films and It’s a Wonderful Life, and, as a result, they celebrate a particular version of the

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Capra hero or Capra narrative: an individual struggling to change the system, whether that system was big business or big government. The two phrases that are most repeated in regard to Capra’s protagonists are “the little guy” and “the common man.”16 For example, the San Diego Union-Tribune claimed that Capra believed America was “an abundant land where the common man could become uncommon.”17 The implication seems to be that, in America, individualism is valued above conformity, that individualism is a particularly – although not exclusively – American trait. However, taking theories of nationalism (as discussed in the Introduction) into account, this creates a paradox, because the process of imagining the nation – of (re)establishing American identity – necessitates nationwide unity that individualism cannot provide. It is through the competing pulls of individualism and community that Capra’s American ideology is established, at least according to Capra’s obituaries. The discourses within Capra’s obituaries therefore reveal the problematic nature of American identity as perceived in 1991, both in general and within Capra’s films. Americanness necessitates a negotiation between the individual and community. It is intrinsically connected to its historical period, and therefore what potentially appears patriotic from one perspective can seem nostalgic or na¨ıve in a distant historical moment. Its terms are constantly being (re)negotiated and (re)established.

The Individual Versus the Community in “Capramerica” While a case study of Capra’s obituaries reveals interesting trends within discourses about Capra in 1991, it also provides an incomplete picture of the director’s body of work. As already noted, the obituaries repeatedly focused on Capra’s films from the 1930s: only one decade within a nearly four-decade-long career. The 1930s films ultimately represent just one stage of Capra’s changing conceptualization of “the national,” and in order to obtain a complete picture of Capra’s understanding of American identity, the rest of his oeuvre needs to be considered as well. Auteur critics have generally discussed Capra’s construction of American identity in terms of his films’ iconography and ideology. While the way in which scholars have understood Capra’s America 29

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has changed over time, the way in which his construction of American identity has been approached has remained perplexingly stable, repeatedly establishing what is American by drawing comparisons to other American reference points. In other words, Capra’s films have been perceived as being uniquely concerned with America in large part because they repeatedly draw upon American history, American folklore, and Americana. If Capra’s films figuratively wave the flag, it seems only appropriate to begin an analysis of Capra’s construction of American identity by examining what is arguably the most overtly patriotic moment in Capra’s canon: Jefferson Smith’s whirlwind sightseeing tour of Washington, D.C., in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Edited by montage director Slavko Vorkapich, the sequence juxtaposes the Supreme Court building, the White House, the junction of Constitution Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue, the Capitol dome, a statue of Thomas Jefferson, a painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a copy of the Declaration of Independence as John Hancock’s name is signed, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on display in the National Archives, the Liberty Bell chiming for “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Lady Liberty’s torch, statues of Samuel Adams and Alexander Hamilton, the Washington Monument, a statue of George Washington, a statue of a bald eagle, the American flag, Arlington National Cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknowns, and, finally, the Lincoln Memorial. The past and present meld together: the signing of the Declaration and viewing the Declaration become comparable acts of patriotism. The imagery occasionally veers away from the geography of Washington, D.C. – the Liberty Bell resides in Philadelphia, and the Statue of Liberty is in New York City – and the soundtrack further extends the focus from the nation’s capital to the nation at large. Patriotic hymns and folk songs used during this sequence include “The StarSpangled Banner,” “Yankee Doodle,” “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” and “Red River Valley,” referencing the American Revolution, the American Civil War, and the American frontier.18 American history and folklore are condensed into easily identifiable iconography that is both visual and aural. This kind of historic and patriotic iconography abounds throughout Mr. Smith. Jefferson Smith’s send-off banquet is overseen by portraits

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of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Smith shares his given name with the latter. He is mockingly referred to by Susan Paine and her father as Old Honest Abe. Ian Scott argues that the frequent presidential portraits, statues, and rhetoric are an “invocation of presidents acting as guardians of an essential American spirit,” and this use of presidential iconography is not exclusive to Mr. Smith.19 Grant’s Tomb is a site of pilgrimage in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (and the inspiration for a speech that references Lincoln). In It’s a Wonderful Life there is a portrait of Woodrow Wilson in George Bailey’s father’s office, and the Bailey house itself boasts a portrait of Lincoln. An early draft of It’s a Wonderful Life had even set the film’s heavenly opening in Founding Father “Ben Franklin’s Office and Workshop.”20 The characters and plots of Capra’s films repeatedly put importance on American iconography, and specifically on iconography that celebrates American history – history that all citizens could supposedly claim as their own regardless of their place of birth (an idea that will be further examined in Chapter 2). For example, during Smith’s pilgrimage to the Lincoln Memorial, an elderly black man and an elderly white man both listen reverently, their hats in their hands, as a young white boy recites the inscription; Lincoln supposedly made and continues to make racial harmony in America possible through the Gettysburg Address.21 As the drunken editor Connell tells Long John Willoughby in Meet John Doe (1941), Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson are “lighthouses in a foggy world,” not just emblems of the past but also signposts for the future, a way to imagine American identity both past and present. The problem with this kind of auteur analysis of Capra’s iconography, however, is that – just like the discourses in Capra’s obituaries – it tends to centre on Capra’s films from the 1930s. This kind of heavy-handed symbolism simply did not exist to the same extent in Capra’s early output or his final films. That does not mean, however, that those movies were unconcerned with nationalism, and hence it is important to examine how auteur studies has understood the intersection between Capra’s iconography and his films’ ideology. It is therefore necessary to return to one of the trends identified in Capra’s obituaries: the theme of the individual (or “little guy” or “common man”) versus the system. This discourse is also repeatedly

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highlighted in scholarly analyses of Capra’s films, especially within auteur studies. The most vocal advocate of the position that Capra is a champion of “the individual” is undoubtedly Ray Carney, who argues that “Capra is most American in his practical insistence that it is the individual who shapes the system, and not the other way around.”22 According to Carney, Capra repeatedly celebrates the establishment of individual selfhood, praising the lone idealist and condemning the corrupt systems that surround him: “At the beginning of his films his characters may be embedded in elaborate and highly articulated societies (and indeed in the course of the films they are never allowed to completely remove themselves from these groups), but as the films go on, the societies they constitute and the network of personal relationships they define are progressively criticized.”23 Communities, in other words – from the local to the national – exist in Capra’s universe, but they are always (at least initially) ailing, and the protagonist’s victory comes in separating himself – if not completely, then at least to some degree – from society and in maintaining his individualism above everything else. Indeed, although Carney is its most vocal advocate, the notion that Capra is a filmmaker who champions individualism above community is widely accepted among the academic community. Leland Poague, for example, agrees with Stephen Handzo that “Capra is primarily a poet of the personal and moral, not the social and political,” and Allen Estrin notes that while Capra participates in “glorification of individualism,” his films also contain the paradox that while the individual is good, civilization itself is rotten to the core.24 The corruptness of civilization – the masses as a mob rather than as a community – is also documented by Poague and Vito Zagarrio (and will be further analyzed, particularly in relation to the World War II orientation films, in Chapter 5).25 Robert Sklar seems to be the strongest dissenter from this position, suggesting that Capra’s “early films of the Depression era were fantasies of social relationships,”26 but his emphasis is on Capra’s work as social myth rather than social commentary. While scholars acknowledge that social structures exist in Capra’s movies, they generally agree that they are only valuable in terms of the obstacles they pose for the hero as he embarks on his journey to independent selfhood.

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a simple honest man, driven into a corner by predatory sophisticates, can, if he will, reach deep down into his God-given resources and come up with the necessary handfuls of courage, wit, and love to triumph over his environment. [. . . ] It was the rebellious cry of the individual against being trampled to an ort by massiveness – mass production, mass education, mass politics, mass wealth, mass conformity.27

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To a large extent, the notion that Capra’s films are celebrations of individualism can be traced back and attributed to Capra’s assertion in his autobiography that the message of his films was that

While this is an interesting self-appraisal, given Capra’s propensity for exaggeration and bending the truth (as Joseph McBride demonstrates in his biography of Capra),28 it is extremely dangerous practice to take the director at his word. While I do not dispute that it is possible to see Capra’s work from the 1930s as dramatizing a conflict between the individual and the system, I do dispute that the individual always dominates. Furthermore, I argue that when Capra’s entire body of work is taken into account, the balance between individual and system shifts from “the individual” to “the system,” if by “system” we mean (as Carney does) social structures and communities. Communities – and particularly local communities – are extremely important in Capra’s films. For example, the theme of good neighborliness abounds, from Longfellow Deeds’s humble observation that “Gee, I’ve got a lot of friends” in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town to Grandpa Vanderhof’s conviction that upon death “the only thing you can take with you is the love of your friends” in You Can’t Take It With You to John Doe’s plea to “Love Thy Neighbor” in Meet John Doe.29 I disagree with Carney that Capra’s protagonists ultimately find their place outside the system. In fact, more often than not, the lone idealist learns that he or she is not alone at all; he or she is part of a community, whether that community is familial, local, or national. Take, for example, the scenes in American Madness (1932), You Can’t Take It With You, and It’s a Wonderful Life where the protagonist’s friends appear en masse to offer much-needed monetary support; or 33

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the moment when the hero’s family embraces him as he returns from foolish escapades in the city in Long Pants (1927) or A Hole in the Head (1959); or the (often implied) creation of new families/communities through the (re)coupling of the hero and heroine at the end of The Strong Man (1926), It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, State of the Union (1948), and Here Comes the Groom (1951), to name just a few. Often, the couple’s (re)union acts as a metaphor for the (re)unification of the town or the nation. Conversely, Capra’s villains are repeatedly either incapable of personal relationships or markedly isolated from their communities: for example, Mike McDevitt in The Strong Man, Jim Taylor in Mr. Smith, and Henry F. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. Or, like A. B. Charles Sr. in That Certain Thing (1928), Anthony Kirby in You Can’t Take It With You, and Mario Manetta in A Hole in the Head, they come to see the error of their ways and, much like the hero, are embraced by the community. The community reforms itself and thereby re-forms itself. The lone individual, despite Carney’s claims to the contrary, is rarely alone, and he rarely stands for just himself; he is a metaphor for the community at large. Throughout his body of work, Capra is fascinated with the idea of how community (and, more broadly, national community and nationality) is constructed, how it functions, and how it is maintained. In shifting perspective and recognizing that Capra’s emphasis is not on the individual himself but on how that individual operates within a larger social system (ex. the family, the town, or the nation), several films that auteur critics have previously considered to be aberrations within Capra’s body of work come to the forefront. For example, The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) and Lost Horizon (1937) are set outside the United States, and American characters are in the minority, making them problematic for scholars who have attempted to label Capra as a filmmaker of uniquely American ideology. Donald Willis calls The Bitter Tea of General Yen “untypical,” and Stephen Handzo calls Lost Horizon “a complete departure in setting and plot.”30 Charles Maland damns the latter (and its advocates) with faint praise, arguing that “generally, its admirers are people who are uncomfortable with the blend of comedy and moralism in Capra’s American masterpieces, preferring instead the exotic settings and mise-en-sc`ene of Lost Horizon or The Bitter Tea of General Yen.”31

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Yet, as Eric Smoodin notes, “for a director known for his ‘American’ themes, Capra made more movies about Far Eastern locales than did most other Hollywood directors from the period: not only Bitter Tea but also Lost Horizon (1937) and the World War II documentaries The Battle of China (1944) and Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945).”32 Capra’s engagement with the Far East is not atypical or a departure within his body of work; it is one of his central preoccupations. An examination of The Bitter Tea of General Yen and Lost Horizon enables an understanding of how Capra sought to define or establish the possibility of community on a global level (and will be conducted in depth in Chapters 3 and 4).

Redefining Capra’s Global Community Therefore, only looking at Capra in terms of America is defining him too narrowly. Indeed, once we begin to look for examples of engagements with the world at large, we begin to see them everywhere. For example, Europeans often play key roles: The Strong Man features a Belgian soldier as the protagonist; British characters outnumber the Americans in Lost Horizon; French orphans motivate the plot of Here Comes the Groom; and Lady for a Day (1933) and its remake Pocketful of Miracles (1961) both highlight Spaniards. South America exists both at home and abroad: Flight (1928) revolves around American involvement in Nicaragua; Ladies of Leisure (1930) and Forbidden (1932) both include Havana-bound cruises; George Bailey carries a travel brochure for Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina in It’s a Wonderful Life; and in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) Teddy Brewster claims that Panama exists in the basement of his Brooklyn home. The Near East is a fantasy of spiritual earnestness and pleasurable mayhem: Sister Fallon publicizes a fake trip to the Holy Land in The Miracle Woman (1931); Morrow promises magic carpets and pyramids during the all-night binge in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; and George Bailey dreams of 1,001 nights, flying carpets, and harems in It’s a Wonderful Life. The South Seas is both a paradise and the locus of troubling sexuality: Paul Bergot must save his sweetheart Mary Brown from a saloon stage featuring barefooted women in Polynesian grass skirts in The Strong Man; Peter Warne muses about taking a girl to his dream island in the South Pacific in It Happened One Night; George 35

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Bailey reveals his fascination with Tahitian coconuts in It’s a Wonderful Life; Jim expresses amazement that the internal temperature of the human body is comparable to that of the South Sea Isles in Hemo the Magnificent (1957); and beatnik Shirl is associated with New Zealand through the philosophy that she espouses in A Hole in the Head. And, in addition to The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Lost Horizon, and the “Why We Fight” films, Asia is represented in cameo appearances from Asian/American characters in Rain or Shine’s (1930) circus troupe, Ladies of Leisure’s Chinatown restaurant, American Madness’s bank run, Broadway Bill’s (1934) betting frenzy, and Arsenic and Old Lace’s license office. Often, multiple geographic regions are referenced in a single Capra film. For example, in Platinum Blonde (1931), reporter Stew Smith spends his free time trying to write a play, but he never seems to get beyond the stage directions on the first page. We see or hear that he has attempted to set his production in, variously, “a street in Araby,” “Siberia,” “a hacienda in Mexico,” “the coast of Norway,” and “a street in Old Madrid.” Stew’s friend Gallagher – a female reporter who also happens to be in love with Stew – chides him for this, asking him how he expects to write about Old Madrid when he has never been there. She advises him to “write about something you know. Write about yourself and Anne – the poor boy who married the rich girl.” This focus on and celebration of the domestic and the national resonates with America’s Depression-era political position of isolationism, the withdrawal of participation in global conflicts following the economic and human costs of World War I.33 It is only when Stew takes Gallagher’s advice to concentrate on life in America and stop fantasizing about the foreign that he is finally able to finish his play. He also realizes that Gallagher (the working woman), not Anne Schuyler (the embodiment of wealth), is the right girl for him. Stew can fantasize about the exotic – either in terms of economic class or geography – but the correct choice is to stick with his lived experiences and with the woman who represents home. (In the final scene, Gallagher cooks breakfast for Stew. Anne is never shown attempting such a domestic act.) Maland argues that “in a sense Stew’s realizations were Capra’s. Not only was Capra learning to use American settings that he was familiar with, but more importantly he was also searching for a hero who

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could embody some of his own values and attitudes.”34 According to Maland, Platinum Blonde is an indication of Capra’s intention to stick to purely American themes, but the sheer volume of global locations and references in Capra’s films after Platinum Blonde strongly suggests the contrary. Indeed, the typical Capra hero would continue to be faced with a choice between the domestic and the exotic, often embodied in female form. (Further examples of this will be discussed in detail with regard to The Bitter Tea of General Yen in Chapter 3, Lost Horizon in Chapter 4, and multiple films including It’s a Wonderful Life and A Hole in the Head in Chapter 6.) As Robin Wood has established, the binary of adventure versus home within American capitalist ideology – not just within Capra’s American ideology – is profoundly gendered, producing the figures of man as “virile adventurer” and woman as “mainstay of hearth and home.”35 These ideal figures also establish a binary opposition between the domestic (hearth and home) and the foreign (the site of adventure). Amy Kaplan cautions that the terms “domestic” and “foreign” are not neutral political and/or spatial descriptions but heavily gendered and racialized metaphors: “Domestic has a double meaning that links the space of the familial household to that of the nation, by imagining both in opposition to everything outside the geographic and conceptual border of the home. The earliest meaning of foreign, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, refers to the physical space ‘out of doors’ or to concerns ‘at a distance from the home.’”36 In other words, the tension between the competing allures of the domestic and the foreign throughout Capra’s body of work results in the ideal figures of the domestic American woman as mainstay of hearth and home and the virile American man who desires exotic adventure. The “domestic” in Capra’s films therefore often possesses the double meaning of both the familial home and the nation; it becomes the intersection of more than one community. The “foreign” meanwhile cannot be home. Capra’s heroes – whether male or female – can visit the foreign, but they cannot stay.37 More often than not, Capra’s heroes engage in merely the fantasy of international travel rather than actual international travel. Stew Smith never leaves New York in Platinum Blonde, George Bailey never leaves Bedford Falls in It’s a Wonderful Life, and Tony Manetta never leaves Miami in A Hole in the Head. The correct choice is always the domestic and (implicitly)

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the national,38 although, as I will discuss in the next section, the definition of what constitutes “the national” changes over the course of Capra’s films. There is also more at stake in the choice between the national and the foreign than just the Capra hero’s personal happiness. If choosing the domestic means choosing America over the foreign, it is a highly political act, one that also takes on different meanings over time. While the domestic always triumphs over the exotic in Capra’s films, that does not diminish the recurring possibility of the formulation of a global community. Nowhere is this more apparent than in State of the Union. Grant Matthews, a wealthy self-made industrialist, agrees to run for the American presidency on the Republican ticket and slowly finds his idealistic notions of politics eroding under pressure from a manipulative journalist and various lobbying groups. Matthews’s idealistic conception of a global community echoes post– World War II optimism about the United Nations (founded in 1945), the Marshall Plan (1947–1951), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the General Assembly in 1948).39 As Grant tells his campaign manager, the message that he would like to convey to the public is that The American Dream is not “making money.” It’s the well-being and the freedom of the individual throughout the world, from Patagonia to Detroit. We can’t be an island of plenty in a world of starvation. We have to send food, clothing, machinery, and money to the bitter, impoverished people of the world and try to recreate their self-respect and give them the desire again for individual freedom. And I’m going to tell them that as long as dictatorships remain in the world we better remain well armed, because the next time we’re not going to get two years to get ready – they’re going to jump us overnight. And I’m going to tell them that there’s only one government which is capable of handling the atomic control, world disarmament, world employment, world peace, and that’s a world government. The people of thirteen states started the United States of America. Well, I think that the people of that many nations are now ready to start a United States of the World – with or without Russia – and I mean a United States of the World, with one Bill of Rights, one international law, one international currency, one international citizenship. And I’m going to tell them that the

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Grant envisions a global community, one where national differences do not matter and one in which more fortunate nations endeavor to aid the less fortunate, thereby balancing out any inequities. Grant’s fantasized United States of the World embraces a brotherhood of man in which discrimination no longer exists. Yet Grant advocates more than an informal global brotherhood, one based on the equal rights of all men; he advocates a formal political organization, one that is universal in scope yet clearly based on an American model (founded by multiple colonies, with a Bill of Rights, etc.). Although he says that the only government that will work is a world government, he clearly sees America taking the lead in its formulation. He believes that the “world” government will spread an explicitly American model of democracy and freedom across the planet. The global community is constructed with a hegemonic American framework, and therefore its claims to true globalness are questionable. Indeed, Grant’s United States of the World appears to be less of a global community than America extended to a global scale.

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brotherhood of man is not just an idealistic dream, but a practical necessity if man is going to survive, and – [He gets cut off ].

Redefining Capra’s America However, by the time State of the Union was released, Capra had extended the boundaries of what qualified as American. Consider Grandpa Vanderhof’s speech in You Can’t Take It With You only a decade earlier. When his niece Penny Sycamore encounters trouble with a play that she is writing, Grandpa suggests a change to Penny’s lead character: “Give her Americanism. Let her know something about Americans: John Paul Jones, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Edison, Mark Twain.” In 1938, amidst a climate of Depression-era isolationism – the same kind of isolationism that was mediated in Platinum Blonde – America is embodied and represented by privileged figures like Founding Fathers (Henry, Adams, Washington, Jefferson), presidents (Monroe, Lincoln, Grant), military leaders ( Jones, Lee), an inventor (Edison), and an author (Twain). They are all people who possess American citizenship; they are therefore undeniably American in 39

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political status. Just as was argued earlier in this chapter regarding Capra’s use of historical iconography, these individuals are part of a universal American national history that an immigrant from any national heritage could supposedly adopt as his or her own. But by 1945, this list of favorite sons – and they were, at this point in time, all male – had begun to expand. In the opening of Prelude to War (1942), the first movie in the “Why We Fight” series of orientation films (which will be further discussed in Chapter 5), the narrator answers his own rhetorical question about how “the free world” (the world occupied by the Allies) had become free by declaring: Only through a long and unceasing struggle inspired by men of vision: Moses, Mohammed, Confucius, Christ. All believed that in the sight of God all men were created equal. [. . . ] There developed a spirit among men and nations, which is best expressed in our own declaration of freedom: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” It is the cornerstone upon which our nation was built, and the ideal of all the great liberators: Washington, Jefferson, Garibaldi, Lafayette, Kosciusko, Bolivar, Lincoln – lighthouses lighting up a dark and foggy world.

In a time of war, the rhetoric of American exceptionalism predominates; multiple faiths agree with the premise put forth in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. God – no matter which God an individual believes in – blesses America. Because Americanism is paralleled with the visions of multiple religious leaders, the implication is that Americanism is already universal; followers of Moses, Mohammed, Confucius, and Christ all buy into it, whether they recognize that this is what they are doing or not. The boundaries of who and what qualify for American identity have begun to expand. Sandwiched between Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln are “great liberators” from Italy (Garibaldi), France (Lafayette), Lithuania (Kosciusko), and Venezuela (Bolivar). American iconography becomes situated within a global framework or, perhaps more accurately, global iconography becomes situated within an American framework. Other foreign leaders – whether secular or religious, present or historical – can be equally great men and can 40

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agree with America’s founding principles and have a kinship with American ideology. By 1948, amidst a climate of postwar support for the United Nations, when Grant Matthews – who is himself named after one of Grandpa Vanderhof’s exemplary Americans – is asked who lives in the White House in State of the Union, he replies: The sprit of all those who fought for human dignity lives there: Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Christ, Paul, St. Francis, Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther, Plato, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Pasteur, Newton, Galileo, Edison, Franklin, Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Crispus Attucks, Lafayette, Garibaldi, Bolivar, Kosciusko, the martyrs and the saints and the poets, civilization’s past and present, Man’s whole history, his evolution from worm to animal to Einstein, his long search for God – all those things live in that noble dwelling.

Religious figures are no longer simply sympathetic to America; they actually occupy its capital. Therefore in the ten years between 1938 and 1948, the qualification for American identity has shifted from citizenship to a shared philosophical vision. The list of potential Americans still includes Founding Fathers (Washington, Jefferson, Attucks), presidents (Lincoln), military leaders (Lafayette, Garibaldi, Bolivar, Kosciusko), scientists/inventors (Pasteur, Newton, Galileo, Edison, Franklin, Einstein), and authors (Plato, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare), but it now also includes artists (Michelangelo) and religious leaders (Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Christ, Paul, St. Francis, Thomas Aquinas, Bacon, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther). Most notably, Grant’s list of White House occupants includes numerous people who are not American citizens, and who even pre-date the founding of the American Republic: Paul, St. Francis, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Michelangelo, Galileo, and Garibaldi are Italian; Joan of Arc, Pasteur, and Lafayette are French; Bacon, Shakespeare, and Newton are British; Plato and Homer are Greek; Martin Luther and Einstein are German; Bolivar is Venezuelan; Kosciusko is Lithuanian; and Moses, Buddha, Confucius, and Christ arguably transcend nationality. The list even includes a distinguishably ethnic American: Attucks.40 41

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According to Grant Matthews, being “American” no longer requires being “an American.” Philosophy and nationality have become separate but sympathetic entities. Simply by examining the rhetoric of who qualifies as American, it becomes clear that the qualifications for American identity within Capra’s films changed over time. America was not a stable construct; Capra’s national community constantly (re)imagined itself. As what potentially qualified as American expanded, the possibility of a global community began to emerge: not in the political sense that Grant Matthews conceived in his United States of the World, but rather philosophically, because America increasingly became an ideology rather than simply a geographic territory. The national community began to take on larger dimensions. Although Capra’s films contain a tension between individualism and community – as noted by both auteur critics and the writers of Capra’s obituaries – community (whether familial, local, national, or global) is always the correct choice for his protagonists. Sometimes they find that the community has been waiting for them all along and that they simply need to shift their own worldviews in order to fit inside it; at other times the community itself needs to have its worldview altered to fall in line with the idealistic hero. The correct choice for the hero is always the domestic and the national, but the definition of what constitutes “the national” in Capra’s films is constantly shifting; “giving someone Americanism” does not mean the same thing in one decade as it means in the next. Ultimately, just like Grant Matthews in State of the Union, Capra is interested in exploring – if not actually establishing – a global community: “a United States of the World.” With this central preoccupation with the global established, it is time to turn to a detailed examination of the role that the Far East plays within this potential global community, beginning with an examination of how it functions within America’s borders.

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2 “Can You Be Both?”: Race, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Capra’s America, 1922–1961 Frank Capra’s engagement with the notion of a global community began at home. Within the national community were diverse immigrant groups who – with varying degrees of success – attempted to coexist as a unified body of American citizens. Some immigrant groups were absorbed into American culture through assimilation (the “melting pot”), while others were accepted through multiculturalism. The metaphor of the “melting pot” comes from Israel Zangwill’s 1909 play, where Russian/Jewish/American immigrant David declares, “America is God’s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming!”1 Alien subjects, in other words, sacrifice the individual cultures of their previous homelands for the homogenous culture of their current homeland. (That only the races of Europe appear to be melting together in this construction is an idea that will be further explored in this chapter.) Under cultural pluralism, on the other hand, alien cultures interact and mix together but remain distinct; they retain their individualism.2 During the 1930s, “the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, sensitive to the need to create unity in the face of the growing threat of National Socialism in Europe and class conflict at home, founded radio broadcasts that stressed the ‘rich heritages’ that had come to 43

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America from its various races and nationalities.”3 This cautious embrace of dual identity generally emphasized nonpolitical aspects of heritage – folk dances and music, folk attire, and food – and, again, it privileged the races of Europe. The political parameters for celebration versus condemnation of racial and ethnic heritage changed over time, and Capra’s films participated in this shifting discourse. As noted in the previous chapter, numerous scholars have celebrated the supposedly “American” quality of Capra’s films. This chapter attempts to address the question of precisely whose America Capra was depicting. Just who did Capra’s “little guy” or “common man” represent? To what degree is “Americanness” in Capra’s films synonymous with whiteness? While Chapters 3, 4, and 5 will be primarily concerned with Capra’s representation of the Far East within Asia, this chapter will examine his representation of the Orient – and, more specifically, Orientals – within the boundaries of the United States. Case studies of representations of Asian/Americans in three of Capra’s films – American Madness (1932), Broadway Bill (1934), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) – will be situated within evolving cultural and industrial attitudes toward race and ethnicity. I argue that while Capra’s America has generally been perceived as a celebration of the melting pot, his representations of Asian/ Americans between 1922 and 1961 reveal a complex negotiation of assimilationist and pluralist attitudes, simultaneously emphasizing Asian/Americans’ inherent foreignness and difference while arguing in favor of global diversity within the national community. Before turning to Capra’s representation of Asian/Americans, however, it is necessary to establish the definition of “Asian/ American” itself. During the period in which Capra was making films, Americans of Asian heritage and Asian nationals residing in the United States were both often referred to as “Orientals.”4 According to Vincent Cheng, the term “Asian Americans” was a “purely political invention, a political expediency created in response to white racism and Orientalism, a very recent invention [. . . ] coined by the late UCLA historian Yuji Ichioka in the late 1960s.”5 Activist groups sought to establish solidarity among “Chinese Americans,” “Japanese Americans,” “Filipino Americans,” and other Americans of Asian descent by uniting those diverse ethnic populations under one blanket term and racial category. Barbara J. Fields argues that Asians, like

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“CAN YOU BE BOTH?”

African Americans, “are not of a single physical type and they, too, come from different countries,” so, “adhering to common usage, it is hard to see how they can be classed as either a single race or a single ethnic group: they do not all share either a language or a culture.”6 In other words, like any kind of race, “Asian” identity is socially and ideologically constructed. It is not rooted in biological fact. While the deliberate construction of racial identity across such a diverse continent can serve a positive political agenda – one striving for unity – it can also negatively generalize the Far East, eliding and erasing the distinctions between a series of cultures that often share little in common (an idea that will be returned to in more depth later in this chapter). Indeed, as Richard Feng notes, the terms “Asian-American” and “Asian American” are highly problematic constructions.7 A hyphen between the words (even when constructing a compound adjective) divides the term into two nouns, suggesting that the two categories are separate entities. A space between the words turns “Asian” into an adjective, implying that the “Americanness” of people with Asian heritage will always be modified. Both constructions suggest that Americans of Asian heritage will always be seen and treated as “Asian” over “American.” Sociologist Rose Hum Lee attempted to solve this problem of terminology in her 1960 study of Chinese ancestry by using the inverted term “American-Chinese.”8 And in 1999, David PalumboLiu introduced the term “Asian/American.”9 The solidus between the words is meant to suggest the slippage between categories; Americans of Asian heritage are seen as being simultaneously “Asian” and “American,” or rather as occupying a space between “Asian” and “American” which falls into neither category. The term “Asian/American” is particularly appropriate when discussing a time period when the legal status of people with Asian heritage was not always immediately apparent and when not all Asians in America were – or had the potential to become – American citizens. Therefore, while I will follow Palumbo-Liu’s terminology, and while I will adapt it to other racial and ethnic groups (like African/Americans and Jewish/Americans), I ultimately agree with Peter X. Feng that all of these potential constructions “suggest that we cannot understand what it means to be American without understanding what it means to be Asian American.”10 Given Capra’s

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preoccupation with America’s relationship to an Eastern “other,” we particularly cannot understand what Capra meant as “American” without understanding what it meant to be (or to become) Asian/ American within his films.

Chinese/Americans in American Culture and Hollywood’s Representation of Asian/Americans, 1922–1961 The process of becoming Asian/American has a complex history. Although American citizenship was conceived as universal and inclusive, it has often been highly exclusionary in practice. Race and ethnicity (rather than country of origin) have frequently been the primary factors determining whether alien immigrants will be assimilated or accepted. Joseph F. Healy, for example, argues that “the melting pot is not an accurate description of how American assimilation actually proceeded. Some groups – especially racial minority groups – have been largely excluded from the ‘melting’ process.”11 This has been especially true of Asian/Americans, as demonstrated by the long legal battle over their right to citizenship. The Chinese – the first ethnic group from Asia to arrive in the United States – first came to America in 1820.12 Settling predominantly on the West Coast, they tended to occupy jobs in agriculture and construction. However, following the completion of the transcontinental railroad, mass panic began among white workers that the still-increasing numbers of Chinese/Americans would “steal” white jobs.13 This fear of the conquest of the “white” race by the so-called “yellow” race – colloquially known as the “Yellow Peril” or the “Yellow Menace” – was, as Eugene Franklin Wong argues, “an American projection onto the ‘yellow’ race of what appeared to be the white race’s conquest of yellow Asia.”14 Popular discourses at the time argued that, unlike European ethnic groups, the Chinese “were unassimable and could never be part of U.S. society. The Chinese were seen as a threat to the working class, to American democracy, and to other American institutions.”15 Under pressure from labour groups and backed by popular support, President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into effect in 1882, barring entry to the United States on racial grounds for the first time in the nation’s history. The Act also declared that “hereafter

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Year

Total Population

Native Born

% Native Born

Foreign Born

% Foreign Born

1920 1930 1940 1950

61,639 74,954 77,504 117,629

18,532 30,868 40,262 62,090

30.1 41.2 51.9 53.0

43,107 44,086 37,242 55,050

69.9 58.8 48.1 47.0

“CAN YOU BE BOTH?”

Table 1 Chinese/American Nativity in the United States, 1920 to 1950

Source: Figures are taken from the U.S. Census, 1920–1950

no State court or court of the United States shall admit Chinese to citizenship,”16 meaning that any then-resident alien Chinese could not be naturalized. The Chinese Exclusion Act would be followed by the 1924 Quota Act, which barred entry and future citizenship for all Asian peoples, including the Japanese and Filipinos.17 Despite the exclusion laws, there were thousands of Asian immigrants in the United States already (see Table 1), meaning that competition for jobs did not immediately lessen, and prejudice remained. For example, in E. S. Bogardus’s 1935 study of racial prejudice and stereotypes, school teachers asked their students if they wanted 23 racial, religious, and national groups as “relatives by marriage, friends in the same social club, neighbours, fellow-workers in the same occupation, citizens of or visitors to the United States, or wanted them excluded.”18 The Chinese ranked sixth from the bottom of the list, followed by “Japanese, Negroes, mulattoes, Hindus, and Turks, in that order.”19 The immigration restrictions remained in effect until 1943, when Chinese immigration was again permitted on a quota basis.20 Readmission was widely perceived as a reward for China’s ally status during World War II. (The Japanese were not readmitted until 1952.) The quota, however, remained strictly defined on racial terms. As S. W. Kung notes, while the place of birth determined the status of European and Filipino immigrants, the admission of Chinese individuals was established on the basis of ancestry; more than or equal to 50 per cent Chinese blood was considered to make a person Chinese: “Thus a Chinese is classifiable under the Chinese quota regardless of where he was born.”21 In other words, cultural and political attitudes toward Asian/Americans between 1820 and 1960 began as accepting, became hostile and exclusionary, then cautiously 47

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Table 2 Chinese/American Population in California, 1920 to 1940 Year

Total in U.S.

Total in California

% in California

1920 1930 1940

61,639 74,954 77,504

28,812 37,361 39,556

46.7 50.1 51.0

Source: Figures are taken from the U.S. Census, 1920–1940

became accepting again, influenced in large part by Sino-American political relations. What was it about Asia and Asian/Americans that appealed to Hollywood during this time period and to Capra in particular? Gina Marchetti suggests that “Hollywood used Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders as signifiers of racial otherness to avoid the far more immediate racial tensions between blacks and whites or the ambivalent mixture of guilt and enduring hatred toward Native Americans and Hispanics.”22 Such an argument, however, does not take into account the large Asian/American population that was based in California and in Los Angeles in particular (see Table 2); Hollywood would have been aware of Asian/Americans in a way that the rest of the country (which did not have such high concentrations) would not have been, and this could have led to an increased willingness to use Asians, Asian/Americans, and Pacific Islanders for their own sake rather than as metaphors for something else. Hollywood representations of Asian and Asian/American identity between 1922 and 1961 often conflated diverse Asian cultures and frequently fell into stereotypes ranging from threatening (e.g. Fu Manchu, the Dragon Lady) to docile (e.g. Charlie Chan, Madame Butterfly).23 Based on Sax Rohmer’s series of stories and drawing upon the discourse of the Yellow Peril, Fu Manchu was a Westerneducated Chinese villain who sought to use the West’s own weapons to destroy it.24 The Dragon Lady was typically a sexualized Asian villainess who sought to first seduce and then destroy the West, typified by Fah Lo See, a sadist who tortures the Western hero when he refuses to love her in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932).25 Both the male and female embodiments of the threatening East reflected American fears about Asia’s growing militancy and economic power.26 Specifically (as will be discussed in Chapter 5), “Japan was becoming a problematic

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mirror to the West, reflecting America and Europe’s progress and excesses in its own military and industrial triumphs.”27 Although these Asian villains embodied America’s fears about itself, they were irredeemable figures who had no place in American society; indeed, they were almost never Asian/Americans, just Asians, and they rarely survived past the last reel. The docile Oriental stereotype was embodied by the benevolent Chinese/American detective Charlie Chan and by his imitators Mr. Wong and Mr. Moto.28 These men spoke pidgin English and were often mocked by their white colleagues, but they always caught the criminal. The female equivalent of Charlie Chan was the Asian woman who selflessly loved and ultimately sacrificed herself for an American hero, as in Madame Butterfly (1932). Unlike the Dragon Lady, Madame Butterfly characters were generally valued for their exotic beauty rather than their sexuality, and they aspired to be Americans or were characterized in American terms. Wong argues that “it is likely that the final immigration measures taken by the United States Government, and the subsequent social relief accompanying the end to the Asian immigration problem, gradually provided a psychological incentive and social climate given to the acceptance of an image of a non-villainous Asian.”29 Asians and Asian/Americans, in other words, finally had the potential to be nonthreatening and comical. They could be a part of the community rather than a danger to it, because their numbers were now limited. Sexuality – and particularly female sexuality – is central to both the threatening and docile Hollywood constructions of Asian and Asian/American identity. Hollywood was restricted, however, in the extent of sexuality that it was allowed to show. The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930, which dictated the guidelines for the industry’s self-censorship, explicitly stated that “miscegenation (sex relationship between the white and black races) is forbidden.”30 Susan Courtney explains that “the parenthetical inclusion of a definition in the miscegenation clause can be read simultaneously as an attempt to avoid interpretive confusion and as an inadvertent announcement of its likelihood.”31 For example, if sexual relationships were forbidden between white and black races, and if Asians and Asian/Americans were considered neither white nor black but – in the crude vernacular of the time – “yellow,” how did the code apply to them?

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In her 1937 handbook for motion picture writers and reviewers, Olga Martin glossed the miscegenation clause: The dictionary defines miscegenation as “A mixture of races, especially amalgamation of the black and white races.” The Production Code Administration, in interpreting this regulation for application to stories, has regarded miscegenetic unions to be any sex relationship between the white and black races, or in most cases sexual union between the white and yellow races.32

As Martin’s phrasing (“in most cases”) suggests, there were ways around the code’s restrictions against white-yellow interracial romance. The most common practice in Hollywood between 1930 and 1960 (when the code was in effect) was to cast a white actor in an Asian or Asian/American role, using make-up to make him or her appear racially Asian: a process called “yellowface.” According to Robert Lee, “yellowface exaggerates ‘racial’ features that have been designated ‘Oriental,’ such as ‘slanted’ eyes, overbite and mustardyellow skin.”33 In other words, because race is not biologically constructed, “physiognomy is relevant to race only insofar as certain physical characteristics, such as skin colour or hue, eye colour or shape, shape of the nose, colour or texture of the hair, over- or underbite, etc., are socially defined as markers of racial difference.”34 There are no inherently or indisputably Asian features or characteristics, just the ones that Hollywood selected and mobilized. Yellowface, therefore, is a performance of a socially constructed racial identity. Yellowface also skirted the code’s restrictions, because while films with yellowface depicted interracial affairs (or desired-but-neverconsummated interracial affairs), audiences remained aware that they were not watching interracial romances but rather romances acted out by two people of the same race. As Yiman Wang argues, “Contrary to conventional racial passing, which hinges on erasing all traces of performance and disguise, screen passing in the form of yellowface or blackface masquerade highlights the white actor or actress behind the racially marked screen persona.”35 In other words, the slippage between the two categories is intentional. The yellowface actor is simultaneously Oriental and white. The larger and more sexually explicit the role, the more likely it was to be played by a white actor. 50

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“CAN YOU BE BOTH?”

But screen passing was not restricted simply to the use of make-up. Because Hollywood generalized the “Orient” – blending (and sometimes confusing) Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and other Asian cultural signifiers – actors of one Asian ethnic heritage could pass for another. The Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa and the Chinese/American actress Anna May Wong, for example, spent much of their careers playing Chinese and Japanese parts, respectively.36 Only the casting of a white actor in an Asian role, however, would circumvent the code’s restrictions against miscegenation. Frank Capra’s depicting Asian/Americans between 1922 and 1961 was therefore not unique. Indeed, Capra’s final feature film, Pocketful of Miracles (1961), clearly acknowledges its debt to the representations of Asianness and Asian/Americanness that came before it. When white gangster Dave the Dude intercepts a telephone call that Count Romero has placed to the Spanish ambassador to investigate Mrs. E. Worthington Manville’s background, the Dude, improvising, adopts an accent and tells the Spanish count, Oh very sorry. Nobody home. Uh, they all, uh, go far away. Yes. They all go, uh, uh, California. Oh yes. Sop up sunshine in California. Yes. So this, uh, Japanese houseboy. Oh so sorry. Oh very sorry. No, no I’m very sorry, they’re not home. Nobody home. Just me. Yeah. Okay. Bye bye.

The Dude’s henchman, Joyboy, turns to him and sniggers, “That’s very good, Mr. Moto, now let’s do some business.”37 He compares the Dude’s vocal impression not to an actual Japanese man but to Austrian/American actor Peter Lorre’s impersonation of Japaneseness in eight films between 1937 and 1939.38 The Dude’s “Japanese houseboy” is Japanese twice removed: an imitation of an imitation. It is further perceived to be an illogical imitation at that. The Count expresses his astonishment that “a Japanese listens to a Spanish and answers in pidgin English!” This interracial interaction suggests a melting-pot construction of race and ethnicity, where one race or ethnicity can mimic and/or understand another perfectly because they possess no differences at heart. A similar melting-pot construction of race and ethnicity had occurred in Capra’s Rain or Shine (1930). When the featured circus 51

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Figure 1. The “American Japanese” Itzkabashi family is a featured circus act in Rain or Shine.

attraction the “marvelous Itzkabashi,39 man of one hundred feats, and his family of full-blooded American Japanese” refuse to perform their act because they have not been paid, ringmaster Smiley Johnson, Mary Rainey, Dave, a musician, and two children perform the act for them. The six Itzkabashi men had been introduced wearing silk robes, and all that is required for the six white characters to perform JapaneseAmerican identity is to don those robes themselves. The JapaneseAmericans are a part of the circus community, but they are easily replaceable because one race can easily stand in for another. Yet the ridiculousness of the racial masquerade in Pocketful of Miracles at least does not go uncommented upon. When Se˜nor Cortez, the Spanish Consul, does finally appear, he exclaims, “My dear Count, what would I be doing with a Japanese houseboy?” Ethnicities – even in masquerade – mix in fantasy, not in reality. But before this racial masquerade can be situated within Capra’s shifting representations of Asian/Americanness, his treatment of race and ethnicity in general must first be considered. 52

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“CAN YOU BE BOTH?” Figure 2. White members of the circus troupe masquerade as the Itzkabashi family simply by donning its robes.

Racial and Ethnic Assimilation Versus Acceptance in Capra’s America Capra’s America has generally been interpreted as a celebration of the melting pot. For example, Sarah Kozloff writes of Meet John Doe (1941) that “despite Capra’s personal background as an Italian immigrant, a modern-day viewer will notice that none of the Millville residents is African American or Asian American; none even has a Jewish or Eastern European or Italian surname. (In the film as a whole one sees two black extras, a cook and a janitor.)”40 In other words, Kozloff questions the scope of Capra’s repeated plea to “love thy neighbor” when the only neighbours shown are WASPs. This criticism, however, is drawn from an examination of only one small sequence within Meet John Doe, not an examination of Capra’s body of work as a whole. And although Capra has been disparaged for producing a whitewashed portrayal of American culture (and attacked on a personal level for being an immigrant who chooses not to show the plight of other American immigrants), race and 53

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ethnicity repeatedly do make appearances in his films. Some races and ethnicities, however, receive more attention than others. African/American characters, for example, are not protagonists in Capra’s films – the closest we get is the blackface vaudevillian actor Don Wilson in The Matinee Idol (1928), which is not close at all – but they do frequently appear in weightier roles than just extras. Take, for example, Nero in Rain or Shine, Clarence in Dirigible (1931), Whitey in Broadway Bill (1934) and Riding High (1950), Rheba and Donald in You Can’t Take It With You (1938), and Annie in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).The characters may not be substantial enough to warrant last names, but the roles are substantial enough to warrant billing the actors in the credits. Clarence and Rheba are cooks, Whitey is a groom, Annie is a maid, Nero is a hired hand, and Donald is Rheba’s unemployed boyfriend. They all work (if they work at all) for white employers, positioning them as part of an economic underclass. Yet, despite their unequal financial status, they form a valued part of familial communities. Rheba, for example, may be the Vanderhofs’ cook, but both she and Donald eat side by side with the family at the dining table. Annie may be the Baileys’ maid, but she is lovingly teased in a familiar manner by both Bailey boys, and they both clearly value her opinion. Nero supervises six white men who hammer tent pegs into the ground for the circus troupe. And, as Donald Bogle notes, although Whitey and Dan Brooks do not eat side by side, they “sleep under the same roof. They share whatever food they can get.”41 African/American characters in Capra’s films were valued, if not entirely equal, members of their communities. Capra’s America may have had financial disparities, but it did not advocate separatebut-equal racial attitudes. If anything, it was unequal-but-together. This inclusive attitude toward African/Americans is unsurprising considering that in both The Negro Soldier (1944) and State of the Union (1947) Crispus Attucks – an African/American Revolutionary War hero who was one of the first casualties of the Boston Massacre – is cited as a martyr to the cause of American freedom and as a spiritual resident of the current-day White House. Roger Daniels contends that “by the time of the American Revolution most blacks were more American than African,” although he is quick to concede that society used their colour to keep them segregated from as much of American life as it could.42 This may partially explain why, as

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noted in Chapter 1, Capra so rarely refers to Africa in his films. (He does refer to the Egyptian pyramids in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, but Egypt, while geographically part of the African continent, can also be culturally grouped with the Near East.) Although African/Americans have not achieved full equality within Capra’s America, they are already a part of his national community. There is no need for Capra’s characters to debate whether or not African/Americans belong; they indisputably do and have done since Jamestown.43 Asian/Americans, by comparison, had only been in the United States for under a century when Capra began making feature films. They were still newcomers, and their place in American society was still indeterminate. Ethnicity is often much harder to identify than race in Capra’s films, because it frequently becomes muddled with questions of nationality. For example, in You Can’t Take It With You, Grandpa Vanderhof laughs at Kolenkhov, saying, “He’s Russian, and the Russians are inclined to look on the dark side,” but is this supposed to mean that Kolenkhov still possesses Russian citizenship or that he is a Russian emigrant with American citizenship? Giuseppe Martini and his wife Maria in It’s a Wonderful Life are depicted as ethnically Italian, but are they supposed to be Italians residing in the United States or Italian/Americans? And consider the exchange from State of the Union between Mary Matthews and Grace Orval Draper where confusion ensues about whether the Polish or Polish/American vote is under discussion: “We’re talking about Polish Americans,” Grace asserts. “Can you be both?” Mary asks in mock surprise. Various scholars have written about Capra’s portrayal of Italian/Americans (almost always tying their analysis to Capra’s biography),44 but they fail to acknowledge that there remains an element of ambiguity about where the dividing line between Italian and Italian/American falls. Can Capra’s America then be described as a celebration of the melting pot? There may be evidence of cultural assimilation within his films, but there is not definitive evidence of political assimilation. In The Strong Man (1926), Paul Bergot travels through Ellis Island, but only the comedic antics that ensue when he attempts to reclaim his luggage are shown, not his progress through the naturalization process itself. This is an extremely important observation: although Capra is celebrated for his repeated focus on American identity, none of his films depict the legal act of becoming an American.

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The process of becoming American in Capra’s films is social rather than political. Take, for example, the description of the founding of the United States in the final “Why We Fight” film War Comes to America (1945): As strangers to one another we came and built a country. And the country built us into Americans. Sweat of the men of all nations was poured out to build anew, the sweat of our first settlers: the English, the Scotch, the Dutch, building the workshop of New England; of the Italian and the sulfur mines of Louisiana; of the Frenchman and the Swiss in the vineyards of California and New York State; of the Dane, the Norwegian, the Swede, seeding the good earth to make the Midwest bloom with grain; of the Pole and the Welshman; of the Negro harvesting cotton in the hot southern sun; of the Spaniard, the first to roam the great Southwest; of the Mexican in the oilfields of Texas and on the ranches of New Mexico; of the Greek and the Portuguese, harvesting the crop the ocean gave; of the German with his technical skills; of the Hungarian and the Russian; of the Irishman, the Slav, and the Chinese working side by side: the sweat of Americans. And a great nation was built. Yes, the sweat of all nations built America – and the blood.

This rhetoric about building the country curiously includes nothing about the oath of citizenship, the legal moment when diverse heritages are joined. (It also conspicuously lists Chinese/Americans last while altogether omitting Japanese/Americans.) In Capra’s America, American identity is built primarily through communal labour and interaction: through social, not legal, processes. It is a formation of national community into which anyone from any cultural background can potentially buy. Consider, for example, The Younger Generation (1929). Perhaps more than any other film in Capra’s oeuvre, it is concerned with the tug of war between ethnic and national identities, albeit Jewish/American rather than Asian/American identity. Through hard work and determination, Morris Goldfish becomes a successful importer of antiques and moves his family from the Lower East Side to Fifth Avenue. We know that Morris possesses Jewish heritage because his father wears a 56

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yarmulke and prays to the “God of Israel.” Morris’s financial success, however, comes at the expense of his ethnic heritage. He changes his name to Maurice Fish, an act which his mother dubs a “smart thing,” because “you see, Papa, Goldfish is not such a good name for a big antiques man like Morris. [. . . ] Fish is more at home.” Morris turns his back on his heritage for business reasons, which would seem to be an indication of his willingness to assimilate into (implicitly white) American culture or at least into WASP society. But the Kahns, the only others members of high society on Fifth Avenue that The Younger Generation depicts, are also Jewish, suggesting that Morris does not successfully achieve assimilation, only transplantation. Furthermore, his attempt at assimilation brings him misery. In the end, his family abandons his fancy Fifth Avenue house (which Papa repeatedly refers to as a cold “Italian tomb”) for the warmth and communal life of the Lower East Side, where the neighbours load Papa’s arms with presents when they hear the news that he has become a grandfather. As Jonathan Cavallero notes, the open exterior settings of the ethnic neighborhood, “emphasiz[e] a sense of community, as peddlers line the streets and friends and family surround the main characters.”45 The Lower East Side may not represent complete multiculturalism – because, just as with Fifth Avenue, the other occupants also appear to be Jewish, based on their names, dress, and accents – but it does represent a community. The immigrants there live happily in Capra’s America because they still retain and remain faithful to their original culture. Happiness, it seems, lies somewhere between the melting pot and cultural pluralism.

Case Studies: Asian/Americans in American Madness (1932), Broadway Bill (1934), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) As already noted, discrimination against Asian/Americans was often based on the assumption that they were incapable of assimilating into the American melting pot or, at the very least, that they would choose not to. But, as The Younger Generation demonstrates, complete assimilation at the expense of ethnic heritage did not lead to happiness. Since Capra’s construction of American identity was not based on legal parameters – just social ones – it should theoretically be 57

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Figure 3. The man speaking Chinese in American Madness.

possible for Asians and Asian/Americans to have a welcome place in Capra’s national community even at a time when Asians were legally prevented from joining it. Unlike Asians (who will be discussed in Chapters 3 and 4), Asian/ Americans do not have primary or even secondary roles in Capra’s films. When they appear at all, it is in fleeting cameo-type shots that rarely last more than several seconds. But unlike background characters,46 these unnamed Asian/Americans have direct relevance and importance to the story. They change the course of action in important ways, and therefore although their appearances are brief (often extremely so) and uncredited, they create a lasting impression. In American Madness, an Asian/American character receives two seconds of screen time. The character appears in a single medium shot incorporated into the montage of phone calls that precipitates the run on the Union National Bank. Gert, the bank’s switchboard operator, calls her friend Mame to tell her that last night over one hundred thousand dollars was stolen. Mame phones her friend Lou, reporting that over two hundred thousand dollars was stolen. A series 58

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of five dissolves shows word spreading by mouth: two shadowy male figures discuss how the thieves stole over a quarter of a million dollars; two men buying newspapers raise the figure to half a million; Sam, an African/American bootblack, announces to his customer that the bank manager “Mr. Dickson took it all hisself. And it was more than a million dollars”; a barber with a French accent pleads with one of his customers, “Mon dieu, mon dieu! Run, run! You are a poor man”; and three men in a bar discuss how Dickson got away with the nowinflated sum of “several million dollars.” There is then a series of 35 cuts within 53 seconds, each shot depicting one end of an excited phone conversation. Twelve different individuals are depicted: the third man from the bar, an old man, a woman with pearl earrings, a man with a cigarette, a man lying in bed, a woman with dangling earrings, a man in a cardigan (speaking Yiddish), a man in a suit (speaking Chinese), a woman wearing a hat with a veil, a woman in a white blouse, an old woman, and a man wearing a tie. It is not clear who these individuals are speaking to; it may or may not be to each other. At first each shot lasts approximately two seconds, but as the sequence progresses, the pace quickens to approximately one second per shot and then approximately half a second per shot. All of the shots feature solid black backgrounds, giving them unity and coherence as a sequence. Most of the callers have their bodies angled toward the right or the left, with their backs to the camera. Only the man speaking Yiddish and the man speaking Chinese directly face the front. The man speaking Yiddish appears three times within the sequence, but the man speaking Chinese only appears once, raising questions about why he has been included in this scene at all. Before analyzing the above sequence in detail, however, it is worth noting that a nearly identical sequence appears two years later in Broadway Bill. Again, a series of people phone each other to spread news: in this case, that the notoriously miserly millionaire J. P. Chase has placed a bet on Broadway Bill, a racehorse with 100-to-1 odds. Just as in American Madness, word spreads first in person and then by phone, and the reported cost of Chase’s bet gradually rises from two dollars to a quarter of a million dollars. Once the frenetic phone calling begins, eighteen different men and women advise friends to bet on Broadway Bill in 18 different shots. In the middle of the sequence is a two-second shot of a man wearing a skullcap, who speaks several

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Figure 4. The man speaking Chinese in Broadway Bill.

words in Chinese and then “Broadway Bill” in English. He is the only individual in the sequence who does not speak entirely in English. The montages in both American Madness and Broadway Bill attempt to demonstrate the diversity of the population that carries each rumor. We see men and women, young and old, working class and upper class, and representatives from WASP, French, African/American, Jewish, and Chinese racial and ethnic groups. The first six speakers in the American Madness phone-call montage are described in Robert Riskin’s screenplay as “Man,” “Another Man,” “Woman,” “Tough Guy,” “Another Man,” and “Another Woman.” Thereafter, the screenplay simply says, “AD-LIB VOICES (quick cuts – a rising tide – different languages): Hello, dear . . . Hurry! . . . Union National is sunk! . . . I told you to put it in the vault . . . I don’t know what’s wrong with the bank . . . I wouldn’t trust anybody . . . Everybody’s taking their money out . . . Union National’s broken . . . Why take any chances? . . . Hurry! Call the others! etc.”47 Whereas the screenplay does specify that the bootblack is African/American and that the barber speaks with a French accent, it does not specify which “different languages” 60

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should be used. In a film that is purportedly about a uniquely “American” kind of madness, Capra’s deliberate selection and inclusion of Yiddish and Chinese takes on particular importance. Both ethnic groups – the Jewish and the Chinese – were stereotyped in popular discourses of the time as being shrewd and successful businessmen.48 And for both to take interest in the financial security of Union National, both individuals must either be investors or friends of investors. Much emphasis is placed throughout the film on how Dickson chooses the bank’s clients based on their character rather than on the strength of their business portfolios, so the inclusion of the Yiddish and Chinese speakers within these sequences would appear to be endorsements of their moral character and their communities. For this news to have reached them, they must have heard it (or overheard it) in English or been informed of it by a bilingual speaker, demonstrating the flow of information across ethnic communities and cultures. Indeed, the multiple races and ethnicities in the montage demonstrate the racial and ethnic diversity of this particular “madness.” Capra had already depicted the intermixing of racial communities in New York City in Ladies of Leisure (1930), where party girls Kay Arnold and Dot Lamar have a meal in a Chinatown restaurant as they discuss Kay’s romantic woes. The scene opens with a sevensecond close-up on a silent Chinese/American attendant as he puts a nickel in a player piano. The camera then tracks right and follows a silent Chinese/American waiter as he intently carries two bowls of food through a crowd of dancing white couples. The exotic d´ecor – wallpaper with cherry blossoms and palm fronds and a chinoiserie painting – is merely a backdrop to the white clientele. It is, implicitly, a working-class white clientele. Both Kay and Dot earn their living by entertaining men – entertaining that may or may not involve sexual favors – and their conversation in the restaurant centres on whether Jerry Strong is a “blank check” or a “rubber check.” There is no obvious reason why the conversation should take place in a Chinatown restaurant; it is the only visit and/or reference to Chinatown that the film makes. The scene therefore seems to link the women’s troubling extroverted sexuality with Far Eastern exoticism (a practice that will be returned to in later chapters), yet it does so

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Figure 5. In Ladies of Leisure, Kay and Dot discuss their romantic woes in a Chinatown restaurant.

within an American setting. Chinatown is part of everyday life in Ladies of Leisure. But has the spread of news in American Madness and Broadway Bill reached Chinatown or China? The black bootblack speaks English with an American accent, so we know that he is African/American, not African. We see the French-accented barber with his New York– accented WASP clients, so we know that he is situated in the United States. But both shots of the Chinese-speaking individuals occur against neutral backgrounds. In American Madness the background is completely black, and in Broadway Bill the background contains an abstract shadow against a gray wall. These individuals could be located anywhere. They could be Chinese or Chinese/American, in China or the United States. The shots do not provide enough context to definitively identify and locate them. The distinction becomes important because, as already noted, during this time period alien Chinese individuals did not have the option of becoming Americans. Their political status marked them as entirely foreign. The brief shots of these Chinese speakers, which 62

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Figure 6. The woman in front of Elaine in Arsenic and Old Lace.

show them as being part of or at least connected to their communities (whether they are based locally or remotely), therefore construct those communities as either local or global in scope, depending on the status of the Chinese speakers’ citizenship. And, because we cannot definitively determine if Chinese or Chinese/Americans are being included, their ambiguous status casts Capra’s communities as simultaneously local and global. Arsenic and Old Lace also contains an Asian/American cameo appearance. The three-second shot of an Asian/American woman occurs at the beginning of the film, in a scene that does not appear in the eponymous stage play, when Mortimer Brewster and Elaine Harper obtain their marriage license. Mortimer, the author of The Bachelor’s Bible, suffers a case of nerves and flees the license office, only to once again decide that marriage is what he ultimately wants. Overcome by his love for Elaine, he races back with her into the line (in comically fast-forwarded motion), where other waiting couples stand two by two. The woman directly in front of Elaine wears a black hat with a large brim. Her face is not visible until she slowly turns around to smile 63

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Figure 7. The man in front of Mortimer in Arsenic and Old Lace.

and wink at Elaine, this action being accompanied by an Orientalsounding version of “Here Comes the Bride” on the soundtrack that is distinct from the music that precedes and succeeds it. Elaine returns the wink and smile. The man in front of Mortimer slowly turns around and smiles broadly but rather dim-wittedly. The soundtrack plays a comedic refrain – one potentially implying inebriation – absent of ethnic overtones. Mortimer returns a forced smirk. When the shot–reverse shots are considered individually, their implications appear straightforward. The women’s winks and smiles are gestures of recognition that making it to the altar is a hard-won accomplishment. The man in front of Mortimer attempts to share a similar moment of intimacy, but Mortimer does not look upon his impending marriage as a triumph. Throughout Arsenic and Old Lace, however, first impressions are deceiving. For example, Mortimer’s seemingly charitable Christian aunts turn out to be serial killers with a joint body count of 12. There is also more to the man and woman standing in front of Mortimer and Elaine than first meets the eye. Because the line in the license office is composed of people who are paired two by two, we can assume that these individuals form couples 64

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who intend to marry each other. But unlike the homogenously white couples and black couples waiting in the queue, the woman in front of Elaine and the man in front of Mortimer form an interracial couple. While the action takes place in New York City, where such a marriage would have been legal, it is a surprising inclusion for a movie filmed in Hollywood in 1944, where such an act would have been illegal under the California Civil Code of 1905: “No license must be issued authorizing the marriage of a white person with a negro, mulatto, or mongolian.”49 It also stood in violation of the Production Code’s restrictions against onscreen miscegenation. In a movie full of playful Gothic transgressions against the law (such as murder, kidnapping, and torture), this act of intermarriage could – based on either the Production Code or California law – be recognized as its first crime. It could be the first indication of the danger to come: a hint of mortal peril through Yellow Peril. The interracial couple is simultaneously a symbol of acceptance and a symbol of rejection.50 It demonstrates the degree to which an Asian/American woman has assimilated into “white” American society, but it also demonstrates that this assimilation would not have been possible in all parts of America. Indeed, if the woman is supposed to be Asian rather than Asian/American, her marriage to a white man may demonstrate that she is assimilating, but it does not guarantee that she is a fully recognized member of the nation. As previously noted, in 1942, when the film was shot, the alien wife of a citizen was not automatically eligible for citizenship. In 1944, when the film was released,51 an Asian woman would have been eligible for citizenship only if she was Chinese (the generic Oriental music gives us no clue as to her ethnic heritage), but not because of her marriage; she would still need to qualify under the quota restrictions, and her marriage to a citizen would not grant her priority. In other words, she gains nothing from her marriage except a husband. The interracial marriage therefore symbolizes the creation of a familial community that transgresses racial boundaries – one that Elaine may be endorsing depending on how we interpret her smile – but it does not symbolize a trans-racial national community. Mortimer smirks regardless of how Elaine reacts. In American Madness and Broadway Bill, Capra’s Depression-era America may or may not be global in scope. His conception of

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national community possessed ambiguous boundaries that were either confined by the borders of the United States or stretched beyond them (or both were confined by and stretched beyond them). In Arsenic and Old Lace, Capra’s war-torn America was decidedly not global in scope; China may have been welcome as an ally and the Chinese may have been allowed the (limited) opportunity for citizenship, but integration was a separate process from naturalization. Pocketful of Miracles, meanwhile, negotiates both of these positions in its construction of national community. Released in 1961 but set during the 1920s and Prohibition-era America, Dave the Dude’s masquerade of Japanese racial identity represents a national community that is not global in actuality – the Spanish consul does not have a Japanese houseboy who speaks pidgin English – but it at least provides the fantasy of a position somewhere between multiculturalism and the melting pot where such a scenario would be possible. Capra’s representations of Asian/Americanness change over time, negotiating a fine line between rejecting difference altogether, advocating racial and ethnic assimilation, and celebrating cultural pluralism. Frank Capra’s engagement with Asian and Asian/American themes between 1922 and 1961 was not unique. What was unique was the frequency with which he engaged with them, the regularity with which they were used to help him construct and define the boundaries of his national and global communities. His shifting conceptualization of Asian/American identity contributed to political, cultural, and industrial discourses on race and ethnicity and negotiated both assimilationist and pluralists attitudes, reinforcing Asian/Americans’ foreignness without completely excluding the possibility that they could be members of the American national community. With these domestic patterns – both within Capra’s work and within Hollywood in general – established, it is time to examine Capra’s representation of the Orient within the Far East itself.

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3 “Where the Fruit Trees Look Like Women and the Women Look Like Fruit Trees”: The Bitter Tea of General Yen and the Blurring of the East/West Binary The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) was Frank Capra’s first feature film set entirely abroad. As discussed in the Introduction, Capra’s short film Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House (1922) had been set in India, and four of his subsequent feature films – Submarine (1928), Flight (1929), Dirigible (1931), and Forbidden (1932) – had contained interludes located overseas. As Capra retrospectively claimed in his autobiography, making a film completely set in China was an “artsy” move designed to court critical recognition,1 but it also provided an opportunity to further test the shifting boundaries of his national community (as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2) against an Eastern “other.” Yet even when Capra’s engagement with Eastern otherness was located within a Far Eastern setting like China, Capra’s East was not always coded as “foreign.” Beginning with a contrasting case study of how Cuba functions in Forbidden – and particularly how it is a national community that is both intensely desirable and needs to be rejected – this chapter will examine how Capra fashioned romantic-yet-dangerous Chinese otherness in Bitter Tea through both 67

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costuming and the yellowface performance of race and ethnicity. Returning to a consideration of the East/West power dynamic in Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism (as discussed in the Introduction) and its potentially gendered qualities, I will demonstrate how throughout Bitter Tea’s story of a cross-cultural and cross-racial romance, the embodied East and West trade off positions of power with, ultimately, neither being able to claim dominance. As already quoted in the Introduction, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam argue that “The ‘West’ and the ‘non-West’ cannot [. . . ] be posited as antonyms, for in fact the two worlds interpenetrate in an unstable space of creolization and syncretism.”2 In other words, the dividing line between East and West is nowhere near as clear-cut as early formulations of Orientalism first claimed, and this chapter will show how Capra blurred the East/West binary in his empathetic representation of China.

Case Study: Romance, Desire, and the Dangerous Lure of South America in Forbidden (1932) At the start of Forbidden, restless, small-town, pince-nez-wearing librarian Lulu Smith declares a desire to escape her life of routine and go on a two-week vacation “someplace where they don’t know me.” While she is withdrawing her savings from the bank, a brochure across the room catches her attention: “Havana,” it declares, “The Land of Romance.” For a presumed spinster who is all too aware that it is “springtime” and who has spent day after day staring at the painting across from her library desk of a soldier and a glamorous woman locked in a passionate embrace, an international cruise seems like the answer she has been looking for, despite the fact that the idea, as the bank manager suggests and Lulu agrees, is “insane.” America had won control of Cuba from Spain in 1898 at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. (The United States’ possession of the Philippines, which was also awarded by the Treaty of Paris, will be discussed in Chapter 4.) American rule lasted until 1902, when Cuba was granted formal independence, but, as Louis A. P´erez Jr. contends, American interest in Cuba did not end when it ceased to be a territory: “The perception of Cuba as profoundly relevant to North American well-being meant that almost everything that happened 68

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on the island somehow implicated U.S. interests.”3 Cuba remained connected to America while still being separate from it. As a region that America had owned and lost, it also took on nostalgic qualities. Lulu’s romantic interlude in Cuba in Forbidden lasts just under four minutes. After an opening intertitle displaying the word “Havana” over a shot of a moonlit beach, the majority of the action takes place in a nightclub, edited together in a breezy montage of roulette, drumming, Spanish dancers, and champagne. Bob Grover, the married lawyer who Lulu meets on the cruise ship, confesses that he aspires to become President of the United States one day. “Oh, don’t be President,” Lulu replies. “It’s much more fun here.” She confesses her belief that she came to Havana to meet him. She looks deeply into his eyes as they leave the dance floor, and the next shot shows them riding horses along the beach: Lulu is far ahead of Bob, her hair loose and waving behind her, and she is smiling. Havana has also become the land of emotional abandon. For Lulu, this one brief foreign interlude is enough. She keeps a photograph as a souvenir but, despite having once begged Bob to stay for “another century,” she does not ask him to return, at least not until he is on his deathbed, when her offer may be sincere or may simply be an attempt to give him the hope he needs to recover. Bob, however, does ask Lulu to “run away” to Havana when the guilt of carrying on an affair with her becomes too much to bear. To prevent Bob from sacrificing his campaign for governor – and, implicitly, the dream of being elected to the White House that she once scoffed at – Lulu marries another man. She guarantees that Havana will remain a part of Bob’s past, not his future; she guarantees that he will choose sacrifice and the slow road to the American presidency rather than a life in Cuba lived only on dreams – or, as Bob calls them, “worms [. . . ] because they gnaw and gnaw inside of you.” Indeed, dreams are dangerous, destructive things in Forbidden. Lulu’s insistence on keeping Bob away from further thoughts of Cuba turns out to be well founded because, in the end, fixations on Cuba lead to the deaths of both men in her life. When Holland, the man who Lulu eventually marries, discovers the souvenir photograph of Lulu and Bob “making whoopee in Havana,” he threatens to use it to ruin Bob’s career. Desperate to prevent that from happening, Lulu cold-bloodedly shoots him. Bob, on the other hand, passes away when

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Figure 8. Bob’s dreams of Cuba – represented by the souvenir photograph at lower right – haunt his relationship with Lulu in Forbidden.

Lulu, sitting vigil at his deathbed, asks him if he remembers their time in Havana. (“You get well, and I’ll run away with you. We’ll go back to Havana on our honeymoon. Wasn’t it a grand holiday the last time?”) While Cuba may be a land of romance, it turns out to be an extremely dangerous state of mind for the American male, and Bob and Holland’s fixation on nostalgic South American exoticism rather than the here-and-now of American life has fatal consequences. Cuba itself turned out to be a dangerous place in 1933. The year after Forbidden’s release, the Cuban government was overthrown by rebels, and their perceived communist leanings meant that the country was suddenly seen to be at odds with American democracy. Cuba was no longer an acceptable foil for the United States, and Capra therefore had to go further afield to find a new romantic “other.” One year and two films after Forbidden, The Bitter Tea of General Yen told the similar story of repressed American missionary Megan Davis’s visit to China and her star-crossed – and, in many ways, forbidden – cross-racial romance with the Chinese General Yen. 70

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Critical responses to Bitter Tea’s representation of East/West relations were underwhelming. For example, Variety reporter Sam Shain did not know what to make of the story in January 1933, calling it “queer,” “singular,” and an “unsympathetic drama” and ultimately concluding that it should not have been made at all: “The printed story undoubtedly would prove more interesting than the picturized version.”4 More recent critical attitudes toward the film’s depiction of China have remained conflicted. In 1980, auteur critic Allen Estrin contended that the message of the film was that the West should leave the East alone: “Its sobering theme [is] that any attempt to westernise oriental culture must be both futile and hypocritical, reflecting the deficiencies of our own culture,” which “is all the westerner has and he should stick to it.”5 In 1999, film historian Thomas Patrick Doherty agreed that China was portrayed negatively, but he argued that this was excusable, because Bitter Tea uses the language of hatred to convey a message of racial tolerance: it is “perfectly aware of the racism at its own heart, but also perfectly persuaded that the twain can meet as friends and lovers.”6 Yet in 2002, approaching the film from the discipline of Asian/American studies, Peter Feng argued that Bitter Tea unequivocally demonized China by characterizing it as a place full of “devious and brutal Chinese warlords.”7 China’s representation is therefore the logical place to begin an analysis of the film itself. And, indeed, at the beginning of Bitter Tea, China appears to be presented in negative terms. Rather than conforming to Capra’s social ethic of “love thy neighbor” (as discussed in Chapter 1), Chapei (the Chinese Municipality in Shanghai) seems to embody an ethic that can be stated as “every man for himself.”8 In the scenes depicting Megan’s attempted rescue of a group of orphans caught in the midst of war, crowds of Chinese people flee in all directions, a corpse dangles from a noose, and soldiers shoot at unarmed civilians with a truck-mounted machine gun. Doherty argues that this sequence depicts “a new kind of war, not on battlefields, but in the metropolis, not against warriors but against civilians. It is the first vivid sound-on-film depiction of what would soon become a newsreel commonplace.”9 In other words, Doherty contends that the depiction of the battle at the beginning of Bitter Tea

“WHERE THE FRUIT TREES LOOK LIKE WOMEN AND THE WOMEN LOOK LIKE FRUIT TREES”

“That, My Friends, Is China”: War, Yellow Peril, and East/West Binaries

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would have been foreign to Western (and particularly American) audiences not just in terms of its geography but also in terms of its morality. Yet the opening sequence may also have seemed foreign (or at least strange and confusing) because it occurs within an ambiguous timeframe. Capra makes a point of situating the action geographically – superimposed over the opening map of China and shots of the city are the words “Shanghai” followed by “Burning of Chapei” – but exactly when Chapei is burning is unclear. And it matters: While Capra scholars have almost universally understood the opening of Bitter Tea to take place during the Chinese Civil War (1927–1950), there is a distinct possibility that it occurs during the January 28 Incident of 1932, which was part of the run-up to the Sino-Japanese War (1937– 1945). If so, it changes the war in Shanghai from a national dispute to international aggression, which in turn changes the tone of the story that follows, paralleling the foreign missionaries’ efforts to control Chinese culture with Japan’s efforts to colonize Chinese territory. The case for the opening action being set during the Chinese Civil War is largely tied to Grace Zaring Stone’s source novel The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1930). While hosting the rescued American Megan Davis at a borrowed palace in the country, the Chinese General Yen reluctantly updates her on unfolding current events: “In capturing the city of Nanking the troops of General Chen Chien got a little out of hand. [. . . ] A number of people were shot and killed, missionaries largely, Doctor Williams of the Nanking College, some ladies, the British Consul too, I believe. [. . . ] Your gunboats, in retaliation, fired on the unarmed civilian population of Nanking, killing hundreds.”10 These events (known as the Nanking Incident) occurred on March 24, 1927; the initial battle in Shanghai two days earlier (“They say the whole of Chapei is on fire now”)11 can therefore be identified as the Nationalist takeover of the city in the lead-up to the Shanghai Massacre of April 12, which marked the beginning of the civil war between Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party and Mao Zedong’s Communist Party. The assumption that Capra’s film follows a similar timeline is supported by multiple references to civil war. American missionary Robert Strike, for example, insists that Yen is “the only man who can get me through the Nationalist lines.” Later, after Yen

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has rescued Megan, he informs her “only military trains are running. There’s a civil war, you know.” American audiences would have been aware of the Chinese Civil War by the time Bitter Tea debuted on January 11, 1933. While the United States remained uninvolved militarily, it developed a proNationalist stance. According to Sean Metzger, Kai-shek’s “conversion to Christianity under the tutelage of his Wellesley-educated wife heralded the emergence of a new China that reflected the hopes of proselytizing American missionaries,” and “the depiction of China as an agrarian society at a historical moment of modernization undoubtedly suggested to many American citizens that, given the right assistance, China could mimic the United States, complete with a Christian head of state.”12 By 1933 when Bitter Tea was in theatres, the Nationalists appeared to be winning the war as the Communists were forced to retreat on the Long March.13 Yet by 1933 China was also involved in a conflict with Japan. Following a series of anti-Japanese incidents – which may have been started by Japan itself – Japanese carrier aircraft bombed the city of Shanghai on January 28, 1932. Although the opening of the battle took place in the International District, it quickly spread to Chapei, where the Nationalist Army attempted to make a stand.14 In other words, the “Nationalist lines” that Strike needs to get through may not refer to the army’s position in the civil war. Indeed, the depiction of the fighting during Megan’s attack at the North Station seems to suggest that the Japanese, not the Communists, are the aggressors: there are two shots, both lasting less than a second, that show passing aircraft releasing bombs onto the city below. The Japanese used aerial warfare on the Chinese in 1932. Between 1927 and 1932, the Chinese were not using it on each other. In other words, there are mixed signals about precisely when Bitter Tea begins. It may, as previous Capra scholars have assumed, be set during the Chinese Civil War, in which case the bombs are an anachronism. (Capra did love using stock footage. It was a cheap way to add a bit of colour.) But, because the film was released in 1933, reference to the events of 1932 could have been easily inserted. The film’s references to the “civil war” would still be valid because that conflict was happening simultaneously; note that Yen calls it “a civil war,” not “the Civil War.” And even if Bitter Tea does

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begin with the Japanese attack, it is important to remember David Palumbo-Liu’s observation that “Capra’s film tries to exploit contemporary history while deleting actuality: there is a conspicuous absence of the words ‘Communist’ or ‘Japanese.’”15 Because the identity of the attacking and defending soldiers is never identified, Bitter Tea allows the opening war to be read in either way: as a barbaric attack by the Chinese on their own people, or as a barbaric attack by one part of the East on another, an act of attempted imperialism that adds an additional menace to the missionaries’ presence in China. As far as the missionaries are concerned, however, it is the East – not the West – that is the barbaric menace, and they verbalize this opinion as they prepare for Megan Davis’s wedding to Strike. Bishop Harkness, a missionary who has been in China for 50 years, regales some of the other missionaries with the “terrible lesson” that he learned only a month before: I was telling the story of the crucifixion to some Mongolian tribesmen. Finally I thought I had touched their hearts. They crept closer to my little platform, their eyes burning with the wonder of their attention. Mongolian bandits, mind you, listening spellbound. Alas, I had misinterpreted their interest in the story. The next caravan of merchants that crossed the Gobi dessert was captured by them and [pause] crucified. That, my friends, is China.

As the bishop relates this narrative, more missionaries gather around him. When the bishop says the word “crucified,” they gasp and turn to one another. Barbara Bowman has interpreted the missionaries’ enclosure of Harkness in the framing of this sequence as a symbol of “the severe limitations of the bishop’s perspective, especially his inability to communicate across cultural boundaries.”16 However, because the missionaries stand with their backs to the camera, they also occupy a position similar to, and therefore become stand-ins for, the film’s implicitly Western audience.17 Their reaction to the bishop’s story – shock, sympathy, and dismay – potentially serves to guide the audience’s reaction. The bishop may be unable to communicate across cultural boundaries and touch the hearts of Mongolian tribesmen, but he can still communicate within cultural boundaries; his story 74

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is eagerly received by members of his own culture, who interpret it as proof of their own inherent moral superiority. Implicit in the bishop’s story is the missionaries’ fear of the Chinese: not just fear that the Chinese have the potential to unflinchingly crucify a small caravan of merchants, but also the fear that they could potentially crucify or outright destroy the entire Western (and implicitly white) population. The Chinese warlord General Yen becomes the embodiment of those Yellow Peril fears, and he consequently also serves as a reflection of Western militaristic and economic aggression, because, as noted in Chapter 2, the Yellow Peril was arguably “an American projection onto the ‘yellow’ race of what appeared to be the white race’s conquest of yellow Asia.”18 Like Fu Manchu (a literary and cinematic embodiment of the Yellow Peril discussed in Chapter 2), Yen has been educated by the West. He speaks English and French fluently, carries a handkerchief, smokes Cuban cigarettes, drinks champagne, and plays Western phonograph records. He seems to have deeper knowledge of Western culture than the missionaries have of Chinese culture. He is also keen to learn more, particularly his American financial advisor Jones’s business tactics. With financial power, Yen can purchase military power; without the troop train full of money, he cannot fund his army. But, crucially, Yen wants to learn and apply Western capitalist practices himself, not have them imposed upon him from outside. He seeks American guidance while maintaining freedom from American control. Although Jones repeatedly offers Yen advice on non-financial matters, he laments that Yen “never takes it.” Unlike Fu Manchu, Yen may not want to destroy – or even attack – the West, but he does at least want to reclaim Western financial power for the East. Yen therefore embodies certain Yellow Peril fears in a way that initially characterizes him just as negatively as the missionaries characterize China. Yet while Bitter Tea takes the early ideological stance that China is barbaric compared to the civilized West and appears to align its (Western) audience with the missionaries’ affirmation of that position, it also criticizes the missionaries, suggesting that their attitude that “this, my friends, is China” is too reductive, too black-and-white, and too condescending. Megan’s fellow missionary Mrs. Jackson,19 for example, proclaims that “everyone in China” is at the wedding party, but the only people shown are missionaries, Chinese servants, and

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the Chinese musicians who play piano and sing “Onward Christian Soldiers.” The only people that matter, in Mrs. Jackson’s opinion, are white or servile or converted: hardly everyone in China. Her worldview is clearly myopic and, worse, bigoted. When Megan tells Mrs. Jackson that Yen “looked so civilized,” Mrs. Jackson warns her not to be fooled: “They’re all tricky, treacherous, and immoral. I can’t tell one from the other. They’re all Chinamen to me.” While some of the Chinese characters in the film (like Mah-Li and Captain Li) will indeed reveal themselves to be tricky, treacherous, and/or immoral, this does not excuse Mrs. Jackson’s inability to make distinctions between individual Chinese subjects. Sociologist Rose Hum Lee contended in 1960 that during the 1930s Americans “did not realize that calling Chinese ‘Chinamen’ was offensive. It simply meant men from China.”20 Yet Mrs. Jackson’s usage of the term does carry negative connotations (tricky, treacherous, and immoral). The very act of grouping all men from China together under one term can be viewed as a demonstration of her Western privilege and power; the very act of describing the Chinese – or at least the Chinese as she perceives them – is enough to (in her opinion) authoritatively define them. In actuality, the fact that “Chinamen” are from China hardly seems to matter to Mrs. Jackson: to get the attention of the Chinese quartet she performs a Native American “whoop,” waving her hand in front of her mouth as she yells; it is the action of another subjugated people, but one she assumes that the Chinese will understand despite vast cultural differences between the two groups. Later, Mr. Jackson attracts the attention of the Chinese piano player by whistling. Both Jacksons assume that the Chinese are best communicated with on a non-verbal level, implying that they believe the Chinese to be uncivilized. And yet, by using non-verbal communication themselves, the Jacksons suggest that there is something uncivilized within them. Therefore, while Gina Marchetti contends that Bitter Tea “establishes a Western moral tone and perspective at the outset, which is only questioned much later,”21 the questioning of the missionaries’ morality arguably begins from the moment that they are introduced. Indeed, Megan, the film’s heroine, is differentiated from the rest of the missionaries from the start of the film. She stands out visually, because they are all significantly older than she is; they have gray hair and many of them walk with canes. Amelia, for example, wears

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a pince-nez and a buttoned-up cardigan with a lace collar, and her hair is styled in a bun. She is the personification of prudish repression (much like Lulu at the start of Forbidden), or so it would appear based on appearance alone. However, she whispers to the other missionaries that she cannot wait to see Megan and her groom kiss and is scolded by a portly, gray-haired male missionary for her non-spiritual embrace of the sexual. Similarly, when the wedding ceremony is postponed, Mrs. Jackson expresses dismay that “my wedding’s all spoiled,” also projecting her personal romantic desires onto Megan. The ageing missionary population fantasizes about the carnal because it is anxious for fresh blood to repopulate it; Megan, it appears, may be prized not for her spiritual dedication but for her youth and fertility. The missionaries are old, bitter, and dying out. Since they are representatives of the West, it too therefore seems to be in need of rejuvenation. This questioning of whether or not the missionaries are right to hold such a negative view of China is central to an understanding of how Bitter Tea’s East/West relationship may have been viewed by audiences at the time of its release. As John V. Wilson of Hollywood’s Production Code Administration wrote in a memo to the PCA’s chief administrator Will Hays on January 21, 1933, ten days after the film had premiered at Radio City Music Hall in New York City: The fact is that every seemingly derogatory remark about the Chinese is refuted by the story. The story is, in fact, a eulogy of the Chinese philosophy, fair dealing, morality, and graciousness. The audience, following the conduct of the Chinese General, who is the hero of the story, gradually becomes ashamed of the Americans who are placed in contrast with him. They see that he really excels in all of the virtues which the remarks in the first part of the story had denied him. The whole purpose of the story is the convincing refutation of the foreign opinion of Chinese characters, and for that reason, it is essential that the seemingly derogatory remarks be used in the first part of the story in order to serve this chief purpose.22

Like Doherty, Wilson argues that the film’s early derogatory representation of China is acceptable only because it is later refuted. According to Wilson, the strength of Bitter Tea as a film is that it allows 77

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the audience to discover that refutation (“a eulogy of the Chinese philosophy, fair dealing, morality, and graciousness”) gradually. It preaches by example rather than through rhetoric. As Wilson argues, the key to the film is not its politics of representation but its politics of identification.

“I See You Are in Need of Powder and Paint”: Gender, Power, and Fashioning the East Wilson identifies Yen as the “hero” of Bitter Tea. The film contains Yen’s name in the title, and auteur critic Donald Willis adamantly maintains that Yen is its primary character.23 Based on screen time, however, Bitter Tea is Megan’s story; she – not Yen – is the main protagonist. Megan is young and idealistic. She is from an old New England Puritan family and therefore presumably descended from the first American immigrants. And unlike the protagonist of Stone’s novel, who is not a missionary ( just planning to marry one), Capra’s Megan believes in her mission to convert the Chinese into Christians and Westernized subjects. In order to fully understand how Megan is positioned when she is first introduced, however, it is necessary to briefly return to the critical theory of Orientalism as a potential way to understand the power relations at play when the West attempts to represent and make sense of the East. As noted in the Introduction, one of the many criticisms leveled against Said’s theory was that it was a particularly gendered discourse, a fact that even Said eventually conceded: Orientalism is a process of the same sort as male gender dominance, or patriarchy, in metropolitan societies: the Orient was routinely described as feminine, its riches as fertile, its main symbols the sensual woman, the harem and the despotic – but curiously attractive – ruler.24

In other words, as scholars like Ella Shohat, Meyda Ye˘geno˘glu, and Mari Yoshihara have shown, in addition to being a Western discourse, Orientalism is a patriarchal discourse; it constructs the East as feminine and in need of Western domination.25 East/West power struggles are repeatedly embodied in and acted through their gendered subjects. 78

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“WHERE THE FRUIT TREES LOOK LIKE WOMEN AND THE WOMEN LOOK LIKE FRUIT TREES”

Yet although Orientalism is inherently patriarchal in nature and imagines the East in feminized terms, Western women could still participate in the Orientalist discourse, occupying a masculine position in relation to a feminized male or female Eastern “other.”26 This is especially true of Megan’s experience in China. The first words that Megan speaks in the film are directed at Yen: “You’ve run down my rickshaw boy!” Megan defends the Chinese victim by expressing shock, outrage, and grief. She empathizes with him, her empathy potentially based on how both she and the rickshaw boy occupy subjugated positions within their respective cultures. But Megan also claims the rickshaw boy as her possession (“my rickshaw boy”) and thus positions herself as his superior, in terms of race or class or both. Megan, although a woman, is therefore representative of the West and Western power from the moment she appears on screen. Much like Yen appears to at least partially conform to Yellow Peril fears about China, his character also seems to be inherently Orientalist – the West’s inauthentic representation of the East – at least when he is first introduced. To begin with, Capra’s Yen is decidedly not a fully formed three-dimensional character. In Stone’s novel, Yen has a first name (Tso-Chong) and a back story (an idealistic boy becomes a warlord when he learns the cruel facts of life); in the film, he does not. Nils Asther’s casting as Yen also establishes the character as Hollywood’s impressionistic representation of the East, not its authentic embodiment. Capra claims in his autobiography that he wanted a “tall, overpowering” actor for the role, but “there were no tall Chinese in casting directories.”27 Therefore, rather than casting a Chinese or Chinese/American actor, Capra cast the 6 1/2 Swedish actor. But, as Pauline Kael contends, Asther’s height adds a “peculiar” aspect to his role.28 He is taller than everyone else in the film – both the Chinese and American characters – by a significant margin (for example, Barbara Stanwyck who plays Megan is 5 5 , and Toshia Mori who plays Mah-Li is 5 ), and therefore he appears out of place – and inherently foreign – within the world of the story. As noted in Chapter 2, casting a white actor in a leading Asian role was standard practice in the 1930s, because it circumvented the Motion Picture Production Code’s prohibition of the depiction of miscegenation on screen. Films could still depict interracial affairs (or desired-but-never-consummated interracial affairs), because

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audiences remained aware that they were not really interracial romances; they were acted out by two people of the same race, one of whom was simply made-up to appear racially Asian. Asther’s whiteness is therefore potentially always transparent. Just as Mark Winokur argues regarding Myrna Loy in The Mask of Fu Manchu,29 Asther’s yellowface make-up may render him simultaneously white and not white. Similarly, Toshia Mori’s performance of Mah-Li can also be interpreted as a form of ethnic passing. The Japanese actress wore a wig that was, according to Yiman Wang, an imitation of Chinese/American actress Anna May Wong’s trademark “China doll” hairstyle, which was carefully lit to make Mori look like Wong (who was rumored to have been considered – but passed over – for the role).30 One Asian cultural heritage passes for another through the use of costuming.31 Although Yen and Mah-Li both embody China for Megan, they are both inauthentic representations of China: China as imagined and represented by the West rather than China as it authentically was (if such a thing as an “authentic” China even existed). Capra, however, argued that Asther’s yellowface make-up was more natural than other Hollywood yellowface make-up of the time, which stretched and taped the outer ends of the eyes back toward the ears, “fooling practically nobody” and making the actors look “more hideous than Oriental.”32 Asther’s eyes were not taped in Bitter Tea; instead his upper eyelids were covered with “smooth, round false ‘skins,’” and his eyelashes were clipped to “one-third their natural length” because Capra contended that “the upper Oriental eyelid is smooth and almost round, lacking the crease, or fold, of the Caucasian eyelid; and [. . . ] Oriental eyelashes are much shorter than Western eyelashes.”33 This comparatively subtle make-up still marks Yen as “other” but attempts to negate the idea of “other” as hideous; the idea of the “other” as romantic becomes possible. Stereotypical Fu Manchu yellowface make-up does make an appearance in Bitter Tea, however. In Megan’s dream sequence, Asther appears as a nightmare version of Yen. He sports traditional Hollywood yellowface (slanted eyes, buck teeth, greasy hair, pointed ears, and long fingernails),34 dresses in a black silk robe, and batters down Megan’s bedroom door with a rifle. As Megan stares at the grotesque figure, the image dissolves to reveal the General in his uniform. The nightmare Yen is standing in for the real Yen; the stereotyped dream

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figure represents Megan’s Yellow Peril preconceptions of both Yen and China. Conforming to those preconceptions, the monstrous Yen sexually assaults Megan (symbolically assaulting the West), pinning her on the bed and running his hands over her body, but she is rescued by a masked man in Western dress (black sports coat, khaki trousers, and white fedora). The masked man punches the attacker, who is propelled backward and vanishes when he hits the wall behind him. Upon the hero’s victory, Megan caresses his face and removes his mask; it is Yen again, this time a Westernized (yet clearly still Oriental) version. The converted Yen symbolizes a man and a country to whom Megan could be unproblematically attracted, and they kiss. Joseph McBride contends that Megan “realizes too late” that the masked stranger is actually Yen,35 but she registers no surprise when Yen is unmasked. She clearly desires Yen, but her desire is specifically for him as nonthreatening and Westernized: for Yen as he might be upon conversion, not Yen as he is. Contrarily, however, Megan flirts with her own Easternization. Throughout her stay at Yen’s palace, she is repeatedly tempted to “go native”: first by briefly donning Chinese clothes and make-up before

“WHERE THE FRUIT TREES LOOK LIKE WOMEN AND THE WOMEN LOOK LIKE FRUIT TREES”

Figure 9. The nightmare Yen in The Bitter Tea of General Yen.

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Figure 10. The Westernized Yen in The Bitter Tea of General Yen.

dinner, then by trying on Mah-Li’s jade rings (an act that suggests her interest in material chinoiserie and Art Deco Oriental fashion), and finally by donning Chinese clothes and make-up to attend to Yen before his suicide. The first two attempts at dress-up are aborted. Staring at her made-up face in the mirror and her ring-bedecked hand, Megan reconsiders her actions and changes back into her Western attire. Winokur argues that “by stylizing the accoutrements of ethnicity, Deco allowed its audience to maintain a safe distance from it. [. . . ] Ethnic motifs became floating signifiers because they were streamlined in such a way that their original frames of reference disappeared.”36 But Megan cannot escape the ethnic signifiers of the material goods that she covets; because they are located in China, they are not removed from their frame of reference (although, clearly, as the products of a Hollywood art department, they are American interpretations of Chinese art rather than genuine artifacts); Megan cannot disassociate her desire for Chinese clothing from her desire for Yen himself. 82

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Megan’s simultaneous desire for and objection to Oriental dress remains complicated for several reasons. Winokur asserts that by the time Bitter Tea was released, ornamental Deco fashion had been replaced by the common sense styles of Coco Chanel, and therefore, “it became easier to depict the Orientalised woman as a villainess because anyone dressing that way was first pass´e and second an economic drain.”37 If this is true, Oriental-style Deco dress in Bitter Tea represents not just the Far East, but also an outdated ornamental Western sensibility, impractical in the context of the American Great Depression. Yet, despite being outdated and impractical, Mari Yoshihara argues that “by embracing Asia, women gained material and affective power both in relation to American society and vis-`avis Asian subjects, which brought new meanings to their identities as white American women,”38 and therefore Megan’s eventual embrace of Chinese material goods could also be empowering. Brian Edwards, however, argues that when white men and women play dress-up in films set in the Middle East, “The costume is always a show piece; it never comes close enough to verisimilitude to tempt the Yankee pasha to forget that he is an American.”39 In other words, as with yellowface make-up, racial masquerade enacted through clothing is also transparent. When Megan dresses in Chinese attire, she may not gain power over Asia through its objects, because the objects are not convincingly Asian; at no point when she is wearing them does Megan forget that she is an American. The politics of cultural cross-dressing are therefore incredibly complex and convey a range of potential meanings all at once. It is only when Megan stops trying to deny her feelings for Yen that she can comfortably wear Eastern clothing. Both Megan and Yen must sacrifice something of their own culture and adopt something of the other’s (Easternization/Westernization) in order for their relationship to be viable. Indeed, while Megan represents America to Yen, she simultaneously represents China to him as well: he calls her “pale as a lotus blossom which blooms in the night,” and, as he says to Jones, “Conquest of province or conquest of a woman – what’s the difference?” To Yen, the Chinese province and the American woman are equivalent. By conquering Megan, Yen would conquer both America and China.

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“We Never Really Die, We Only Change”: Empathy, Romance, and the East Although Megan has hopes of Westernizing Yen, she invests the majority of her energy in the film toward Westernizing Mah-Li, Yen’s concubine. Mah-Li tells Megan that she was educated in a mission school (which is probably where she learned to speak fluent English), and she therefore has presumably suffered prior missionary attempts at Westernization. However, she takes Megan to the temple rather than to church, suggesting that she either was not a successful convert or that she has renounced the Christian faith. Megan wants to reintroduce her to her early Christian teaching, and she also wants to instill Western values, encouraging Mah-Li to exert her own independence rather than being subordinate to Yen. Megan and Mah-Li’s relationship – much like Megan and Yen’s relationship – is complex. As noted earlier in this chapter, Western women could occupy a masculine position of power in relation to a feminized male or female Eastern “other.” For example, as Shohat and Stam contend, “Western women at times participated in the Western colonial gaze, with writings which dwell voyeuristically on oriental clothes, postures, and gestures, exoticizing the female ‘other.’”40 And Megan does dwell on the “female ‘other’”: it is initially Mah-Li’s clothing, Mah-Li’s jewelry, and Mah-Li’s General that Megan desires. It is through Mah-Li – not Yen – that Megan is first seduced by the East. Therefore, Megan occupies a Western position of power over Eastern Mah-Li, and she uses that position of power to dwell voyeuristically on Mah-Li (or at least Mah-Li’s possessions). Mah-Li remains doubly subjugated as a woman (subordinate to the male Yen) and an Easterner (subordinate to the Western Megan). Yet because Mah-Li’s possessions are objects of Megan’s desire, Mah-Li holds a degree of power over Megan as long as the possessions remain hers. Further complicating this power struggle between women is Megan’s apparent identification with Mah-Li. Yen is surprised that Megan has only known Mah-Li “a few days, and still you act as if she were of your own flesh and blood,” to which Megan replies that she is: gender can transcend racial boundaries, and Megan and Mah-Li are united through the feminine sex in a way that Megan and Yen cannot be because they lack similar race, religion, and gender. As

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Susan Napier notes in her study of Western fan cultures based around Eastern media, “The importance of emotional involvement with the Other is worth emphasizing because it is an aspect of East-West interaction either ignored or underrated by Said and his followers.”41 Although Napier is primarily concerned with American-Japanese relations, her analysis can be extended to Sino-American relations. If the West identifies with its Eastern “other,” the oppositional binary between East and West breaks down. The Eastern “other” becomes “familiar” (but not the “self”; although related, it still possesses difference). Through emotional identification and involvement, any kind of opposition between East and West – binary or otherwise – blurs. China, as embodied by Mah-Li, is potentially no longer “other” to Megan. This bond between the women is established from the first time they interact aboard Yen’s train to his summer palace. Megan is recovering from the bump on the head that knocked her unconscious, and Mah-Li offers her a cup of tea as Yen watches. Mah-Li then makes the General comfortable and settles down to rest herself, at which point there is a series of nine close-ups with eye-line matches cut together in quick succession: Megan looks from the reclining MahLi to Yen; Yen looks from Megan to Mah-Li; Mah-Li looks at Yen and smiles; Yen looks from Mah-Li to Megan; Megan looks at Yen and raises her blanket, then looks down; Mah-Li looks from Megan to Yen; Yen stops looking at Megan and goes to sleep; Mah-Li looks from Yen to Megan; and Megan stops staring into space and goes to sleep. Megan and Mah-Li’s costuming is paralleled in this sequence: both wear pearls – Megan in a ring, and Mah-Li in a necklace and bracelet – just as both will later desire jade rings. While there are moments when Yen and Megan look at each other and moments when Yen and Mah-Li look at each other, at no point do Megan and Mah-Li look at each other. The two women are mirrored as both look at Yen with desire. This visual twinning serves to make MahLi familiar because she resembles Megan and Megan exotic because she resembles Mah-Li. The groundwork for possible identification between the two women is set. Yet Megan’s attitude toward Mah-Li is also condescending. She repeatedly refers to (and therefore constructs) Mah-Li as an immature “child,” who, according to Orientalist logic, requires her (therefore

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justified) guidance and protection (which could also be construed as interference and subjugation).42 For example, when Jones suggests that Mah-Li deserves to be executed for her crimes, Megan insists that she will not let “that child be butchered.” While there is a bond between the women, Megan potentially considers it a maternal connection, one in which she is the more mature of the two. Yet Megan also continually encourages Mah-Li to take control of her own fate – a very adult action – and to exert her independence from Yen. The only opportunity that Mah-Li is seemingly given to earn enough money to support herself, however, entails betraying Yen: revealing the physical location of his financial holdings to his enemies. In other words, the Western education provided by Megan gives birth to Mah-Li’s stereotypical Dragon Lady duplicity (as discussed in Chapter 2). Yen notes the irony that it is Mah-Li’s Western education that ultimately seals her fate: “In the old days, in the days of the Manchus, I could have had her tongue cut out. But now as you missionaries have taught her to read and write she’s a constant menace as long as she’s alive.” Mah-Li’s literacy, which plays a key role in communicating the position of Yen’s train to his enemies (through a written “prayer”), is why she must be executed. But it is Jones, a representative of the West – not Yen – who exposes, humiliates, and condemns Mah-Li. In other words, the West gives Mah-Li the tools to commit villainy, pushes her toward it, and then punishes her for it. Therefore, although Bitter Tea begins by suggesting that the West is civilized and the East is barbaric, the film goes on to imply that the West is just as morally bankrupt because it is (at least partially, if not entirely) complicit in the East’s negative status. Ultimately, the film moves toward a position that suggests that neither West nor East can claim superiority over the other because, through their sins, they achieve a state of equality. This message, while hinted at in Megan’s relationship with Mah-Li, is predominantly conveyed through Megan’s relationship with Yen. The General is a warrior, representing the militaristic threat that the East poses to the West, but he is also a philosopher with artistic sensibilities. When Megan tells him that she does not understand how a man can both execute prisoners and extol the beauties of the moon, Yen chides her for believing that Chinese culture is purely barbaric:

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Yen implicitly does understand Chinese poetry, music, and painting. While they all contain aesthetic beauty, they all also contain ambiguity. The fruit trees look like women and the women look like fruit trees. What appears to be one thing is really something else – suggestive of the duplicity that the missionaries accuse China of possessing – and yet this duality also indicates positive balance and harmony between man and nature. Yen appears to be selfOrientalizing here, constructing a representation of the East that matches positive rather than negative American preconceptions about it (as demonstrated through chinoiserie and Art Deco);43 this selfOrientalization serves to ennoble the East rather than undermine it. China has the potential to be war-torn and full of beauty at the same time. While Megan initially sees China in “true missionary spirit,” Yen explains that things do not have to be black or white. They can be black and white – and even gray. It is through Megan’s interactions with Yen that her preconceptions begin to change. She begins to come to terms not just with the inherent duality of Chinese culture (war-torn and beautiful) or with Yen’s inherent duality (warrior and philosopher), but also with her own inherent duality. Megan – much to her surprise – also contains qualities that are tricky and treacherous or at least self-deceiving. Most crucially, as Gina Marchetti has argued, Megan convinces herself that Yen desires her physically because she has physical desires for him.44 Yen loves Megan, but it is love that he is prepared to suffer unrequited and in silence, because his pride and honour refuse to accept any love that is not freely given in return. Even Yen’s boastful jocular conversations with Jones do not necessarily imply that he ever seriously believes that his relationship with Megan will become physical. “The conquest of a woman” could simply refer to his desire to convert Megan from her close-minded worldview. Megan misinterprets Yen’s intentions as carnal because, as her dream

“WHERE THE FRUIT TREES LOOK LIKE WOMEN AND THE WOMEN LOOK LIKE FRUIT TREES”

Have you ever read our poetry, Miss Davis? Do you understand our music? Have you ever seen our paintings of women walking among fruit trees, where the fruit trees look like women and the women look like fruit trees? There has never been a people more purely artists and therefore more purely lovers than the Chinese.

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Figure 11. At the conclusion of the suicide scene, both Yen and Megan are finally equal in ruin.

demonstrates, she physically desires him, albeit on specific terms and on an unconscious level. The ending of the film and Yen’s suicide are therefore significant: If Megan does eventually give her love to Yen freely, why does he reject it? In Stone’s novel, the bitter tea of the title is purely figurative. Schultz (the Jones character in the novel) rescues Megan, taking her away by boat while Yen, buying them time to escape, stays behind, encircled by his enemies. A lantern is knocked over and the dock goes dark.45 While both Megan and Schultz assume that Yen has been killed, they do not see his murder, and he therefore potentially could still be alive. Capra’s film, however, does show us Yen’s death; and, as McBride notes, while there are numerous suicide attempts in Capra’s films – most famously in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) – this is one of only two onscreen attempts that proves successful.46 In the suicide scene, Yen looks at a statue of his ancestors and prepares to drink the poisoned cup of tea that he has prepared for himself. Megan enters the room, wearing the elaborate Chinese gown 88

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“WHERE THE FRUIT TREES LOOK LIKE WOMEN AND THE WOMEN LOOK LIKE FRUIT TREES”

that she had refused to wear earlier, her face painted with make-up. As she watched Mah-Li do earlier on the train, she puts a pillow behind Yen’s head and rests a blanket on his lap, then kneels at his feet. “I . . . I had to come back,” she says. “I couldn’t leave.” She buries her face on his knee and proclaims, “I’ll never leave you.” Yen raises her head with his hand. Tears are streaming down her face, but whether they are the tears that she shed while preparing herself or tears that she silently shed when pronouncing her devotion is unclear. He dries her tears with his silk handkerchief. Megan smiles, and remains smiling for several seconds. “Silk,” Yen muses. “China gave the world silk.” Megan looks at Yen, and then buries her head on his knee again, audibly sobbing. He takes her hands in his. She raises her head and rests it on his hands. He removes one hand, and drinks three sips of tea, staring intently at her. She continues to caress his free hand. His head falls back, and he dies. Megan continues to stroke his hand, unaware. Scholars have read the suicide scene in various ways, the point of differentiation being why Megan cries. Willis and McBride contend that Megan’s tears are tears of shame and disgust and that Yen “realizes that she can never fully overcome her instinctive sexual revulsion toward him.”47 This reading suggests that while Megan tries to honour her promise to Yen out of principle – to sacrifice her life and herself to him because she gave him her word that she would – she cannot keep up the charade. I, however, agree with Doherty that she is “not worn down but redeemed.”48 Megan’s dream shows that she loves Yen (albeit initially because of what he could potentially become rather than what he is) and therefore the key to this scene is not that she cries – presumably out of despondency at his ruin and the cultural and political forces that will contrive to keep them apart – but that she smiles, relieved that she has surrendered to her emotions despite her prejudices. Yen’s suicide then is his way of releasing her, not from a promise that she does not want to keep but from a future that would treat her unkindly. According to national marriage restrictions established by the Expatriation Act of 1907 and the Cable Act of 1922, an American woman – whether naturalized or native-born – who married a man ineligible for citizenship lost her own citizenship.49 Because the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 classified the Chinese as aliens ineligible for citizenship, if Megan were to marry Yen, she would

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gain love but lose her national identity. All that Yen can offer her is his ruin. His army has abandoned him, and he is too proud to continue living in shame. Megan’s love is not enough to redeem him, because, as he says, the only place that he can imagine the two of them being able to be together is in the afterlife. Megan’s declaration comes too late to change anything. Feminist critics have interpreted Megan’s submission to Yen – demonstrated through her subservient kneeling at his knee – in opposing ways. Marchetti argues that “by converting her from her missionary calling, based on a genuine sense of self-worth and confidence, Yen steals Megan’s spirit.”50 Yen and the East reign triumphant because they reinforce the patriarchal structures that Megan’s independent New Womanhood (travelling to China, postponing her wedding, ignoring Jones’s advice, etc.) had previously defied. Isabel Santaolalla, on the other hand, believes that Megan and the West emerge triumphant, because “Megan’s supposedly altruistic arrival ends up in self-enriched withdrawal, even if her merchandise is not of a material but of a spiritual nature: here she discovers her ‘other’ self and takes it back with her.”51 Like the Western merchants who profited from China’s gift of silk to the world, Megan profits from self-discovery obtained in the East. I, however, argue that neither the East nor the West emerge victorious. Yen is ruined and emasculated, shamed to the point where suicide is his only option. As Marchetti argues, by becoming romantically involved with Yen, Megan spiritually taints herself – she is no longer pure because she experiences sexual desire – and therefore, although she can redeem Yen, she has lost the ability to save him.52 At the same time, Yen’s destruction and emasculation renders him unthreatening: an object finally worthy of Megan’s love. (The West can only submit to the East when the East is incapable of doing anything but also submitting to it.) Yet Megan is also destroyed. Her missionary convictions have been shattered, as has her faith in the intrinsic goodness of humanity. She has lost her agency and her power to dominate or be a threat to the East. Yen sacrifices his life; Megan loses her voice, and does not speak for the remainder of the film. She stares blankly into space as she travels on a boat floating between China and America; its destination and her future could be either. Neither East nor West emerge victorious; they are – finally – equal in

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“WHERE THE FRUIT TREES LOOK LIKE WOMEN AND THE WOMEN LOOK LIKE FRUIT TREES”

ruin. The East/West binary has become blurred. By the end of Bitter Tea, the East looks like the West and the West looks like the East. Capra’s first feature film set entirely overseas therefore ultimately questions distinctions between the domestic and the foreign, blurring the boundaries between America and China. Eastern identity is fashioned through its relationship to the West, but it is not a simple oppositional relationship. As the next chapter will demonstrate, Capra would further explore the complexities of the West’s interest in China in his only other feature film set entirely overseas, Lost Horizon.

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4 “Sometimes He Calls It Utopia”: Lost Horizon and the Politics of Imperialism Lost Horizon (1937) – the story of a group of British and American travellers who encounter the seemingly utopian lamasery of ShangriLa deep within the unexplored Tibetan mountains – has a particularly contested status within the Capra canon. On one hand, it has been repeatedly derided as “a colossal act of hubris,”1 monotonously preachy,2 and – most damningly – a “static” movie.3 As auteur critic Charles Maland reasoned, the plots of adventure films are driven by conflict, but conflict is a quality that utopian societies notoriously lack: “It’s no way to construct a film. [. . . ] Lost Horizon, as a friend once told me, is all solution and no problem.”4 Lost Horizon is seen as being so flawed and so atypical of Capra’s output that, as already noted in the Introduction, Andrew Sarris used it to deny Capra entrance into the vaunted “Pantheon” of Hollywood auteurs; it was the precise moment when Capra supposedly “stopped the world and got off”5 and demonstrated inconsistency in his personal vision. On the other hand, film historian John Baxter proclaimed that Lost Horizon “is perhaps [Capra’s] purest and most coherent statement,” his clearest articulation of his social ethic, which is best summarized as “Love Thy Neighbor” or which Shangri-La’s High Lama himself summarizes as “Be Kind.”6 John Raeburn lists Lost Horizon among Capra’s “best work,” and Robert Sklar agrees that the movie is significant within Capra’s oeuvre, but only because the director’s films 93

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are “concerned more with character than they are with place.”7 In other words, Lost Horizon is a film about an individual in conflict with – or at least conflicted about – a (supposedly ideal) community. But, since British characters outnumber the Americans and since it is set in Asia, Lost Horizon is not generally seen as being a film about American community. In fact, as noted in Chapter 1, Maland viewed Lost Horizon as decidedly un-American, arguing that “generally, its admirers are people who are uncomfortable with the blend of comedy and moralism in Capra’s American masterpieces.”8 As this chapter shall argue, however, Shangri-La’s national positioning is far from clear-cut. And while Lost Horizon may not be explicitly about America, the film still manages to raise questions about American imperialism in the Far East. Beginning with a brief case study of the conflicting interpretations of Shangri-La’s nationality in contemporary reviews of Lost Horizon, this chapter will examine whether Shangri-La really is a utopia (and for whom) before comparing the structure of its society to British India and the American Philippines, both of which had previously been depicted by Capra in Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House (1922) and Submarine (1928), respectively. Capra’s career overlapped with the end of U.S. imperialism in the Philippines (1946) and Hawaii (1959), and it is therefore unsurprising that meditations upon America’s political involvement in the East entered into Capra’s body of work. Calling Lost Horizon a film with a particularly contested status is, in some ways, an understatement. There is hardly an aspect of the film that is not contested, including precisely what constitutes the film itself. The cut that was shown at Lost Horizon’s very first preview in Santa Barbara on November 22, 1936, was reportedly three and a half hours long. By the official premiere in San Francisco on March 2, 1937, it had been shortened to 132 minutes. The “News of the Screen” column in the New York Times reported on March 16 that the original ending, which had featured Sondra calling to Conway from the gate of Shangri-La, had been replaced “with an optional conclusion” in which Conway made his way toward an empty gate.9 By the time a general release version appeared in September, the film had been cut down to just 118 minutes.10 But reediting did not stop there. Drawing on unexpected publicity from a playful 1942 press conference speculation by President Franklin

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“SOMETIMES HE CALLS IT UTOPIA”

Delano Roosevelt that James Doolittle’s bomber planes – which had appeared over Tokyo in April from seemingly out of nowhere – had flown in from a base in Shangri-La, Columbia Pictures rereleased the film as Lost Horizon of Shangri-La (1942). This timely reissue required the removal of much of the film’s pacifist sentiments, which were deemed inappropriate in a time of war, leaving just 108 minutes of footage.11 The film was recut and reissued a final time in 1952, by which point it had been reduced to just 95 minutes.12 Thirty per cent of the film had vanished in 15 years. In 1986, the American Film Institute (AFI) painstakingly restored the film to its 132-minute premiere version. Although they located a full soundtrack, they were unable to locate seven minutes of footage, so production photographs and freeze-frame images were inserted for those sections of the film.13 Consequently, Lost Horizon is a fluid text that has constantly been reshaped, which makes a historically specific approach to it vital. While the location of Shangri-La itself (in the fictional Tibetan Valley of the Blue Moon)14 is relatively uncontested, the starting location of the film does vary between versions. Or, rather, the action at the start of the film remains situated in the fictional city of Baskul and even remains depicted by the very same images of Chinese extras fleeing toward the camera, hurrying across a field carrying their luggage, but the location of Baskul itself shifts. Scholars have generally understood the Baskul of James Hilton’s 1933 source novel as a fictional stand-in for Kabul, Afghanistan.15 Capra’s Baskul, however, is clearly situated in China in the 132-minute preview version, as indicated by the opening written prologue: “Our story starts in the war-torn Chinese city of Baskul, where Robert Conway has been sent to evacuate ninety white people before they are butchered in a local revolution.” (Sarris goes so far as to suggest that it is “Capra’s flair for Chinoiserie” that prompts this change of setting.)16 Despite this clear signposting, one anonymous reviewer in the London Times reported in April 1937 that the film opened with Conway “rescuing Europeans from a riot on the Indian frontier”17 – a revealing mistake that I will revisit toward the end of this chapter. In essence, it was an easy error to make. The geography of Baskul was imagined rather than cartographic, and therefore one place (or one representation of Eastern otherness, be it Afghanistan or China) could stand in for

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another. This imaginative geography arguably transcends just Eastern otherness, however. As Joseph McBride notes, Capra used documentary footage “taken in the Himalayas, the Alps, and the High Sierras” for the travellers’ snow journeys, so Asian, European, and North American geography all pass as Chinese.18 Although Brett Nielson contends that “one can infer that Shangri-La is a place inaccessible to transnational flows, or a kind of non-global city,” due to its isolated geography and “unlocatability” within the Kuen-Lun Mountains,19 Shangri-La is arguably a global community – one that draws from and harmoniously combines multiple national signifiers – even if it has a geographically specific location in Asia. It can be many places at once. Yet while geography is flexible, it is exclusively Asian ethnicities that interchange and pass for one another. In fact, when Lost Horizon of Shangri-La was released in 1942, the opening conflict was updated from the Chinese Civil War to the Japanese invasion of China simply by changing the wording on the opening intertitle.20 As with the depiction of the war in China in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (discussed in Chapter 3), it was not clear which side was supposed to be attacking and which side was supposed to be fleeing during the opening war scenes; it did not matter to the story. The approaching jeeps mounted with machine guns had Chinese symbols painted on their sides, but they could just as easily be believed to contain Japanese soldiers as the Nationalists or the Communists because the Japanese invasion of China and the Chinese Civil War overlapped and were both underway by the date on which the film’s opening was set: March 10, 1935. But they were, of course, hardly the same thing; the changing of the invading army shifts the focus from an internal disagreement about nationalism to an act of external aggression and attempted imperialism (the East dominating the East). Geography and Asian ethnicity (Chinese vs. Japanese) were both fluid – fluid in a text that was itself fluid. This chapter will refer to the 132-minute restored version of the film as the primary text, but it will be careful to note differences between versions of the film where appropriate. Moments where the academic discourse refers to different versions of the film will also be noted. Just as Conway must decide within the film’s narrative what is real and what is a dream, scholars working on Lost Horizon must be careful to take stock of

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Case Study: Critical Reception of Lost Horizon ’s Set Design and the Nationality of Shangri-La (March 4, 1937, to April 30, 1937) Given its slippery nature, the logical way to begin an analysis of Lost Horizon is by historicizing it: investigating how first-run critics understood the way that nationality functioned in the film during a two-month window of time. As already noted, during its first run Lost Horizon’s ending was “optionally” changed but its length otherwise remained the same; this was a span of time when the shifting text was relatively stable. To provide focus, this brief case study will concentrate on just one possible aspect of the contemporary critical reception of nationality in Lost Horizon – a discussion of the Oscar-winning set design in both the American and British press – by examining a sample of 12 reviews (six American and six British) from popular and trade publications based in the cities where Lost Horizon first premiered: New York (on March 3, 1937) and London (on April 19, 1937). Because Lost Horizon was an American adaptation of a British source novel, both American and British critics potentially had an investment in the film’s construction of national identity, and the differing national interpretations of how Shangri-La’s set design – the physical embodiment of the utopia – reflected its national character are particularly revealing. Historical reception studies are of course restricted by the materials available, and according to Barbara Klinger, the totality of historical research is itself a “utopian goal,” impossible to fully attain.21 Lost Horizon is now decades old, and remaining records of the film’s critical reception are limited. Its first-run audience is largely deceased, and although some testimonials survive in the Frank Capra Collection at Wesleyan University – particularly letters written directly to Capra by fans – the imbalance of positive to negative feedback that Capra chose to save must be viewed with suspicion.22 Eric Smoodin has used the “What the Picture Did for Me” column in the Motion Picture Herald in his audience analyses of several Capra films,23 but exclusive analysis of exhibitors’ opinions should be viewed with suspicion as well, because they are inevitably connected to the film’s box office – and

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changes to the film itself, to verify if assumptions about this shifting text actually bear scrutiny over time.

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box office success or failure may be attributed to a large number of factors that cannot be viewed in isolation. An examination of the critical reception of set design must also consider the opinions of the popular press. Shangri-La’s clean white lines and sprawling Art Deco architecture – which were credited on screen to art director Stephen Goosson but which were initially sketched by Columbia Pictures’ artist Cary Odell – were reportedly based on the work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.24 Both Art Deco and Wright’s Prairie School of architecture drew inspiration from diverse global cultures. Art Deco originated in Europe and drew upon continental, African, and Oriental styles.25 The Prairie School, as its name suggests, was designed to complement the American Midwestern landscape and was typified by long, low buildings and flat or gently pitched roofs with extended overhangs to shield against the sun and snow.26 The Prairie School was intensely regional and therefore was perceived to be uniquely American, although Wright drew upon both PreColumbian and Japanese architecture for inspiration.27 Drawing upon both Wright and Art Deco, Shangri-La’s architecture had numerous ethnically diverse sources of inspiration, and contemporary critical reception of the film used the lamasery’s architecture to engage in a debate about the national character of Shangri-La. Opinions about whether the utopian society depicted in the film was – and whether it should have been – Tibetan, British, or American varied. American critical analysis of Shangri-La’s set design was cursory at best. When reviews did comment upon it, it was as an object of spectacle: Time magazine declared it “one of the most magnificent sets in cinema history,” and the New York Times lauded the “impressiveness” of the “sets,” celebrating the design of the entire film, not just the lamasery.28 To American critics, Shangri-La was a high watermark of Hollywood elegance and opulence. It was an artistic achievement, but nothing about it was so nationally coded or uncoded that it necessitated extensive comment. British critics, on the other hand, generally saw the set design as a vulgar Hollywood celebration of escapism and materialism amidst a global depression. The Spectator, for example, declared that ShangriLa was “something incurably American,” further specifying that “this

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The temptation to poke fun at this film of Mr. James Hilton’s fantasy on the ground that the lamasery in mid-Tibet has all the comforts of Hollywood is almost irresistible. [. . . ] The green valley paradise of Shangri-La, supposed to be a retreat from the world in which Eastern wisdom mingles with Western culture, resembles nothing so much as a typical Hollywood home as popularly imagined.31

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Utopia closely resembles a film star’s luxurious estate on Beverly Hills; flirtatious pursuits through grape arbours, splashings and divings in blossomy pools under improbable waterfalls, and rich and enormous meals.”29 Monthly Film Bulletin described Shangri-La as “a combination of a millionaire’s garden playground, an economist’s paradise, and Nirvana.”30 The London Times shared this opinion:

These reviews appear to be expressing dismay that the lamasery’s architecture is not authentically Tibetan. According to Hilton’s novel it should have resembled “a group of coloured pavilions clung to the mountainside with none of the grim deliberation of a Rhineland castle, but rather with the chance delicacy of flower-petals impaled upon a crag.”32 However, it is somewhat ambiguous whether this argument is seriously campaigning for adherence to Tibetan architecture or whether it is campaigning for adherence to the British source material, which was, of course, a British interpretation of Tibetan architecture to begin with. Either way, the most explicit aspect of this British discourse is its anti-Americanism. The real problem with the lamasery’s architecture is not what it is not (Tibetan) but what it is: Art Deco. It is inappropriately decorative and flamboyant during a period of global economic depression. Yet the insistence that Shangri-La resembles a movie star’s Hollywood mansion is an interesting one. It is true that in the 1930s Art Deco was a popular style in Hollywood set design. Yet, according to film historian Ruth Massey, few [off-screen, real-life] houses, even in Hollywood, were designed in either the art deco or the moderne style. [. . . ] The ideal in 1930s America was the bungalow or ranch-style home, epitomized in the popular Westerns of the period and available in pre-fabricated parts 99

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by mail order. [. . . ] In most star homes featured in popular magazines it was the more ‘traditional’ Colonial Revival look that dominated in America.33

While Wright designed 24 homes in California, none of them – in 1937 at least – were Hollywood mansions; his clientele were generally upper-middle-class professionals.34 The connection made by British critics between Shangri-La’s Art Deco design and Hollywood is therefore intriguing on several levels. First, it associates a European style that drew upon diverse ethnic inspirations solely with America. And second, it assumes that “real” America matched “reel” America, when that was not necessarily the case. Shangri-La’s architecture therefore became the unwelcome embodiment of Hollywood’s pleasure in exuberant spectacle and glamour: something with which British films could not compete owing to their comparatively restrained budgets. It embodied the threat that American films posed to the British market. By investigating the perceived national character of Shangri-La’s architecture, we see that American and British opinions about the nationality of Capra’s utopia were divided: it was simultaneously Tibetan, British, and/or American. This critical discourse also extends beyond the film’s contemporary reviews into modern academic debates about Lost Horizon. For example, although Maland believed that Lost Horizon was a departure from Capra’s “American settings,” he bemoaned the lamasery’s “Eastern design too much tempered by a Frank Lloyd Wright functionalism,” a criticism that suggests that Shangri-La was American (or at least was “tempered” by Americanness); Maland is expressing disappointment that the set design is not Eastern enough, as if there was a “real” East that it should have matched.35 Leland Poague voices a similar complaint: “The problem with the Lost Horizon sets is not simply that they differ from Capra’s earlier realistic sets, but that they do not differ enough. Shangri-La looks too real, too much like a junior college library, and therefore the ‘to leave or not to leave’ question becomes even less significant.”36 These auteur critics are uneasy with a location that is not geographically American and yet seems to somehow suggest America; their condemnations of the architecture reveal that the setting of Lost Horizon is many places at once.

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“SOMETIMES HE CALLS IT UTOPIA”

A location that could be multiple things to multiple contemporary reviewers and to multiple modern scholars is ultimately quite appropriate in the case of Shangri-La. After all, the English translation of the Greek word for utopia is “no place.” Utopias are philosophical conceits that suffer problems when they are placed on a map and attempt to function in the “real” world; they almost always cease to be utopian when put into practice.37 Such a pattern raises a question, however: If Shangri-La does function – at least within the “reel” world of the film – does that mean that the society is not a utopia?

“I Believe It, Because I Want to Believe It”: Utopian/Dystopian Imperialism Indeed, the question of whether or not Shangri-La really is a utopia or whether British diplomat Robert Conway simply wants and/or needs it to be is the central question of the film. As the five travellers – Conway, his brother George, the British paleontologist Alexander P. Lovett, the American businessman Henry Barnard, and the tubercular American prostitute Gloria Stone – adjust to life in the lamasery, the theme of appearance versus reality repeatedly resurfaces: the respected financier Barnard turns out to be the assumed identity of fugitive white-collar criminal Chalmers Bryant, Gloria hides her fear of her terminal illness with make-up and cynicism, Russian lamasery resident Maria appears to be 20 but is actually 67 years old,38 and even the mysterious High Lama turns out to be the Belgian priest Father Perrault. But are the revelations ultimately any truer than the masks? Do the characters really change? Were they ever really lying? The film’s conclusion – whether in the original or in the “optional” ending – is equally open-ended and left to interpretation: While Donald Willis and Charles Wolfe have asserted that Conway successfully returns to Shangri-La after abandoning it to help his brother and Maria escape,39 all that the premiere version of the film shows is a long shot of Conway trudging through the snow, a medium shot of the gate leading to Shangri-La (either with Conway’s love interest Sondra standing behind it or “optionally” empty), then a close-up of the ringing lamasery bells. Conway never passes through the gate; it is possible that he only dreams of Shangri-La during his journey, especially since the long shot of Conway does not create 101

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a plausible eye-line match with the medium shot of the gate. The lamasery may still only be a fantasy. It is therefore unsurprising that the utopia contains cracks in its structure; it needs to have them in order to make Conway’s central doubt viable. To give just one example, Shangri-La’s approach to religion is complex. As Chang describes the lamasery’s philosophy to Conway, the overriding principle is one of moderation: “We find in the valley it makes for greater happiness among the natives. We rule with moderate strictness and in return we are satisfied with moderate obedience. As a result our people are moderately honest, moderately chaste, and somewhat more than moderately happy.” Charles Allen described this philosophy as “a mix of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism leavened by Western pragmatism,”40 but Chang insists that it is nondenominational. Chang’s position is implicitly contested, however, by the figure of the High Lama. Shangri-La is run by Father Perrault, a Catholic priest who continues to identify both himself and his ethos as Catholic. The discrepancy between the religious positioning of the lamasery and its leader is perhaps a minor point, but if the religious philosophy of Shangri-La does not bear scrutiny, it raises the question about what else in the supposed utopia does not bear scrutiny. Is Shangri-La really a utopia? Hilton’s source novel was more open-ended on this point. He only went as far as calling the Valley of the Blue Moon “nothing less than an enclosed paradise of amazing fertility,”41 but the film explicitly describes Shangri-La as utopian twice: first in the written prologue (“Sometimes he calls it Utopia”) and then in Lovett’s dialogue (“You may not know it, Mr. Chang, but right here you have Utopia”). Yet the first declaration of utopia is qualified – only sometimes is it a utopia – and the second declaration is pronounced by a comic character, which renders the seriousness of its tone questionable. The supposedly indisputable proof that Shangri-La is, in the end, a legitimate utopia is Maria’s sudden reversion to her genuine age after leaving the magical environment of the valley, which had until then slowed the aging process. Yet Maria appears to age well beyond her sexagenarian years, acquiring white hair and wrinkles. According to Lucy Fischer, Maria also inexplicably appears Asian rather than Russian upon leaving the Valley,42 which is possibly the result of being played by a different (uncredited) actress in her aged state, but

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it makes that casting choice an interesting one. Is the implication that Asianness is not utopian while Europeanness is? Or is this simply an illusion brought about by madness? (It seems to cause George to run toward the cliff face from which – either accidentally or on purpose – he falls to his death.) The discrepancy between Marias – young and old – again raises the question of which is reality and which is the dream; it is another crack in the utopia. As Peter Bishop has noted, utopias are not only “imaginary places where an alternative society can be envisaged,” but also “vantage points where criticism can be directed back at established society.”43 It is perhaps therefore unsurprising that Conway sees a part of himself in Shangri-La. It is, as Chang tells him, his utopia, not the other visitors’: “Why Mr. Conway, you amaze me. I mean your amazement. I could have understood it in any of your companions, but you who have dreamed and written so much about better worlds? Or is it that you fail to recognize one of your own dreams when you see it?” Conway works for the British Foreign Office. He is an agent of British imperialism: as the written prologue to the film makes clear (in all versions of the film), he is England’s “Man of the East,” and he has specifically been tasked to “evacuate ninety white people before they are butchered” (either by “a local revolution” or the Japanese invasion).44 At the height of its power, the British Empire governed nearly a quarter of the world’s population.45 Imperialism meant territorial expansionism bent on the exercise of formal authority by one people over another (either by direct rule or by installing compliant native leaders who would govern on its behalf) and was differentiated from informal (or economic) imperialism, which was the domination of one people by another without actual rule.46 It is significant that a portrait of Queen Victoria, the first British empress of India, hangs behind the Prime Minister during the brief cutaway to 10 Downing Street in Lost Horizon; Capra’s Britain is still imperial Britain. As noted in the Introduction, Capra had depicted British India once before, in his very first one-reeler Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House (1922), and although the location of the setting had not been heavily emphasized, it demonstrates that Capra was at least vaguely aware of British politics at the time. Yet by the 1930s, the British Empire was beginning to weaken, and according to Bernard Porter, “the possibility sank in that India really might be lost.”47 The possibility

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of a riot occurring on the Indian frontier – the previously referred to mistake made by the London Times regarding the location of Baskul in 1937 – was very real (although not true of Lost Horizon).48 We know that Conway is unhappy with his role as an ambassador of British imperialism because of a drunken speech that he makes to his brother once they are safely aboard the final evacuating plane: “Did you make that report out yet? Did you say that we saved ninety white people? Good. Hooray for us. Did you say that we left ten thousand natives down there to be annihilated? No. No you wouldn’t say that. They don’t count.” Because the speech goes on to advocate extreme pacifism (the desire to avoid the annihilation of anyone, be they white or native), it was cut from Lost Horizon of Shangri-La. According to Joseph McBride, this decision shocked Capra, who “remarked that the whole story [of Lost Horizon] was contained in that speech on the airplane by Conway, and that the film made little sense to him without it.”49 Conway’s dissatisfaction with the mission and rhetoric of imperialism is important, because it establishes that he is searching for an alternative, a way out of being “the best little foreign secretary we’ve ever had, just because I haven’t the nerve to be anything else.” What Conway comes to see in Shangri-La – and what he cannot quite convince himself to believe is true – is an imperial society that functions harmoniously without recriminations or retributions from the local population. The imperial character of Shangri-La manifests itself in a series of ways. While the lamasery of Shangri-La itself is perched high above the Valley, a bustling village community of “natives” (Chang’s word) exists below.50 The villagers are native inhabitants – Tibetans – while the lamas are predominantly European. (Chang is Chinese, but Perrault is Belgian, Sondra is unspecifically European,51 and Maria is Russian.) The lamas, led by a Westerner, govern the Eastern villagers, who toil but do not reap the benefits. Geography is highly metaphoric: the lamas on high govern those in the valley below;52 in other words, this utopia contains a class system. Chang’s regime of moderation (quoted above) is one that is applied “in the valley,” not necessarily to the lamasery itself. Chang calls the villagers “our people,” and he proclaims that “we rule with moderate strictness and in return we are satisfied with moderate obedience.” The lamas do not just see to the spiritual well-being of the residents; they also

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Figure 12. The lamas on high govern those in the valley below in Lost Horizon.

claim them as possessions and govern over them. The few villagers who do make it up the mountain to the lamasery are only given the opportunity to act as footmen, silently smiling and standing in the background as the Western travellers eat their meals.53 (Their silence is particularly striking as it is later revealed that everyone in the valley speaks English.) The elaborate dinners therefore serve as a microcosm of the utopian space in Shangri-La, with one class serving another. As McBride has argued, “despite Conway’s avowed distaste for British imperialism, Lost Horizon is essentially an imperialist fantasy.”54 The fantasy is also a particularly patriarchal one. Chang tells Conway that if a man wants another man’s woman, he gives her over, an idea that Conway likes very much. The women appear to have no voice in the matter. (The two women who we see in the utopia – Sondra and Maria – do exhibit agency, but they both turn out to be villainesses: Maria lies about her age to trick Conway into leaving; Sondra – according to the premiere cut of the film but not subsequent versions55 – was the person who arranged to have Conway kidnapped and brought to Shangri-La in the first place.) Barnard and Lovett 105

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Figure 13. Lost Horizon’s natives silently (ob)serve the meals at Shangri-La.

mingle with several native women during a trip to the valley floor: a scene that was included in the premiere version but cut in subsequent versions,56 and although the soundtrack remains, the accompanying footage has been lost. Stage directions in the script are vague: “Barnard has encountered some beautiful native girls, and they have surrounded him with their hospitality – plying him with wine and food,” and Lovett initially is “lagging behind and missing out on all the fun,” but after Lovett has had “too much to drink” and tells the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” to a group of native children, the native girl who poured him a drink of wine “alluringly” asks, “Who was it, Lovey?” to the question of who slept in the bears’ bed.57 According to the script, Lovett then turns to Barnard and remarks, “Look at those eyes? There’s the devil in those eyes!” and when the scene cuts to the next day in Shangri-La, Lovett is singing “here we go gathering nuts in May” and being “unusually chipper.”58 The only two production stills of the scene uncovered by the AFI show three native women gathered around Barnard, trapping him into a corner of the frame as they crouch over his sitting figure, or else peering back at 106

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the camera over their shoulders offering questioning, welcoming, and indifferent looks. What precisely is supposed to have happened in this scene? Do Barnard and Lovett achieve conquest of the land and its people through conquest of its women or do the women conquer them? Who is Lovett looking at when he recites the “someone’s been sleeping in my bed” line: the valley children or their mothers? What inspires Lovett to stay: the opportunity to dominate or to be dominated? The inequality between the lifestyles of the villagers and the lamasery is justified as being for the villagers’ benefit. According to Donald Lopez, “what makes Shangri-La invaluable is not the indigenous knowledge of the indigenous people,” but the perceived wisdom of the governing Europeans.59 (Sondra, for example, gives lessons to the native children, but precisely what are they learning from an English lullaby? Are her lessons meant to supplement their native culture or replace it?) On Conway’s walk through the valley he sees sheep being sheered, a blacksmith plying his trade, shepherds driving their flock, women washing clothes in the river, a potter throwing a vase, and tallow candles being made. Living in a rustic, pre-industrial state supposedly keeps the natives happy and stressfree, which, in turn, allows them to live longer. The problem with this argument is that the lamas also live for centuries, and they have every modern convenience. For example, Barnard expresses dismay to Gloria that “those poor [valley] people are still going to the well for water! Think of it! In times like these!” and announces that he intends to install modern plumbing for irrigation, but he makes this announcement shortly after standing in front of several elaborate vertical fountains in the lamasery’s reflecting pool: fountains that clearly require and therefore already have plumbing. If the ruling upper class already has modern utilities, the reason that the villagers do not have them cannot simply be “times like these”; it must also be connected to the social hierarchy, which in addition to class divisions appears to contain economic disparity. For whatever reason, the lamasery has not decided to share. Indeed, as McBride has noted, the modern lamasery interior includes locks on the doors.60 In a place that boasts no want and no crime, what exactly are the locks for? In a monastic society supposedly unconcerned with materialism or the threat of violence, they provide

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Figure 14. Barnard tells Gloria that he is surprised by the valley’s absence of plumbing.

yet another discordant element, one indicating that the potential for conflict exists beneath the calm surface of the community. Therefore, just as in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (discussed in Chapter 3), the inscrutability of the native population takes on a menacing undertone from the Western perspective. As Lovett says regarding Chang: “I don’t like that man. He’s too vague.” And when George confronts two native footmen by wielding a gun and screaming “answer me or I’ll blow your brains out,” the men stare at him silently until Conway knocks George out with a punch. Behind the smiling faces of the valley residents may lie the potential for rebellion. After all, the hired porters who are entrusted to lead Conway, George, and Maria away from the lamasery gradually leave them further and further behind, even using them for target practice until the reverberations of a shot set off a fatal avalanche.61 Just as with the other characters – Barnard, Gloria, Maria, the High Lama, and so on – first appearances regarding the Tibetans may be deceiving and may conceal the capacity for revolt. 108

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Shangri-La is therefore ultimately Conway’s idea of utopia, a utopia that – regardless if it is just a dream rather than reality – he chooses over a possible future life as a foreign secretary. He rejects a deeply dissatisfying imperial system – one in which white lives are valued more than native ones – for, ironically, another imperial system. The difference is that Shangri-La is an imperial system where the natives offer no protest against their fate, where they are perfectly happy to be governed. Shangri-La therefore may be a utopia, but not universally. It is a British character’s fantasy of British imperialism, one that British diplomat Lord Gainsford ultimately decides that he believes because he, too, wants to believe it. As Tomoko Masuzawa concludes, “it is as though [Conway] and the leftover colonists of like mind imagined that they could make colonialism right by carrying out their domination more perfectly.”62

“Everything Is Somehow Familiar”: Capra and American Imperialism Yet Shangri-La also has resonance for an American audience. Tibet was an object of fantasy not just for the British but also for America.63 Donald Lopez argues that American fantasies of Tibet owe a debt to the way that British colonialism quickly dispelled myths about India and China.64 On the other hand, Tibet – like Japan – was never colonized by the West (although it was colonized by the East),65 and it did not Westernize itself; it therefore remained an unspoiled source of fantasy for the West, an unacquirable and therefore immensely desirable region that could serve “as the cure for an ever-ailing Western civilization, a tonic to restore its spirit,” particularly because it lacked the underlying militaristic threat of Japan.66 As Bishop contends, following the Great War and the Great Depression in particular, “The West seemed spiritually bankrupt, its ideas and inventions a hindrance – perhaps even antithetical – to human happiness,” while Tibet had spiritualism in spades.67 Part of the reason that America was perceived as spiritually bankrupt was because it, like Britain, was an imperial society in 1937. Although the nation had been founded by rejecting its colonial bonds, it had willingly imposed new ones itself, arguably betraying one of its founding principles.68 America’s imperial nature is noted by Grandpa Vanderhof in You Can’t Take It With You (1938), when he muses 109

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about the Spanish-American War: “What did we get out of that? Cuba. And we gave that back” (as discussed in Chapter 3). Grandpa rather conveniently overlooks how America also was given – and how it also kept – the Philippines until 1946. Guam was also retained until 1950. As H. W. Brands argues, “Empires do not happen by accident. America, like Britain, gained an empire because Americans wanted one and went out and got it.”69 In 1899, America accepted the annexation of the Philippines because “the Filipinos were [supposedly] unprepared for independence. Lacking economic and social preconditions for self-government and especially self-defence, they would not last long in the shark-infested waters of the western Pacific.”70 Like the British, Americans believed that they were saving the countries that they governed from themselves. The Filipinos were, however, ready for resistance, and they fought the PhilippineAmerican War between late 1899 and mid-1902. By the middle of the Great Depression, America was at least partially ready and willing to give the expensive-to-sustain Philippines their independence; it passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934, which inaugurated a ten-year commonwealth period. The reluctance in granting full independence was related to the lingering fear that the Philippines would become “easy prey for an expansionist power like Japan.”71 Capra had already depicted the American Philippines in Submarine (1928), where the opening title card proclaimed that the scene was set “in the tropic waters” off the Filipino coast. When best friends Bob Mason and Jack Dorgan go on shore leave, they head to the Travelers Inn, where sailors gape with open mouths at a non-white woman in a long-sleeved cropped top and a short sarong dancing exotically in front of them. An army officer escorts a native girl (an uncredited actress wearing yellowface make-up and a poorly fitted wig) out of the saloon and says via intertitle: “You stay here Almond-Eyes, till I get a taxicab.” As she waits for her partner to return, Mason escorts her back into the club, where he becomes upset when Dorgan begins to flirt with her. The dispute between Mason and Dorgan over who has her affections turns into a dispute with the original army officer, which eventually escalates into an all-out brawl between the army and the navy. Yet all three – the two best friends and “Almond-Eyes” – exit the saloon smiling and laughing, the army officer’s hat displayed like a trophy on a stick that the girl carries over her shoulder, her arms linked

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Figure 15. “Almond-Eyes” happily goes off with Jack and Bob in Submarine.

through those of both navy men. This final image of the Philippines is a happy portrait of imperial harmony.72 The woman quite willingly subjugates herself to the American authority. In essence, Lost Horizon was a similar depiction of imperialism, albeit primarily coded as British rather than American. It was simply utopian imperialism on a grander scale. Yet American influence in the East was not limited to the Philippines. In China, American influence was informal rather than systematic and existed on an economic rather than political level.73 Yet, as discussed in Chapter 3 (and as will be revisited in Chapter 5), American interests in Shanghai were substantial, and China was extremely important to American trade in the East. As Frank Ninkovich notes, “the Philippines are not seen as valuable in themselves, but as a ‘way-station’ to the China trade [. . . ] an American Hong Kong.”74 American imperialism, unlike British imperialism, did not seek to colonize its territories – whether formal or informal – simply to pillage them for raw goods. According to Walter Nugent, “Never was there the slightest intention of making the islands a frontier of settlement 111

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or a state.”75 Yet this lack of a desire to incorporate the Philippines into the union (as would happen with the territory of Hawaii, which will be discussed in Chapter 6), demonstrates the kind of separatist thinking that had made imperialism possible in the first place. Shangri-La in Lost Horizon therefore has the potential to be read as either kind of imperial society. Shangri-La is just a temporary refuge until after the passage of the High Lama’s forecasted storm, at which point society can rebuild itself from Shangri-La: whether or not the West will stay in Shangri-La beyond that point is ambiguous. Conway’s remark to Sondra that “everything here is somehow familiar” could be a sentiment shared by a British audience or an American audience – although, as demonstrated by the case study, actual critical reactions to the representation of national identity in the film were varied. Shangri-La was both British and American. It was also Tibetan. It was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

“I Sometimes Think the Other Is the Dream”: Global Utopia or National Dystopia? While much of Lost Horizon is contested – what constitutes the film itself, whether or not Shangri-La is utopian, and the shifting characterizations of its national identity – the 132-minute premiere version inarguably contains Capra’s clearest rhetorical articulation of a global community until that point: The time must come my friend when this orgy will spend itself, when brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. Against that time is why I avoided death and am here and why you were brought here. For when that day comes the world must begin to look for a new life. It is our hope that they may find it here. Here it shall be, with their books and their music and a way of life based on one simple rule: be kind. When that day comes, it is our hope that the brotherly love of Shangri-La will spread throughout the world. Yes my son, when the strong have devoured each other the Christian ethic may at last be fulfilled and the meek shall inherit the earth.

The High Lama’s message is one of “brotherly love.” Loving thy neighbours – all of thy neighbours – creates a harmonious 112

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international community where all participants are equal. His dream, in essence, is one in which imperialism is not possible. Yet, as demonstrated above, Shangri-La did have imperialist undertones, regardless of whether they reflected American or British imperialism. The imperial state of Shangri-La appears to mediate the High Lama’s description of the “orgy” outside it. According to the High Lama, the entire world is “a scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other” – literally, in the case of Baskul. As noted earlier, the first shots after the conclusion of the written prologue are of fleeing Chinese civilians haphazardly running across the frame in all directions, jostling into one another amidst the confusion. Yet the Chinese are not the only “scurrying mass.” Several of the Chinese are depicted surging toward the right of the screen, toward the potential shelter of the airport office, but when Conway and his brother close the door on them, the image cuts to the office interior where the waiting white civilians jostle into each other as they surge toward the left of the screen, toward the shelter of the arriving aircraft. The actions of the Chinese and the whites are visually mirrored. East and West reflect each other; just as in Bitter Tea (discussed in Chapter 3) they are both doomed, both corrupted, both in need of rescue – rescue that, supposedly, only Shangri-La can provide. Yet, crucially, the East and West are still kept separate. There remains a door between them. Conway is only tasked to save the “white people.” There are locks on the doors of Shangri-La. The High Lama’s dream of equality is undercut because his actions – or the actions of the lamasery that is under his control – advocate that fences should remain between neighbours, that a hierarchy between racialized classes should be maintained. If even the High Lama does not practice what he preaches, can Shangri-La claim to be christian in addition to Christian? Lost Horizon marks a step closer to Capra’s dream of a global community, or at least the High Lama comes closer than any Capra character yet toward articulating it: a dream where everyone on the planet (not just in America) lives together in harmony. But beneath the soft-focus fantasy of Lost Horizon there is a harsher reality, one of economic disparity and social hierarchy. It contains echoes of both British and American imperialism – it is somehow, but not exactly,

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familiar; the reflection is distorted by hegemony. Questions about the correct distribution of power – not just in the East but throughout the world – would indeed usher in the coming storm in the form of World War II, and Capra’s dream of a global community would once again shift, as we shall see in Chapter 5.

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5 “A Free World and a Slave World”: The Fractured Far East in The Battle of China and Know Your Enemy: Japan Frank Capra’s dream of a global community (discussed in Chapter 4) was temporarily suspended when the coming storm prophesized by the High Lama in Lost Horizon (1937) materialized as World War II. Loving thy neighbour – all of thy neighbours – became impossible in the face of worldwide conflict, particularly when the Allied and Axis powers were divided by seemingly incompatible ideological beliefs and opposing political structures. Capra contributed to the Allied war effort by producing films for the U.S. Army, including the “Why We Fight” series – Prelude to War (1942), The Nazis Strike (1943), Divide and Conquer (1943), The Battle of Britain (1943), The Battle of Russia (1943), The Battle of China (1944), and War Comes to America (1945) – the “Know Your Allies/Know Your Enemies” series – Know Your Ally Britain (1943), Know Your Enemy: Japan (1945), Here Is Germany (1945), Your Job in Germany (1945), and Our Job in Japan (1946) – and The Negro Soldier (1944), Tunisian Victory (1944), and Two Down and One to Go! (1945). While these nonfiction films are often overlooked in auteur studies of Capra, they are crucial to an understanding of how Capra’s conceptualization of national community evolved over time. Auteur critic Donald Willis has argued that “if Capra must be categorized politically, I’d say that, based on his major films [by which 115

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Willis meant the fiction films of the 1930s], he was apolitical, antipolitical, or, based on Meet John Doe, a nihilist. [. . . ] For all their political frenzy, Capra’s films are not really definable in political terms. They were made with a vaguely-defined ‘public’ in mind, not a party or an ideology.”1 Charles Maland echoes this sentiment by repeatedly claiming that Capra champions a “social” rather than “political” ethic.2 While such statements are contentious for Capra’s fiction films, they are completely untrue of Capra’s World War II output, which was made for an extremely specific audience (enlisted men undergoing orientation training in the U.S. Army)3 and which had to be political; their remit was to address the question of why America had entered the war and why, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, Germany rather than Japan was its primary target. The orientation films therefore also had to explicitly foreground and engage in political discourses about the Far East. Indeed, as evidenced by the list of films above, the number of movies dedicated to the Far East equalled the number dedicated to the Nazi threat. As discussed in Chapter 2, Hollywood’s prewar approach to the Far East had been to confuse and conflate multiple Asian nationalities into a single entity termed “the Orient” – a practice that Capra had been occasionally guilty of (as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4). But China needed to be differentiated from Japan in Capra’s World War II orientation films, because one nation was America’s ally and the other was its enemy. While this need to differentiate between Asian nationalities was not exclusive to Capra or indeed to the medium of film – as evidenced by the infamous December 1941 Time magazine sidebar “How to Tell Your Friends From the Japs”4 – it forced Capra to reexamine his construction of national communities, specifically the tension between the individual and the community that had characterized his prewar output. Beginning with a case study of U.S. Army correspondence debating the accuracy of China’s depiction in The Battle of China and the subsequent decision to pull the film from circulation, this chapter will examine how Chinese and Japanese nationality are ideologically constructed and differentiated within The Battle of China and Know Your Enemy: Japan (the two feature-length films on the Far East made by the Capra unit),5 exposing how, in the midst of a moment when global community was an impossibility and was denied to America’s enemies, the qualifications for entry into

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“Cutting, Re-cutting, Re-re-cutting”: The Capra Unit during World War II First, however, it is important to establish that the orientation films were made within a very different production context from Capra’s prewar films – a context that posed very different challenges. Colonel Frank Capra served with the U.S. Army from February 11, 1942, until June 15, 1945, as commanding officer of the 834th Signal Corps Photographic Detachment on special assignment to the Army’s Special Services Division, Film Production Section, which was under the command of Brigadier General Frederick Osborn’s Morale Division (renamed Special Services Branch in early 1942).6 This was a hierarchical system, one in which, according to historian John Dower, each script that Capra’s unit produced “eventually had to be approved by some fifty military and civilian agencies within Washington.”7 More individuals and organizations had influence over the final cut within this system of production than in the studio system. In fact, the orientation films were part of “that subgenre of the nonfiction film that begins on the editing table with footage that was made for another purpose”; they were compilation films composed primarily of material shot by someone else.8 There is therefore a need to be cautious about precisely what role Capra played within this filmmaking unit. As a 1945 memorandum from Brigadier General Edward L. Munson (then-chief of the Army Pictorial Service) makes clear, “The vast amount of time-consuming historical and film research, plus the exigencies of the service caused considerable shifting in personnel on these projects; thus a detailed account of all people who had any part, however small, of the preliminary work or the preparation is practically impossible of compilation.”9 For example, the so-labelled “official” script for The Battle of China dated April 5, 1944, claims that the film was directed by Frank Capra and Edgar Peterson and that it was written by James Hilton, Alan Rivkin, and Walter De Leon.10 But Munson’s 1945 memorandum claims that responsibility for The Battle of China in its final form can be attributed to Capra as producer, Edgar Peterson as

“A FREE WORLD AND A SLAVE WORLD”

Capra’s national community began to extend past America’s borders to its allies: to Britain, to Russia, and (crucially) to China.

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associate producer, and Anthony Veiller and James Hilton as writers.11 The writers who are credited differ, and the nature and extent of Capra’s supervision changes between the two lists. Did he executiveproduce the film or merely co-direct it? Army records do seem to imply that Capra had a hand in all of the films being made by his unit, but his level of involvement undoubtedly varied between projects. Still, a report filed by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lord in October 1943 (which will be discussed in detail in a moment) appears to indicate that the Army considered “Why We Fight” to belong to Capra above other members within the unit.12 Capra contends in his autobiography that he was personally tasked by Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall to make “a series of documented, factual-information films – the first in our history – that will explain to the boys in the Army why we are fighting, and the principles for which we are fighting.”13 This autobiographical account establishes the terminology that was used to refer to the resulting films. Although the “Why We Fight” series has come to be described as “propaganda” – which Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black define in their book on the Office of War Information (OWI) during World War II as “the expression of opinions or actions carried out deliberately by individuals or groups with a view to influencing the opinions or actions of other individuals or groups for predetermined ends and through psychological manipulations”14 – memos and briefs written at the time always referred to the movies as either “informational” or “orientation” films, possibly to avoid the pejorative associations that “propaganda” had obtained since its use during World War I.15 In other words, the Army defined the films primarily by their content and/or their context of exhibition, not by their intended influence. The “Why We Fight” series was anticipated to take nine months to complete; it took over two years. According to the aforementioned report filed by Lord in October 1943, the delays were largely due to Capra and Anatole Litvak’s artistic perfectionism: Both of them work principally by, what seems to me, a trial-and-error method. Neither of them, in my opinion, possesses a highly developed pre-visualization sense. In other words, they do not know whether or not they like something until it has actually been shown to them on

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Lord concluded that this trial and error resulted in a “highly artistic job,” and therefore while he disagreed with the unit’s methods, he praised its results.17 But Capra’s perfectionism meant that many of the films were not released until the war was practically over. Know Your Enemy: Japan, for example, was finally released on August 9, 1945, the day that the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, and it was pulled on August 28, two weeks after Japan had surrendered; it was in circulation for only 19 days.18 The fact that it remained in circulation for even that long may be due to the film’s repeated claim that, historically, when Japan declared that it wanted peace, it was secretly preparing for further war; the U.S. Army may not have initially trusted that Japan’s surrender was genuine. Our Job in Japan – the short film which was completed by Capra’s unit in March 1946, long after he had left the service – appears to have been shelved before its release, and Capra’s biographer Joseph McBride suggests that this was because opinions about who to officially blame for the war had changed by the time the movie was completed.19 The impact that Capra’s orientation films might have had on troops was problematized, in other words, by their limited exhibition and the changing political situation during that period of exhibition.20

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the screen. Hence, the cutting, re-cutting, re-re-cutting, etc. of the important orientation pictures that seems to be standard practise [sic] at the Film Production Section. Hence, the tendency to have trouble with animation and the necessity for doing and re-doing an occasional chart, graph, map, etc., many times.16

Case Study: Army Correspondence Regarding The Battle of China (November 1944) The ever-changing political situation was precisely what concerned the Army about the depiction of China within The Battle of China. On November 1, 1944, Major General F. H. Osborn sent a short memo to General Marshall in which he declared: The film The Battle of China is the least satisfactory of the “Why We Fight” series. It is the only one in which many of the sequences are not actually pictures of historical events, but scenes taken from 119

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entertainment or other film to produce the desired effect. Particularly it gives a picture of a unified China and of a military leadership which is in obvious contrast to the known situation in China. We recommend that it be withdrawn from showing, pending consideration of its possible revision, reducing by one the number of films mandatorily shown to all troops.21

Osborn’s dismissive memo is a useful starting point for an analysis of the orientation films because it demonstrates that, even two years into their production, the Army was still evaluating the orientation films’ purpose; it was questioning what their primary message should be and how that message should be conveyed. According to Osborn, the problem with The Battle of China was that it fictionalized the politics of contemporary China. His phrasing suggests that this sort of misrepresentation would be acceptable if the situation in China were not “known” to be “in obvious contrast” – in other words, if the country was not known to be in a state of civil war and decidedly divided. (Although both the Nationalists and the Communists were opposed to the Japanese occupation, this did not mean that they were allied or “unified.”) Osborn therefore attacked not only the film’s particular depiction of China but also its method of depicting China. Osborn’s memo is also an intriguing starting point because next to the stamp that marks it “approved” by order of the Secretary of War (dated November 1944), it contains a handwritten note stating “Implementing instructions well in accord with agreement reached in telephone conversation between Gen. Osborn and Gen. Nelson,” initialed by Brigadier General O. L. Nelson, Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff.22 What conditions for The Battle of China’s rerelease were agreed upon during that unrecorded (and therefore forever lost-to-history) telephone conversation?23 While the sequence of events leading to The Battle of China’s withdrawal is somewhat unclear (because the authorizing stamp indicates only the month, not the day), it appears that Capra learned about the decision after plans to withdraw the film were in motion.24 According to the letter that Capra sent Osborn on November 21, the ordeal left him “quite disturbed.”25 His threepage missive defended the film against both of Osborn’s charges: the overuse of “scenes taken from entertainment or other film” and the overemphasis on a “unified China.”

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Capra reminded Osborn that almost all of the footage used in the “Why We Fight” films consisted of “scenes taken from [. . . ] other film,” because the primary source material was captured enemy footage, very little of which was used in its original context. He also confessed that “The statement that it is the only one of the series containing film not of historical events it [sic] not literally true. There is much more of this type of film in ‘Battle of Russia,’ and ‘Battle of Britain,’ than there is in the China picture.”26 In other words, throughout the “Why We Fight” series, the Capra unit had been using fiction film to “document” both historical and contemporary events. For example, Divide and Conquer reportedly used footage from Twentieth-Century Fox’s Viking Trails, Warner’s Escape From Crime, Paramount’s The Avengers, Artkino’s The Girl From Leningrad, and Columbia Pictures’ The Commandos Strike at Dawn, while War Comes to America would go on to use footage from Griffith’s America, Twentieth-Century Fox’s Drums Along the Mohawk and The Roaring Twenties, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s The Big Parade, and Warner’s Confessions of a Nazi Spy.27 The title card to Know Your Enemy: Japan also acknowledges that “free use has been made of certain Japanese motion pictures with historical backgrounds” and even that “when necessary, for purposes of clarity, a few reenactments have been made under War Department supervision.” The final title card in The Battle of China declares that “certain non-combat stock scenes were used from historical pictures,” but, again, a timeline is difficult to establish, and this disclaimer may have only been added as an afterthought – possibly as one of the conditions of the film’s rerelease. In other words, whether Capra had previously informed his military superiors that he was using “entertainment” film in this way or whether he had intentionally withheld this information is unclear. Capra contended that the use of “entertainment” film in The Battle of China was absolutely crucial to his representation of China and the Chinese people. Although there are indications that he included footage from multiple Hollywood films – including Goldwyn’s Marco Polo and David Selznick’s Ku Kan28 – Capra only admits to using documentary film shot by M.G.M. cameramen in China for “The Good Earth”29 several years ago. [. . . ] It was from this unused film that we selected a few hundred feet of material to visually aid us

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in portraying the migration. There was a heartbreaking dearth of Chinese material, and we had to resort to any and all known sources to be able to visualize what we were attempting to say about China.30

Capra’s description of unused The Good Earth (1937) footage as “documentary” implies that although it was staged for use in an “entertainment” film, Capra believed that it captured China authentically and was far from a fictionalization or misrepresentation. In other words, he defended his method of depicting China by claiming that it was just as vivid and valid as traditional documentary approaches. In response to Osborn’s second accusation – that The Battle of China’s depiction of China was in “obvious contrast to the known situation” – Capra simultaneously admitted guilt and shifted the blame: As to the semblance of unity we portrayed in China’s leadership, I’ll admit our crystal ball failed us all, for I must remind you that your office, General Marshall’s office, etc., saw both the rough cut and the finished version, and no mention was made at the time on this point. When dealing with contemporary history in the parlous days we are bound to go out on the limb from time to time. Our crystal ball worked in “Divide and Conquer” when we chose General De Gaulle instead of General Giroux [sic] as the French leader, although at the time the odds favored Giroux [sic]. In China, we put our bet on Chiang Kai-Shek and probably lost, although events in the very near future may still prove us right.31

Capra seems to imply that the problem was not that he portrayed a unified China when China was not in fact unified but rather that he had portrayed it as unified under the wrong individual (Chiang KaiShek not Mao Zedong). According to Capra, the important thing was not who the Army backed but that it backed someone: “If we had not stressed that China was on its way to unity, there wasn’t much else we could say, for surely it would have been better not to make the picture at all than to say that one of our Allies was divided and torn with internal strife.”32 How then, in the absence of a reliable crystal ball, did Osborn expect Capra to represent China? The stated policy of the OWI was to 122

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not foreground national leaders as allies or enemies: “Americans, the theory is, will be better haters – and thus better fighters and workers – if they are not beclouded with the false idea that the enemy is a bunch of poor misguided people, who deserve more pity than bullets and bombs. [. . . ] In the event that Hitler should die or be killed, Americans must not be led to believe their job is over.”33 The enemy, according to the OWI, was an ideology rather than individuals. In practice, this meant that the Army orientation films treated enemy nations as enemies: the Germans as a whole, the Italians as a whole, and the Japanese as a whole.34 By the same logic, Allied nations (not individuals) were allies: the British as a whole, the Russians as a whole, and the Chinese as a whole. Representing China as a unified whole was therefore crucial to the orientation films’ ideology, regardless of whether or not it was true. As this case study of The Battle of China makes clear, national unity was a complex concept in Capra’s orientation films, one that required a more nuanced approach to the Far East than Hollywood had previously employed.

Dividing the Globe/Dividing the Continent Superimposed over the map of the world at the beginning of Prelude to War – a map that places the United States rather than the Prime Meridian at its centre – is a quote by Vice President Henry A. Wallace, taken from a speech delivered on May 8, 1942: “This is a fight between a free world and a slave world.” Prelude then cuts to the Earth floating in space, animated by Disney Studios. The globe moves to the left as its equally sized shadow moves to the right; the two spheres are positioned side by side with a gap in between. The original Earth contains the Western Hemisphere (North America and South America). The shadow Earth, although dark and covered in clouds, contains what appears to be the Eastern Hemisphere (Europe, Africa, and Asia). The globe has literally been divided. The Allies are beacons of light, champions of values that are diametrically opposed to the shadowy Axis powers. Numerous binaries are functioning at once: light/dark, free/slave, West/East, and Allies/Axis. There is also a suggestion that global reunification can only occur following Axis defeat – only, implicitly, in a future where America, not Germany, Italy, or Japan, is at the centre of the map. (Such an 123

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Figure 16. The United States – not the Prime Meridian – is at the centre of the map in Prelude to War.

Figure 17. Prelude to War’s “free world” contains the Western Hemisphere. Behind the clouds, the “slave world” contains the Eastern Hemisphere. 124

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American-centric conception of supposedly “global” community is, of course, inherently problematic, as will be discussed in the next section.) As indicated by Prelude, the orientation films had to balance wartime and postwar goals. They had to argue for the defeat of the enemy and for the reintegration of the enemy during peacetime. The way in which the enemy (the slave world) was represented was therefore a delicate matter. While Prelude’s image of the divided globe has been celebrated as the ultimate exemplar of American wartime propaganda,35 it actually belies the construction of “Ally” versus “Axis” that occurs in Capra’s orientation films. During World War II the entire Eastern Hemisphere was not in shadow (was not a slave world), because it contained England, Russia, and China. These Allied nations did not surrender to the Axis powers; they remained “lighthouses in a foggy world.” In other words, instead of simply dividing the globe, the orientation films needed to also fracture Europe and Asia – to differentiate Britain from Germany and China from Japan. Capra’s method of achieving this differentiation was to employ a familiar formula: separating the various national communities into good neighbours versus dehumanized mobs. In Capra’s prewar fiction films, national communities had the potential to be forces for either good or evil. What separated them was whether they considered the common good (paradoxically expressed by thinking for themselves, therefore retaining the potential for individualism within the community, which served to strengthen rather than fracture it) or whether they accepted what they were told at face value and acted as dehumanized mobs (sacrificing their individuality to become part of a mass). In Meet John Doe, for example, the John Doe clubs are formed around the principle that everyone should “love thy neighbor,” but the assembled rally of support turns decidedly unloving upon hearing D. B. Norton’s disclosure that Long John Willoughby is only posing as John Doe; the crowd that cheered Willoughby only moments before hurls insults, then apples, then punches. As Vito Zagarrio has noted, dual-natured communities can also be found in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, and even The Strong Man, so Capra’s concerns regarding mob mentality not only existed before the orientation films but would also continue after them.36

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If what separated good neighbours from dehumanized mobs within Capra’s fiction films was the retention of individualism within the collective, this posed a particular problem within the orientation films. Capra could not simply demonize all instances of the masses acting en masse, because this would undermine the entire project: it would damn the United States Army along with the Japanese and German armies. The orientation films therefore needed to explain why shots of American soldiers marching in formation were different from shots of German soldiers goose-stepping in formation. The difference between the Allies and the Axis needed to become one of ideology – the rights of the individual within the collective (whether the Army or the nation) needed to be foregrounded. (As discussed in Chapter 1, this is arguably one of the distinctive trademarks of American nationalism: America is a nation composed of “others” that remains a unified “self.”) The remainder of this chapter will consider the way in which Capra used ideologies of individualism and community to fracture the Far East and differentiate China from Japan within The Battle of China and Know Your Enemy: Japan.

“Westward to Freedom”: China as Good Neighbours The Battle of China takes repeated pains to demonstrate that the (supposedly) unified Chinese nation stood for the rights of the individual. Following the narrator’s pronouncement that the “most important” thing to remember about China is that “China is people – 450 million of them,” the film cuts to a shot of a crowd swarming a narrow street. Here, the Chinese are a mass walking slowly toward the camera and eventually passing it. But superimposed over this image – which changes angle halfway through the sequence to a sidelong view – are 24 brief close-ups of individual Chinese citizens: two soldiers wearing helmets, a child carrying a bale of reeds, a female receptionist operating a switchboard, two men wearing glasses, a woman holding a baby, a young man staring directly into the camera, an elderly bearded man wearing a skullcap, two women at a soda fountain, a man smiling, a child writing, a man sorting flowers, a smiling woman staring directly into the camera, a man in a fur hat, a man looking up at the sky, four children smiling at the camera, another man with a beard, a young woman working, 126

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Figure 18. Battle of China highlights individuals within the crowd.

a man wearing his hair in a queue, three children, a man in a hat, a woman in a hat, a man in a very large-brimmed hat, and a child sticking out its tongue. These individuals are not from within the passing crowd: they are stationary, and the background images vary. Rather, they function as a supposedly representative sample of the Chinese population. Although the sequence begins with the military, civilians are its primary focus, particularly women, children, and the elderly. The emphasis is on seeing through or beyond the mass to the individuals that it contains – both in a literal sense (the images fade through each other) and a figurative sense. The use of close-ups in the “China is people” sequence is echoed in the sequence that shows the aftermath of the Japanese “rape” of Nanking. Although the images in the Nanking sequence are not superimposed, there is a pronounced shift from long shots depicting architectural damage to close-ups of human casualties, particularly the corpses of women, children (including infants), and the elderly. There are also four close-ups of the walking wounded: a man with a mangled arm that seems to contain no bone, a woman whose bone protrudes 127

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from her arm, a man whose head has been partially severed from his neck, and a man whose face has been almost completely burnt off. The emphasis on each victim’s face before cutting to his or her injuries personalizes the consequences of war. Through deliberately selected and juxtaposed graphic close-ups, Chinese citizens become individuals rather than a mass – even in death.37 And yet, although the orientation films emphasize individuals within the Chinese population, the politics of China’s representation are complex, as the case study has already shown. McLaughlin and Parry argue that Hollywood’s fictional output during World War II “tried simultaneously to make these allies [Great Britain, Russia, and China] distinct, so that viewers could understand why they should be valued as nations and nationalities, and to make them appear to be like Americans,” because Americans could then understand and relate to them.38 These processes were inherently linked in Capra’s orientation films. The Battle of China ultimately argues that the Chinese should be valued as a nationality because they are like Americans. Repeated parallels are made between China and the United States: Sun Yat Sen is called the Chinese “George Washington” – a man whose words echo Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, for the people, by the people” – and the narrator claims that China believes in two of America’s Four Freedoms: the Freedom of Expression and the Freedom of Religion. The particular nature of these comparisons – between Chinese politics and America’s founding – goes beyond simply claiming that the two nations share common ideological values. By comparing Sun Yat Sen to Washington, the film implies that China formed itself on an American model – despite the fact that China’s founding predated America’s founding by almost 4,000 years; Sun Yat Sen, although an important political figure, was far from one of China’s “founding” fathers. The Battle of China implies that China was “founded” as a nation only when it began to aspire to Americanness. In other words, by declaring that China was like America and that China actively wanted to continue being like America, The Battle of China argues that the reason why Americans should fight for China was because it was already an extension of the American nation – therefore problematically denying China’s claims to independent nationhood in a film where, as demonstrated in the case

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study, establishing China’s independence and unity was crucial to the ideological project. This undertone of American imperialism (which, as discussed in Chapter 3, had been a factor in American-Chinese relations for centuries) is also apparent in The Battle of China’s opening pronouncement that one of the three important things to remember about China is that “China is land.” In Know Your Enemy: Japan, the narrator turns to reports by geographers to uncover what the “real Japan” is, but Japan is not proclaimed to “be” land in the way that China is. China as land in The Battle of China meant that China was full of raw materials – materials that presumably could be used to feed the American war machine. The Battle of China also dwells on both the French Concession and the International Settlement in Shanghai, suggesting that they, above all, were what about the city was most worth saving: the “great docks and channels” through which “passed most of the wealth of the Orient.” What was valuable about China therefore was not necessarily China itself (either its land or its people) but rather how America could profit from it. While the orientation films’ conception of Chinese nationhood was inherently problematic – suggesting, as demonstrated in the case study, that China was unified when it was not and that China aspired to Americanness – it attempted to construct the Chinese people as individuals, individuals who believed in individualism (and, specifically, an American model of individualism based on two of the Four Freedoms). Therefore, although both China and the Chinese army were (supposedly) unified masses, they were seen as forces for good rather than evil, because they honored the rights of the individual within the collective.

“An Obedient Mass With but a Single Mind”: Japan as a Dehumanized Mob While Capra’s orientation films attempt to (somewhat condescendingly) reconstruct ally China in America’s image, they construct enemy Japan as inherently foreign and un-American. The narrator in Know Your Enemy: Japan declares that “whatever Japan took from the West or the Chinese, the warlords never took the moral or ethical principles that went with them. All modern knowledge that has come to the Japanese people, all culture, all ideas, all thinking has 129

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been filtered through to the people from the top down.” America, the narrator argues, was based on a system of government that has always been bottom-up in its approach – the people, not their elected officials, are what supposedly drive politics in a democracy. Unlike China, then, which The Battle of China claims aspires to a government “of the people, by the people, for the people,” Japan is characterized by a political structure that is seen to be diametrically opposed to America’s. Japan has supposedly borrowed only the outward trappings of democracy, not its ideological heart. Indeed, Japan is repeatedly presented as a national culture that does not tolerate or have room for individualism, either within or outside the collective. A two-minute sequence, for example, shows shot after shot of Japanese boys being trained in the art of war, shots that are accompanied by the repetitive sound of steel being hammered. The narrator declares, “As iron ore is melted in furnaces to remove impurities, so in Japan humanitarian impurities are burned out of the child. As steel is shaped by beating and hammering so is the boy hammered and beaten into the shape of the fanatic samurai” (colouring over the fact that samurais no longer existed within Japanese culture). Japanese soldiers, in other words, were massproduced. They were declared to be “as much alike as photographic prints of the same negative”: entirely without individualism. The Japanese army is presented as a dehumanized mob, albeit an orderly and well-drilled one. This lack of individualism is also perceived to extend beyond the Japanese army. The narrator argues: Since from the beginning the emperor-gods have mixed their flesh with mortal flesh, it follows that all Japanese are cousins in divinity – the soldier and the wrestler, the wrestler and the priest, the woman in the rice fields, the factory worker, the geisha girl, the businessman, the diplomat, the fishermen off California – all are members of one family whose blood is superior to that of the blood of any other race on earth because it is mixed with the liquid sunshine of the gods.

Within the Japanese nation-formation myth, citizens from all walks of life and soldiers are perceived to belong to the same collective (“cousins in divinity”). This statement is then juxtaposed with the 130

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Figure 19. The Japanese speak as one in Know Your Enemy: Japan.

image of a Japanese crowd chanting “banzai” en masse. Indeed, throughout The Battle of China and Know Your Enemy: Japan, the Japanese speak either as one or not at all. There are occasionally shots of Japanese individuals – Emperor Hirohito on his horse, for example – but they are almost never accompanied by a spoken soundtrack. One notable exception is the Nanking sequence in The Battle of China, which begins with a medium shot of two Chinese prisoners whose hands are tied behind their backs being shot in the head. The image cuts to a close-up of a Japanese soldier giving an order, then cuts back to the prisoners – now lying face-down on the ground – as one is shot in the head a second time. In this instance, the Japanese verbal command is untranslated, denying it meaning for an English-speaking audience. The actions of the Japanese (murder and desecration of a corpse) imbue the command with a fanatical tenor. The implication is that all the Japanese are fanatics, blindly following an irrational ideology. In Two Down and One to Go! there is even the ghostly chanting of “banzai” over the corpses of Japanese soldiers – which, unlike Chinese corpses, are not shown individually but in large piles – demonstrating fanatic unity that continues even in death. 131

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The idea that the Japanese are one undifferentiated mass is also implied through the orientation films’ vocabulary for the enemy. Discussion of German citizens alternates between “the Germans” and “the Nazis,” leaving room for the possibility that not all Germans belong to or agree with the Nazi party.39 According to Koppes and Black, Hollywood fiction films during World War II frequently contained the “good German” or German resistance fighter – figures who were presented as exceptional, isolated cases of individualism.40 Dower, however, argues that “there was no Japanese counterpoint to the ‘good German’ in the popular consciousness of the Western allies.”41 Indeed, in Capra’s orientation films, Japanese citizens are only ever referred to as “the Japanese,” “the Japs,” or the racial slur “Nips” (after “Nippon,” the native name for Japan). No differentiation is made between the nation and the military or between the nation and a political party.42 The possibility for “good Japanese” is denied, because without individualism there can supposedly be no underground resistance. And yet, the beginning of Know Your Enemy: Japan contains the following disclaimer in scrolling text: In the last 100 years a small number of Japanese have come to the United States. Under our law their children, born in this country, are citizens. They have been educated in our schools and speak our language, and a great many of them share our love of freedom and our willingness to die for it. In Europe a regiment formed of these Americans of Japanese descent, called Nisei, distinguished itself for gallantry against the Nazis. The story of these brave men who, however much they resemble our enemies in physical appearance, have proved their right to American citizenship on the battlefields of Europe has been told in other information films. Their story symbolizes the loyal contribution of Americans of Japanese descent in all theaters of war. This film tells the story of the Japs in Japan to whom the words liberty and freedom are still without meaning.

A distinction is made between “Americans of Japanese descent” and “Japs in Japan.” In other words, just as the orientation films fracture the Far East – differentiating between China and Japan – Know Your Enemy: Japan also differentiates between Japanese heritages, separating 132

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groups based on nationality. Around 33,000 Japanese/Americans served in uniform during World War II – although they were restricted to the European Theatre to avoid other American troops mistaking them for the enemy – and the 442nd Regiment was “probably the most decorated unit in United States military history.”43 Through military valour, Japanese/Americans demonstrated their inherent Americanness and “proved their right to American citizenship.” The implication is that they were the “good Japanese.” There was room for exceptions to the rule, just not within Japanese citizenship. Therefore it is no surprise that Know Your Enemy: Japan’s disclaimer says nothing about the Japanese in America: the resident aliens who gave birth to the Nisei. The narrator of Know Your Enemy: Japan, for example, claims that Japan deployed army officers posing as labourers, shopkeepers, gardeners, fishermen, and tourists to collect reconnaissance information for Tokyo, including photographs of military facilities in Honolulu and Seattle. The film implies that all Japanese citizens in America were loyal to Japan, revealing the widespread fear and suspicion that had led to the passage of Executive Order 9066 on 19 February 1942, which ordered the removal of 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from California, Oregon, and Washington to ten internment camps located within the interior United States. No distinction was made regarding citizenship: Japanese/American citizens were interned alongside Japanese nationals. For example, despite 20 years of service as a doctor – some of it with the United States Military – Toshio Ichioka, the Japanese-born father of actress Toshia Mori (the co-star of Capra’s The Bitter Tea of General Yen), was relocated and interned along with his wife and their niece.44 This anxiety about Japanese aliens was largely due to their lack of American citizenship, and yet the possibility of obtaining American citizenship had been denied to them by the Immigration Act of 1924, creating a vicious loop of fear and hostility. The orientation films predictably stress that the primary conflict regarding nationality during World War II was not located within America but rather between America and enemy nations. Drawing upon a discourse reminiscent of the Yellow Peril, Know Your Enemy: Japan argues that the Japanese philosophy was “treat with the foreigner, learn his weapons, and then use them to destroy them.”

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In other words, while The Battle of China argues that “the Chinese believed in using the best of Western civilization for the progress of their country,” Know Your Enemy: Japan claims that Japan used the West to create a war machine – one that could be turned against the West as Japan attempted to “extend the capitol and cover the eight corners of the world under one roof.” And yet, using American weapons of war against America only served to make explicit America’s inherent militarism, particularly America’s imperialism in South East Asia (specifically the Philippines, as discussed in Chapter 4) – something at which the imperial undertones of China’s representation only hinted. The construction of Japan as an aggressor nation simultaneously highlighted America as an aggressor nation; violence was what Japan learned and took from the West. Therefore even as The Battle of China and Know Your Enemy: Japan attempted to establish Japanese culture as ideologically opposed to American values, it unwittingly drew further parallels. The division of the Far East into separate national cultures was crucial to the orientation films’ explanation of why, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, China was America’s ally while Japan was its enemy. In order to accomplish this ideological distinction, Capra had to revisit his prewar construction of national communities, shifting emphasis onto the role of individualism within the community rather than documenting the struggle between the individual and the community. Within Capra’s orientation films, individualism was shunned by America’s enemies but was embraced by both America and America’s allies. The qualifications for entry into Capra’s national community therefore began to extend beyond America’s borders and to its (selected) neighbours, a process that – as Chapter 6 will demonstrate – continued in Capra’s subsequent fiction films.

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6 “Tahiti? Inside Me?”: Frank Capra, South Sea Exoticism, and American Domesticity Before World War II, the Far East – or at least the idea of the Far East, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 – had allowed Frank Capra to explore both what America lacked and what it might become. But after World War II, none of Capra’s previous go-to locales for Eastern otherness – including the Philippines, China, and Japan – remained appropriate foils for America owing to changing international relations. The Philippines were granted their independence from America in 1946, and America’s troubled imperialist involvement there (as discussed in Chapter 4) was still too recent to romanticize.1 America’s breaking point with China occurred when Chinese volunteers crossed into Korea en masse in October 1950 and engaged American troops near the Manchurian border: “The Chinese heroes of the 1940s became the Chinese monsters of the 1950s,”2 and the escalating Cold War supposedly set communist China in diametric opposition to democratic America. Japan, on the other hand, transitioned from an American enemy to an American ally after World War II, but America’s postwar occupation there – and its wartime use of the atomic bomb on Japan’s civilian population – complicated American-Japanese political relations. Partially owing to the uncomfortable specter of American imperialism and the rise of communism, references to the Far East gradually faded from Capra’s postwar films.3 135

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As noted in Chapter 1, however, the Far East was not the only region of the globe with which Capra had been concerned during his career. So, when the Far East was no longer an option, Capra’s focus on an exotic “other” simply shifted further East and South of the equator, returning to an already established fascination with the South Seas and more specifically with Polynesia: the triangular area between Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island. While Capra’s engagement with the South Seas lasted for a longer period of time than his engagement with the Far East and while it encompassed a greater number of films from the Capra canon (as identified in Chapter 1) – such as It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) – it was also a less straightforward engagement, as this chapter shall demonstrate. It would be difficult to label any of Capra’s movies as part of a “South Sea” genre.4 None of his films are set there, and none depict Polynesians or Polynesian/Americans. The South Seas is instead reduced to a series of cultural artifacts (postcards, posters, and grass skirts, for example) or, more often, further abstracted to the point where it is purely a topic of conversation: a shifting fantasy of tropical otherness that represents different things at different points in time. In other words, the South Seas problematizes Capra’s engagement with Eastern otherness as examined so far in this book. As discussed in the Introduction, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam have observed that in addition to being part of the cultural South (the supposedly primitive area below the equator), the South Seas is often portrayed as being part of the cultural East, but it can also be claimed as part of the cultural West, in large part owing to the predominance of Western imperialism in Polynesia, including America’s control of Hawaii from 1898 to 1959.5 Lying geographically to the east of the East, the ambiguous (at least from a Western perspective) cultural positioning of the South Seas makes it an ideal comparative study to the Far East. Unlike the Far East, Polynesia appears to exist solely within an American context for Capra: American characters within America’s borders interact with tropical signifiers – echoes of cultural otherness – expressing desire, fear, or (most often) a mixture of the two. Using a chronological structure, this chapter will examine Capra’s shifting engagement with Polynesia across his body of work, focusing on a series of seven texts: The Strong Man (1926), Rain or Shine (1930),

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It Happened One Night, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, Hemo the Magnificent (1957), and A Hole in the Head (1959). To offset its broad scope, this chapter will treat all of these films as case studies (situating them in extremely specific historical contexts), examining how they fit into wider discourses regarding America and the South Seas and dissecting how tropical exoticism – as opposed to Far Eastern exoticism – became simultaneously rejected by and internalized within Capra’s national community.

“I Saw an Island in the Pacific Once”: Imperialism and the South Seas Consciousness of the South Seas in the West can be largely traced to reports of Captain James Cook’s voyage to Tahiti in 1769, although the island had earlier Western visitors including Louis de Bougainville in 1768. Both explorers published accounts of their visits, describing the island as a place full of natural beauty (dense rain forests, smoking volcanoes, fragrant flowers, and blue lagoons) and replete with unbridled sensuality and sexuality (unselfconscious nudity, particularly among the women).6 Tahiti was, in essence, both a tropical paradise and Paradise: a garden where the native population lived in a state of innocence, like Adam and Eve before the biblical fall of man. Tahiti’s native population was perceived to be simultaneously purer and more primitive than the West; theirs was a lifestyle to envy and, at the same time, feel superior toward. While Tahiti was just one island among many, it came to dominate Western conceptualizations of the South Seas as a whole.7 Implicit – and sometimes explicit – in Cook and Bougainville’s early reports of Tahiti is the patriarchal discourse of imperialism.8 Bougainville’s native country of France would, in time, come to control the Tahitian and Marquesan Islands as well as New Caledonia; Cook’s native country of Great Britain would come to control New Zealand, Fiji, the south-east corner of New Guinea, and the Cook Islands.9 While the United States would have first learned about Tahiti – and the South Seas in general – through these French and British colonial reports, America would eventually gain its own territories in the Pacific, including Hawaii (1898), Guam (1898), American Samoa (1900), and the Marshall Islands (1947).10 Unlike America’s other imperialist holdings, however, Hawaii actively 137

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campaigned for its annexation by America, and it would continue campaigning to become part of the union until it achieved statehood over 60 years later.11 Hawaii’s willingness and, indeed, apparent eagerness to be governed by America differentiated the Polynesian territory from Cuba and the Philippines, which (as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4) were marked by a more contested – and consequentially militaristic – American imperialism. It is therefore not entirely surprising that Capra’s representation of Polynesia – and of Hawaiian culture in particular – would differ from his representation of the Far East. Although Cuba achieved independence in 1902 and the Philippines achieved independence in 1946, Hawaii would not obtain statehood until 1959, meaning that it was still an American territory when Capra made his penultimate film. According to some accounts, Hawaii’s diverse racial and ethnic composition between 1898 and 1959 was precisely what made America hesitant to grant the territory statehood: “It was inconceivable that the United States would incorporate into the body politic thousands of Asiatics at the same time that the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ was being worked out and tightened up. [. . . ] The large proportion of Japanese in Hawaii and the general attitude of Congress toward an ‘undesirable’ population doomed Hawaii to remain a dependency.”12 In fact, given the large percentage of residents with assorted Asian heritages in the 1920s and 1930s (including Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino), Hawaii arguably became victim to the same Yellow Peril fear that had plagued American relations with China, Japan, and the Philippines.13 However, despite their mixed racial and ethnic heritages, Pacific Islanders – as opposed to just Hawaiians – were frequently coded as white or at least as aspiring to whiteness, and the appearance of South Sea women in particular was “largely evaluated in terms of how closely they approximated the physical features of European women.”14 Indeed, when Hollywood began depicting the South Seas, this confusion about Pacific Islander racial identity would continue: Olga Martin’s gloss on the Motion Picture Production Code clarified that “the union of a member of the Polynesians and allied races of the Island groups with a member of the white race is not ordinarily considered a miscegenistic relationship.”15 However – just as in Martin’s gloss on yellow-white miscegenation (discussed in

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Chapter 2) – the use of the word “ordinarily” suggests that there were occasions when it was considered miscegenation by Hollywood. But, of course, Hollywood’s attitude toward the South Seas changed over time, and Capra’s films participated in that shifting discourse. While Capra’s films would not travel there, the South Seas would still find its way into his representation of America; its exotic otherness would still echo across the Pacific in various forms. Over the course of Capra’s career, the South Seas would shift from a place of spectacle to paradise to danger to fantasy, eventually becoming internalized within America.

The South Seas as Spectacle: The Strong Man (1926) and Rain or Shine (1930) As already noted, none of Capra’s films were set in Polynesia, either in whole or in part. None of his films contained Polynesians or Polynesian/Americans. But Capra’s early films did contain impersonations of generalized Polynesian identity by white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) characters. In The Strong Man, the first feature film that Capra directed, the peaceful border town of Cloverdale is overrun by criminals who convert the town hall into the Palace Theater. Mike McDevitt, who owns the Palace, faces off against the local parson “Holy Joe” Brown for control of the community. Irritated by the legions of the faithful singing “Onward Christian Soldiers” in an attempt to bring down the Palace walls with music like Joshua brought down the walls of Jericho with his trumpet, McDevitt declares via intertitle, “If that psalm-singing idiot bothers me much more, I’ll have his daughter in here as the main attraction.” The Palace’s main attraction – as revealed in an earlier cutaway shot – is a burlesque stage show featuring women in Polynesian grass skirts.16 It is McDevitt’s threat to cast Mary Brown in the production that marks the Palace stage show as a pantomime of Polynesian culture rather than the transplanted genuine article. As the daughter of the local parson, Mary is implicitly Christian, implicitly white, and implicitly American. And if Mary – a blind woman – has no conceivable firsthand knowledge of Polynesian culture and yet is perceived to be qualified to perform it, it is reasonable to assume that neither of the other two burlesque dancers is authentically Polynesian either. 139

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Figure 20. The main attraction at The Strong Man’s Palace Theater has a Polynesian theme.

Cultural cross-dressing also occurs in Rain or Shine. When the circus arrives in the town of Shrewsbury, ringmaster Smiley Johnson attempts to drum up business by introducing several acts to a crowd of onlookers. Patrons of the circus will, he boasts, encounter the Princess Dashimi: “the most gorgeous Oriental danger in the world today.” In return, the Princess – clad in a grass skirt and bejewelled brassiere – smiles and wiggles her hips as she dances the hula, then flips up her skirt as she takes a seat on the top of the carriage. She is flirtatious and playful and – unlike the burlesque dancers in The Strong Man – blonde. Her name, it is later revealed, is actually Frankie. In other words, she too is a WASP. The Princess is merely Frankie’s stage persona, and her act – or what little of it she reveals – is another pantomime of exoticism. In both The Strong Man and Rain or Shine, exoticized (and eroticized) femininity is on display. The Polynesian (or faux-Polynesian) woman as an object of sexualized spectacle was hardly a trope exclusive to Capra however. According to historian Michael Sturma, 140

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“TAHITI? INSIDE ME?” Figure 21. Rain or Shine’s Princess Dashimi: “The most gorgeous Oriental danger in the world today.”

Captain Cook’s accounts of unbridled sensuality and sexuality led to the figure of the South Sea maiden as a particular object of Western fascination.17 Postcards of Hawaiian hula dancers were in wide circulation by the 1890s, for example, and ethnographic films like Moana of the South Seas (1926), White Shadows of the South Seas (1927), and Tabu (1931) were structured around the love lives of South Sea women.18 Polynesia – and particularly Polynesian femininity – was an object of exotic spectacle for the West. It is worth noting, however, that the impersonations of Polynesian femininity in The Strong Man and Rain or Shine were not for the benefit of an exclusively male gaze. Both men and women are in the audience for the performances in both films, and both genders applaud – and, by extension, appear to approve of – the spectacle that they witness. So, while the performance of Polynesian sexuality is a fate from which Paul and Holy Joe seek to rescue Mary in The Strong Man and something from which Bud Conway’s family want to disassociate him in Rain or Shine, there remains something potentially 141

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pleasurable about the un-selfconscious display of flesh that the South Seas allow – even at a distance and inauthentically.

The South Seas as Paradise: It Happened One Night (1934) The appeal that South Sea femininity had for American female audiences would become commercialized in the early 1930s. No longer was the South Seas simply an object for spectacle; it was an object for active consumption as well. According to Sarah Barry, the start of the decade led to a vogue in tropicalism, and there was a change in cosmetics meant for pale, bleached faces to colours that would complement a range of skin tones: “Suntanned skin became associated with bourgeois leisure, while pallor represented long hours worked in sunless factories.”19 American ideas of beauty began to incorporate the ethnic and exotic, and soon the tropics had pervaded American culture.20 In It Happened One Night, however, the attitude toward the tropics is far more ambivalent, despite the region’s coding as a sensual paradise. During the last night that Peter Warne and Ellie Andrews spend together before reaching New York, Peter confesses that he’s “been sucker enough” to make plans about what he’ll do when he finds his dream woman: You know, I saw an island in the Pacific once. Never been able to forget it. That’s where I’d like to take her. But she’d have to be the sort of a girl who’d come and jump in the surf with me and love it as much as I did. You know, nights when you and the moon and the water all become one, and you feel you’re part of something big and marvelous. That’s the only place to live. Where the stars are so close over your head you feel you could reach up and stir them around.

In Peter’s fantasy, sensuality is equated to being connected to nature: jumping in the surf, basking in the moonlight, and stirring the stars. Like the biblical Paradise, the South Seas is a sensual Garden. This dream ties in with popular stories about the HMS Bounty mutiny of 1789 in which British sailors chose the lure of a Tahitian paradise – and, by many accounts, Tahitian women – over their military duty: 142

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“More than any other single event [the Bounty story] embellished the romantic mystique of Tahiti.”21 In the Pacific, Peter can be with someone who’s “real and alive,” but he does not expect to find his dream woman in Polynesia, merely to bring her there. His longing is not for South Sea femininity but for the license to embrace sensuality that it offers Westerners. Yet it seems that his dream is a place where he ultimately cannot or will not take the American heroine. It is only after hearing Peter’s fantasy that Ellie crosses the Walls of Jericho – the blanket hung between the two single beds to prevent their occupants from succumbing to temptation – and confesses her love to Peter, declaring “Take me to your island. I want to do all those things you talked about.” But Peter rejects Ellie’s advances; something about her declaration does not complement his dream. When they finally admit their love for each other and the Walls of Jericho fall, they honeymoon in the Midwest, not in the South Pacific. The South Seas may be associated with female sensuality for Peter, but it is a model incompatible with American femininity. In other words, although American women in the 1930s could dress like tropical beauties, Ellie cannot become one in It Happened One Night. The fantasy of an American woman embracing Polynesian sensuality and the reality of an American woman (even a fictional one) embracing Polynesian sensuality were two different things. Peter ultimately chooses America over his dream island.

The South Seas as Danger: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) Tension between American and Polynesian models of femininity and sexuality remained as World War II began, and it finally found its way into what has generally been considered the most “American” of Capra’s supposedly all-American films (as discussed in Chapter 1): Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The film is set entirely in America and is concerned with the American political system, but aggressive female sexuality is linked to Polynesia through the film’s mise-en-sc`ene. When, at Jim Taylor’s behest, Susan Paine attempts to seduce Jefferson Smith away from his senatorial duties via telephone, she is framed standing next to a painting of three dancing dark-skinned 143

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Figure 22. Framed with a painting of three hula dancers, Susan Paine seduces Jefferson Smith away from his senatorial duties in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

women wearing grass skirts, leis, and flowers in their hair. Perhaps more than any of Capra’s other films, Mr. Smith was recognized for its set design, which was praised for including a painstakingly detailed and accurate re-creation of the Senate chamber.22 Genre critic Leland Poague was led to declare that while “Capra actually tells us very little about the art direction in his films,” based on Mr. Smith “we can thus generally assume, I think, that Capra took great care with all of his studio sets to assure the highest level of verisimilitude.”23 If Capra’s set designs – particularly for Mr. Smith – were highly intentional, the pairing of the vamp with South Sea exoticism in this shot is no accident. Historically, the vamp was an exotically threatening and explicitly sexual gendered figure of the “other.” Between 1915 and 1919, Theda Bara, for example, starred in 39 films for Fox, and in all but a handful played a calculating, manipulative woman whose wiles were frequently connected with her ambiguously ethnic appearance, exploited throughout her film career as Arab, Egyptian, Russian, 144

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Racial otherness and dangerous female sexuality had also already been linked in the Bounty story. The shot of Susan standing next to the painting of hula dancers in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington subsequently establishes a connection between Susan’s aggressive sexuality and the exoticized sexuality of South Sea maidens. The correct choice for Senator Jefferson Smith is not Susan but his secretary, Clarissa Saunders, whose small-town upbringing and familiarity with the American system of government make her an all-American woman and a representative of American values: the ideal helpmeet for the all-American man. In other words, by the late 1930s, the embrace of the tropical was dangerous, and on December 7, 1941, Polynesia became a place of destruction when Japan bombed the American military base in Pearl Harbor. Yet Capra’s orientation films during World War II were largely unconcerned with the South Seas. As noted in Chapter 5, their remit was to explain why America had entered the war and why Germany rather than Japan was its primary target. Focusing on the Pacific Front rather than the European Front would have defeated this mandated purpose. The orientation films do mention battles that were fought there – particularly in Two Down and One to Go! and Our Job in Japan (both made after the fighting on the European Front had ended) – but their references to Polynesia are generally made in passing. During the war, the South Seas became a place of violence, death, and defeat rather than one of exoticism: it “could no longer hold on to its Eden-like innocence when soldiers were fighting and dying in bloody battles in the Pacific on the very islands that had conjured up images of paradise, peace, and romance.”25 America, however, shifted as well: its economic interests became global in the wake of European reconstruction.26 It is apt then that Capra’s first postwar film examines the tensions inherent in America’s new place in the world, testing the boundaries of the national and the global in gendered terms.

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Polynesian, Italian, Spanish, Mexican, or other “races” that stood in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon heritage valorized at the time as the stock of “true” Americanness.24

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The South Seas as Fantasy: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) In It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is repeatedly faced with a choice between his dreams of travel and his family life in his hometown of Bedford Falls. From the scene in Gower’s Drug Store at the start of the film, it is apparent that he will never have both. As young George scoops ice cream for the young Mary Hatch, he announces his intentions to see the world, while Mary, unbeknownst to him, simultaneously verbalizes her intention to settle down: GEORGE: You don’t like coconuts! Say, brainless, don’t you know where coconuts come from? Lookit here – from Tahiti – Fiji Islands, the Coral Sea! MARY: A new magazine! I never saw it before. GEORGE: Of course you never. Only us explorers can get it. I’ve been nominated for membership in the National Geographic Society. MARY (whispering): Is this the ear you can’t hear on? George Bailey, I’ll love you till the day I die. GEORGE: I’m going out exploring some day, you watch. And I’m going to have a couple of harems, and maybe three or four wives. Wait and see. This scene is later echoed when George throws a rock at the deserted Granville house and declares that “I’m shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet, and I’m going to see the world: Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum.” Yet before George can finish vocalizing his desires, Mary throws a rock of her own and wishes (although this is not revealed until later) that she will marry George and raise a family with him in the Granville house. Adventure and home are diametrically opposed. The dreams of the two characters are incompatible: Mary cannot settle down with George if George insists on adventuring rather than settling down. George’s resistance to settling – even at this young age – is indicated by how he adds coconut to Mary’s ice cream despite her insistence that she does not like it. He is seeking a compromise, naively hoping to bring her around to the idea of becoming an adventurer as well. Although George lists a large number of foreign locations that he plans on visiting over the course of the film, it is significant that Tahiti

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is his first fantasy. Young George Bailey associates the South Seas with sensuality, but with a sensuality that has become conflated with Near Eastern exoticism (harems and polygamy), much like the conflation between the biblical Walls of Jericho and South Sea exoticism in The Strong Man and It Happened One Night. As George’s hopes of travel continue to be thwarted, he begins to fantasize about locations that are increasingly closer to Bedford Falls: from the South Seas to Arabia to South America to Europe to the Caribbean.27 But his dream of the South Seas does not completely disappear. As George returns from purchasing a suitcase for a pre-college trip around the world, Uncle Billy hails him from the second-floor window of the Bailey Building and Loan: “Avast there, Captain Cook. You got your sea legs yet?” His cousin Eustace adds, “Parlez-vous franc¸ais? Hey, send us some of them picture postcards, will you, George?” George’s ideas about adventure and what the South Seas contain have implicitly been drawn from accounts of Cook’s voyage to Tahiti and postcards of Pacific maidens. He is seeking not only adventure, but also a particular eroticized model of exotic femininity. When faced with the opportunity to go find it, however, he repeatedly privileges the needs of the community and his family above his own desires – decisions that the conclusion of the film ultimately suggests were the right choice. Before his pre-college trip, his father dies, and he agrees to take over the Building and Loan. Before his rescheduled worldwide cruise, his brother accepts a job with his fianc´ee’s father, and George has to stay with the family business. Before he can depart on his own honeymoon, he uses the funds to keep the Building and Loan in business during a run on the bank. And during World War II George is stationed at home, not overseas, because his deaf ear – which he earned saving his brother from a frozen lake as a child – makes him ineligible for active service. Family and the needs of the local community are repeatedly at odds with the exotic allure of the global. The honeymoon scene is the ultimate symbolic face-off between the domestic and the exotic. After George sacrifices the honeymoon funds to save the family business, Mary, Bert, and Ernie decorate the Granville house with travel posters depicting, in Bert’s words, “romantic places, beautiful places, places George wants to go.” Featuring scantily clad women in bikinis and leis kneeling on surfboards,

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Figure 23. Mary decorates the Granville house with posters of “romantic places, beautiful places, places George wants to go” in It’s a Wonderful Life.

the posters advertise Florida beaches (“Vacations like these in the U.S.A.”) and luxury cruise liners to the South Seas. A phonograph plays ‘Song of the Islands’ (referring specifically to the islands of Hawaii). However the symbols of the exotic are paired with symbols of nature that has been domesticated and tamed: cut chrysanthemums and daisies sit in a vase, the fire is contained in the fireplace, and the spit-roasted chickens will be served on china place settings.28 The domestic and the exotic coexist, successfully balanced for the moment within the boundaries of the United States. By concluding with a soft-focus shot of Mary, the sequence affirms that filtering the exotic through domesticity leads to happiness. Domestic life is an adventure in itself. Indeed, Sturma argues that after World War II tropical exoticism once again became something to which white American women could aspire. In the postwar era, as gender roles were being contested – and three million women were being laid off from or voluntarily leaving wartime jobs outside the home upon the return of male veterans29 – South Sea maidens reinforced the patriarchal structure of 148

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American society: “Western representations of South Pacific women offered lessons on femininity, frequently providing an idealized antidote to Western women’s self-assertion.”30 Island beauties were exotic, sensual, and welcomed male desire, but they were almost always submissive rather than aggressive. The irony, however, was that as Margaret Mead’s famous anthropological accounts of Samoa and New Guinea had revealed, not all Pacific Island cultures were patriarchal; some were matriarchal or egalitarian.31 In other words, the postwar fantasy of the South Seas contained undercurrents of danger, in particular a threat to American masculinity, and Capra’s use of South Sea sexuality would draw on the islands as both a fantasy and a threat. Indeed, we also see the reverse, the triumph of the exotic over domesticity, in It’s a Wonderful Life’s nightmare sequence of Pottersville: Bedford Falls as it would have been if George had never been born. Pottersville is filled with bars, casinos, pawnbrokers, and burlesque halls, replacing Bedford Falls’s department stores, Building and Loan, and cinema. Vito Zagarrio compares the look of Pottersville to “New York, Los Angeles, or Washington,”32 and Ray Carney compares it to “Vegas, Forty-Second Street, and L.A. Strip.”33 Flashing neon signs advertise the “Blue Moon Bar,” “The Bamboo Room” – coupled with a switch in the soundtrack to tropical music echoing “Song of the Islands” – and the “Indian Club Bar.” The exotic and the ethnic have invaded Bedford Falls, transforming it from suburban to urban, from wholesome to seedy. As Carney notes, “Pottersville includes in a perverted form all of the adventure, romance, and excitement that George dreams of living in the whole preceding film.”34 George dreamt of travelling to exotic places, but his nightmare involves “the exotic” invading and overrunning small-town America. The South Seas (particularly represented through The Bamboo Room and the change in music) is appealing only so long as it remains firmly in the South Seas. In the postwar context, Polynesia is both a positive and negative fantasy – a cultural trend that could also be traced through the launch of the bikini: the daring two-piece swimsuit designed by French designer Louis Reard in 1946, which took its name from the American-owned Marshall Islands atoll where the United States launched a nuclear testing program, spilling radioactive waste across

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the neighboring islands.35 The female body became the site through which imperialism, race, and gender were debated. Therefore in It’s a Wonderful Life “domestic” has a dual meaning. As embodied by and advocated by Mary, it stands for both home life and home country. George repeatedly chooses to remain in America and to stand by his family and his community. He sacrifices his dreams of travel to become a dependable husband, father, and citizen. America contains all the adventure he needs.

The Internalized South Seas: Hemo the Magnificent (1957) and A Hole in the Head (1959) The domestication of the South Seas continued throughout the rest of Capra’s career. In 1951, Dorothy Lamour cameos as herself in Here Comes the Groom, singing about Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the United States of America: “Folks he met here were a healthy set here, wore nothing much except a smile. With me along here, in a new sarong here, I’d have been right in style.” Lamour had been credited with popularizing the skimpy sarong – Hollywood’s interpretation of tropical fashion – in films such as The Hurricane (1937), The Road to Singapore (1940), and Aloma of the South Seas (1941).36 The knowingness of her cameo has parallels to Dave the Dude’s Mr. Moto impression in Pocketful of Miracles (discussed in Chapter 2). It signals that Capra was well aware of Hollywood conventions regarding the South Seas by this point in time. By the late 1950s, Capra’s films gradually began to internalize the South Seas, incorporating it within America’s borders. In Hemo the Magnificent, the second educational documentary within the Bell Laboratory Science television series produced by Capra between 1952 and 1958, Dr. Research explains to Mr. Fiction Writer that humans have a circulatory system that has gradually evolved from single-celled organisms to fish to reptiles to mammals. Still, he proclaims, “There’s great mystery and great wonder in the fact that our body – this temple of the spirit – is built of billions of highly specialized individual cells like minute tropical sea animals who only live in, well, say Tahiti. Externally your address may be in Ethiopia, Tibet, or Kansas City, but internally we’re all basking in the warm waters of the South Sea isles.” The South Seas has become internalized, contained not just within 150

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“TAHITI? INSIDE ME?” Figure 24. Polynesia is still a gendered spectacle in Hemo the Magnificent’s documentary footage of Tahiti.

the family or local community (as with the Granville honeymoon in It’s a Wonderful Life) but also physically within the individual. Despite the skepticism that Jim the Janitor expresses upon hearing this proclamation (“Tahiti? Inside me?”), the idea of what America means has changed for Capra, expanding to encompass the foreign. It applies equally to Africans and Asians as well as Americans. The very qualifications for Americanness have also shifted, from citizenship to an ideological conformation. But the way that Jim the Janitor understands this shift reverts to a familiar formula: “Inside me? Girls? Ukuleles? [He laughs.] You know, I could sell tickets.” Polynesia is still a gendered spectacle. The documentary footage accompanying Dr. Research’s proclamation shows dark-skinned, dark-haired beauties in bikinis walking along the beach under the palm trees. Although the South Seas may be internalized, they retain their exoticism, exoticism which is still understood primarily through notions of femininity. In Capra’s postwar output, there was no longer a dream of an external paradise. Paradise was 151

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Figure 25. The staircase mural in A Hole in the Head’s Garden of Eden hotel contains an exotic Adam and Eve.

quite literally internalized – not only within America but also within working-class Americans. The idea of America as not just a tropical paradise but also Paradise is made explicit in A Hole in the Head. Filmed partially on location in Miami – a fact repeatedly highlighted in the marketing for the movie37 – the story is largely set in the Garden of Eden hotel. The walls are painted with murals depicting Adam and Eve. The stairwell, for example, features the image of the naked couple standing in waisthigh vegetation, separated by the figure of the serpent, which is wrapped around a pillar. Eve wears a flower in her hair and holds an apple in her hand, and Adam’s arm is extended toward her, as if to take the apple from her. Meanwhile, in the hotel lobby, the image on the wall is of Adam and an unadorned Eve at peace in the Garden, surrounded by birds and grazing deer. The hotel therefore contains two versions of Eve: as a helpmeet and as a temptress.38 Adam and Eve in the murals have dark hair and dark skin. Their garden contains palm trees. This may be intended as a reflection of Miami’s beaches, suggesting that the world outside Tony Manetta’s door is Paradise. But next to the murals, especially around the reception desk, are multiple travel posters (“Fly Eastern Airlines,” “Fly Now, Pay Later,” “Fly on a Round Trip Ticket”), suggesting that the Paradise they depict may actually be a generalized tropicalness – one potentially connected to the South Seas. As discussed earlier in this chapter, popular discourses around the South Seas had imagined it as Paradise. Luis Reyes, for example, argues that Hollywood depictions 152

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Figure 26. Shirl as the Eve in the Garden of Eden.

of the South Seas contained a “utopian quality, often portraying the isles as earthly Edens,” and that the philosophical framework of South Sea cinema is “a replay from the collective unconscious of the biblical mythos, of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden after they taste the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”39 Yet, if there is an implication that the Paradise that Tony seeks is exotic, there is also the implication that international travel – venturing to that Paradise – will lead to the Fall. While in It’s a Wonderful Life coconuts came from Tahiti, in A Hole in the Head they grow in Miami. (As Tony’s brother Mario says while marveling at the speed of air travel: “Six o’clock I’m sitting in my own kitchen. Now I can look around, see a coconut.”) There is no need to go abroad, and caving in to the temptation to do so would only invite trouble. Tony’s tenant and initial love interest Shirl is explicitly identified as the Eve in the Garden of Eden Hotel. “My current Eve is a lulu,” Tony confesses in the opening voiceover. “She would have made the serpent eat the apple.” In other words, like the Eve in the stairway mural, Shirl – who bears a physical resemblance to the painted Eve owing to her dark hair and who adopts the body posture of first Eve and then the serpent when we first meet her – is a temptress rather than a helpmeet, one who will literally seduce Tony from the top of the stairs through the use of an apple later in the film. Like George Bailey, Shirl repeatedly expresses a desire to travel the world in A Hole in the Head, although she does not particularly care where she is headed. Shirl, like Eve, has already experienced the Fall – “You know the saying,” she tells Tony, “There are two 153

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kinds of women, and I’m the other kind” – and is doomed to leave the Garden of Eden from the beginning. Indeed, she already appears to be wandering aimlessly without any connection to notions of home at the start of the film. She rents a room in Tony’s hotel (a temporary lodging), and is repeatedly framed in transitory spaces: on the threshold of doorways and windows or running along the beach where the sand meets the water. She is also vaguely exoticized. Historian Patty O’Brien notes that after World War II there was a rise in the popularity of beach culture: “The Pacific islands, especially Hawaii, were the readily acknowledged home of this new craze that involved the appropriation of appearance as much as it did cultural practice, and so the iconography of the islands reached a zenith in visibility through beach kitsch – hibiscus flowers, tikis, tans, leis, hula skirts, and hula hoops.”40 And yet while the Pacific Islands and Hawaii may have been the source of the American beach craze, by the time of A Hole in the Head these symbols of tropical exoticism seem to have lost their original ethnic connotations. In the film’s marketing campaign, Shirl is generally shown in a bathing suit, carrying a surfboard and/or bongo drums: symbols that could stand for either Hawaiian or Miami beach culture – or even Beat culture.41 Shirl is coded as tropical and exotic without necessarily being coded as foreign. Although Shirl frequently expresses a desire to travel abroad, there is no indication that she has actually ever done so. Her knowledge of the Far East, for example, is hazy at best: After she sings “The Monkeys Tell No Tales in Zamboanga,”42 Fred the desk clerk asks her where Zamboanga is. Shirl can only respond, “Well, who cares?”43 There are also implications that, like George Bailey, Shirl only knows about the South Seas secondhand. “Haven’t you ever seen one?” she asks Tony about kiwi birds (the national symbol of New Zealand), but she does not claim to have ever seen one herself. “You see,” she says, “I’m a wild bird, and you’re a kiwi. [. . . ] They’re stupid things. They want to fly, but they just sit around all day long just flapping their wings and can’t get off the ground.” Tony is grounded because of his family obligations, but Tony is also the one who is branded as exotic and shaded with the South Seas in Shirl’s metaphor – not Shirl herself. The domestic contains echoes of New Zealand wildlife. In other words, Shirl’s repeatedly expressed desire for the foreign is unspecified

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and constantly shifting between various modes of exoticism: from the Caribbean to Cuba to the South Seas to the Philippines. Her exoticism is ultimately generalized, unconnected to any particular geographic region, and more aligned with generic American beach culture. Her exoticness is an affect: all surface and no substance. It is merely an echo from across the ocean – or even from within America. In the end, Shirl’s exoticism is potentially not very exotic at all. It is implied that Paradise for Tony exists at home, with a woman who unambiguously represents America and American values. His brother and sister-in-law’s choice for his new wife is Louise Rogers, a woman whose husband and son drowned and who insists that all she wants in life is to no longer be forced to buy just one lamb chop at the butcher’s; she wants to take care of a family again. Shirl, on the other hand, does not offer Tony the possibility of familial community. She tells Tony that she left her husband because “him and his whole family kept bugging me day in and day out, day after day, have a baby, have a baby. Who needs a baby? I’m a baby myself, and I want to be free.” Shirl epitomizes what feminist Betty Friedan identified in the 1960s as the central problem that had faced American women during the 1950s: “There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to conform, the image that I came to call the feminine mystique.”44 Shirl’s refusal to define herself as someone’s wife or mother, her insistence on defining herself by her own actions, and her subversion of expected gender roles come at the cost of being characterized as childish, as opposed to Louise’s adult womanhood. The potential innocence that might accompany Shirl’s childish characterization is negated, however, by the sexualization of her character. A Hole in the Head therefore offers Tony a choice between two different women who represent two different sets of values: domesticity and the sense of community that it provides versus foreign adventure and its severance of communal ties. While his dilemma matches that of the typical Capra hero (choosing between the domestic and the exotic), the binaries at play – male/female, adventure/home, and domestic/exotic – have become somewhat blurred. The woman is the adventurer, and the man represents familial community. Foreign adventure never occurs except in rhetoric. The kiwi, rather than the bald eagle, represents America. Coconuts, rather than coming

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from Tahiti, now come from Miami. The notion of what America means and where its borders lie has shifted. America, it seems, can accommodate the exotic within the domestic – and within the exoticized American woman. Unlike the Far East, which could only ever aspire to Americanness (or to which Americanness could only ever aspire), the South Seas became increasingly internalized throughout Capra’s body of work. Although the South Seas began as an object of desire and fear, it gradually shifted over the course of Capra’s films. By the postwar period, Capra’s heroes no longer dreamt of an external paradise. Paradise existed in a domestic sphere. The definition of what qualified as American had altered so that Americans might have Tahiti inside them, but America remained the correct choice for the Capra hero over the exotic.

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Conclusion: Mapping “a United States of the World”: Authorship and the Cinema of International Relations Frank Capra repeatedly insisted that his films were exclusively concerned with America and Americans. Auteur critics repeatedly championed Capra’s films as exemplars of American ideology. As the preceding chapters have sought to demonstrate, however, Capra’s recurring fascination with how American identity was constructed, how it functioned, and how it was maintained was not, in fact, situated within an exclusively national context. Although what constituted “America” changed over time, Capra’s body of work repeatedly compared and contrasted the national with the global. Yet, as argued in the Introduction, the discourse of Capra’s authorship did not end with his body of work; it did not halt when he stopped making movies. Authorship is equally shaped by texts, their context, and the discourse that surrounds them. It is not ahistorical. While it has been more than 50 years since Capra retired from filmmaking, his movies tenaciously remain a part of American popular culture. For example, since the television revival of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) in the 1970s, screenings of the film have remained a Christmas tradition that garners perennial newspaper and magazine coverage.1 Reportage of both Democratic and Republican political campaigns – and, increasingly, the rhetoric of Tea Party members themselves – still 157

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often draws comparisons to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).2 A postage stamp – arguably one of the tests of posthumous American iconicity – featured the hitchhiking scene from It Happened One Night (1934) in 2012.3 It therefore remains for the Conclusion to examine how a tension between the domestic and the global manifests itself in the legacy of Capra’s films. Owing to Capra’s continued prominence within American culture, his films have often been objects of homage and adaptation. To name just a few examples, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) was remade as the Adam Sandler vehicle Mr. Deeds (2002); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was parodied in The Simpsons (“Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington,” 1991) and the Eddie Murphy comedy The Distinguished Gentleman (1992); and It’s a Wonderful Life has sparked numerous tributes ranging from It Happened One Christmas (1977) to It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie (2002). It is worth noting, however, that the Capra films selected for tribute have tended to be those that are perceived to celebrate American ideology. For example, in The American President (1995), when lobbyist Sidney Ellen Wade visits the White House for the first time, she proclaims to the security guard that she is “trying to savour the Capraesque quality.” When her friend Susan assures her that the guard “doesn’t know what ‘Capraesque’ means,” he replies: “Yeah I do. Frank Capra. Great American director. It’s a Wonderful Life. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Sidney Ellen Wade of Virginia, knock ’em dead.” In other words, Capra’s legacy and his authorship are defined around a select canon of films (Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith), by the recurrent tension between the “little guy” (“Sidney Ellen Wade of Virginia”) and the system (the “’em” in “knock ’em dead”), and by their “great American” character.4 Given that Capra is supposedly a “great American director,” his legacy outside of America’s borders is particularly intriguing; Capra’s importance to American culture has not prevented his work from being adapted by other national cinemas.5 So, before weighing the implications of Capra’s outward-looking construction of national identity, one final case study remains.6 If, as this book has argued, a recurring preoccupation with the global can be traced throughout the work of a director who has become synonymous with “American” movies, this suggests that the reverse might also be true: that the local and domestic can exist within the films of a director who

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has become synonymous with transnational cinema, such as Hong Kong martial arts star-director Jackie Chan. The previous six chapters have examined how Capra represented the Far East. What happens, however, when the Far East represents Capra? Beginning with a case study of how Chan adapted two Capra films – Lady For a Day (1933) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961) – into Miracles (1989), this conclusion will return to a consideration of the discourses of nationalism, national cinema, and authorship, examining how Capra’s quest for global community led him to gradually circumnavigate the globe in an eastward direction, traveling from India to the Philippines to China to Japan to Polynesia, only to arrive back at America. It will review the diverse ways in which Eastern otherness has been represented in Capra’s oeuvre, assessing when it is presented as redemptive and when it is presented as corruptive, as well as the implications of the choice that the Capra hero routinely faces between the domestic and the exotic. How was Capra’s central preoccupation with American identity structured around its relationship to a (gradually shifting) Eastern “other”? Most importantly, what are the broader implications of Capra’s outward-looking approach to national identity? Is he still the “American” filmmaker that popular discourse claims he always has been, or does he raise new questions about transnationalism in classical Hollywood? How does Capra’s construction of national identity serve to question the boundaries of American cinema and American culture between 1922 and 1961 and – to think about Chan again – even beyond?

Case Study: The Transnational Versus the National in Jackie Chan’s Miracles (1989) According to Jackie Chan’s autobiography, Miracles (alternately known as Kei Zik in Cantonese, Ji ji or Mr. Canton and Lady Rose in Hong Kong, The Canton Godfather in Australia, and Black Dragon in America) had been inspired by two Capra source texts, Lady for a Day and Pocketful of Miracles: “I saw both films when I was a kid; though I couldn’t understand the English, I loved the story anyway.”7 The “story” is a singular noun in Chan’s explanation because Pocketful was itself a remake of Lady for a Day. Capra’s late-career reworking of his earlier films – which he had also done when he remade Broadway Bill 159

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(1934) into Riding High (1950) – implies that the director himself felt that there was unfinished business in his construction as an auteur. There was something about both Lady for a Day and Broadway Bill that fell short of Capra’s expectations and that therefore required revisiting. The plot of Miracles most closely follows Pocketful, albeit with more martial arts: The gangster Kuo Chen Wah (played by Chan) agrees to help the street woman who sells him lucky roses to pose as a member of high society in order to enable her daughter – who has been raised in a boarding school in Shanghai and does not know the truth about her mother’s social and economic status – to marry the son of a wealthy man. The multiple levels of adaptation at play in Miracles – not just by Chan, but also by Capra – are important to note. Lady for a Day had been based on Damon Runyon’s 1929 story “Madame La Gimp.” Miracles was an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation. It is also important to state at the outset of any comparison between Chan and Capra that they are undeniably different kinds of filmmakers working in different time periods and different national contexts. While Capra was a producer-director, Chan is primarily a stardirector, a personality recognizable both on film and behind the camera.8 While Capra was associated with various systems of production within Hollywood, Chan was part of the Hong Kong filmmaking scene, which defined its predominantly Cantonese-language productions against the Mandarin-language output of Mainland China. Hong Kong constituted a municipal region rather than a country, and therefore its cinema has been (and largely continues to be) perceived as being more regional than national and often as being more transnational than regional.9 For example, Kwai-Cheung Lo argues that Hong Kong cinema’s transnationalism is evident from the increasing number of co-productions with other countries, the international settings of plots, the ubiquity of foreign stars and stars of half-Chinese/half-other ethnicity, and the visible impact of Hong Kong idiosyncratic film styles in Japanese cinema and a few mainstream Hollywood movies.10 In other words, Hong Kong cinema’s reliance on foreign markets – particularly in the Pacific – means that, regardless of how it is defined, it needs to appeal to diverse global audiences.11

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Much like Capra’s films have been repeatedly characterized as uniquely “American” in focus, the discourse surrounding Chan’s films has repeatedly characterized them as “transnational.” David Bordwell, for example, contends that whether assuming the role of star or director, Chan really globe-hopped. He extended his playing field to Japan (Thunderbolt, 1995), Russia and Australia (First Strike, 1996), North America (Rumble in the Bronx, 1995), and even South Africa (Who Am I? 1998). Supercop (1992) moves from Hong Kong to Mainland China to Malaysia, while Operation Condor (1991) showcases Asia, Europe, and the Sahara Desert.12

Gina Marchetti further observes how elements of Africa, the African diaspora, and African/American culture featured in Chan’s Hong Kong films Rumble in the Bronx (1995), Mr. Nice Guy (1997), and Who Am I? (1998) before his career took off in America with the Rush Hour franchise (1998, 2001, 2007).13 Indeed, while these films are all part of Chan’s post-Miracles body of work, his interest in international relations was also apparent in his earlier films, including the global archeological adventures of Armor of God (1987). In other words, in the discursive construction of Chan’s authorship, engagement with the international – and particularly with the crossing of borders – is considered one of his thematic hallmarks. Chan’s appreciation of Western filmmaking – and particularly of classical Hollywood – is also well-documented in discourses of his star persona. As Mark Gallagher notes, “Nearly every article about Chan written for a general-interest U.S. publication in the mid- to late 1990s cites his interpretations of famous scenes from [Buster] Keaton’s and [Harold] Lloyd’s films, as if to remind readers that Chan was worthy of attention not merely as a foreign matinee idol but as an international performer drawing from a venerated historical tradition.”14 Miracles was particularly perceived to owe a stylistic debt to classical Hollywood or, at the very least, to contain detailed production design and continuous crane shots that were unusual for Hong Kong cinema.15 It was a film that seemed to reaffirm the idea of Chan’s filmmaking as transnational owing to its American influences in style and its American source texts. 161

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Yet Chan’s adaptation of Capra can also be read as the opposite of a transnational text: one that highlights locality. Miracles repeatedly emphasizes the geographic divide between Hong Kong (where the flower seller and gangster live and the action takes place) and Shanghai (where the prospective father-in-law Mr. Wong lives). Although the distance is not as great as that between New York and Spain in Lady for a Day and Pocketful – after all, both Hong Kong and Shanghai are in Greater China – there is still a wide cultural gulf that must be navigated along with the differences in class. There are differences in language (Cantonese vs. Mandarin) and differences in local customs that provide opportunities for comedy of misunderstanding throughout the film. Of particular interest is Chan’s reimagining of the scene from Pocketful that was analyzed in Chapter 2: the gangster’s interception of the potential father-in-law’s telephone call. In Capra’s Pocketful, the white gangster Dave the Dude pretends to be the Spanish ambassador’s Japanese houseboy, lying to the Spanish Count Romero in broken English that his (supposed) employer is soaking up the sunshine in California and is therefore unable to come to the telephone. The Count expresses his astonishment that “a Japanese listens to a Spanish and answers in pidgin English!” The (seemingly) interracial interaction suggests a melting-pot construction of race and ethnicity where one race or ethnicity can mimic and/or understand another perfectly because they possess no differences at heart. Yet Dave the Dude’s mimicry of Japaneseness is explicitly identified by his henchman as a performance, which seems to acknowledge that race itself is a social construction rather than an inherent biological fact. It is a scene that interrogates the authenticity of Western constructions of Asianness. An impersonation of race via telephone remains in Miracles. And, perhaps surprisingly for a movie that was filmed almost entirely in Cantonese, the conversation remains in broken English. There are, however, several alterations that change the context and content of the scene and thereby its possible meanings. The telephone call that Mr. Wong (the Count Romero character) places to Captain Ho (a Hong Kong police chief rather than a foreign ambassador) is intercepted by the gangster’s girlfriend Luming Yang rather than by

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the gangster. After agreeing to speak to Wong’s butler – who is in the gangster’s employ – she quickly realizes that she is speaking to Wong himself, and she improvises: LUMING: My master? Captain Ho? Oh, Captain Ho! He go to Canada and . . . and America and California. . . to see papa and mama. MR. WONG: What’s the hotel name? When he come back? LUMING: Hotel? Hotel Furama. Come back November or Christmas. MR. WONG: What? What’s your name? LUMING: My name? My name? Amita. Amita. I come from Manila. Manila. Sayonara. MR. WONG: Sayonara. Miracles contains a conversation in English and Japanese about a man who has (supposedly) gone to Canada and America taking place between a native Mandarin speaker and a native Cantonese speaker who is pretending to be Filipina. Three of Capra’s recurrent Far Eastern locales are accounted for – China, Japan, and the Philippines16 – but the meanings that these locales convey have shifted in Chan’s adaptation. Perhaps the best place to begin unpacking this scene is with how Mr. Wong attempts to make sense of the conversation. After hanging up the telephone, Wong incredulously asks his butler, “Are Filipina maids common over here?” to which the butler replies that “it’s becoming fashionable” although they are hard to come by.17 Unlike Count Romero, Wong is not surprised by the language in which he has communicated (pidgin English) but rather by the person with whom he has communicated. He is taken aback by the transnationalism of Hong Kong, by the ability of a civil servant to acquire an exotic status symbol like foreign hired help. The English language itself is not exotic, particularly not in a region still under British imperial rule;18 it is commonplace and expected, even for nonBritish characters. The (supposed) Filipina’s familiarity with Japanese farewells may be an indication of the Philippines as yet another transnational location, with people from multiple heritages frequently immigrating and emigrating there.

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Finally, because Miracles is set during the 1930s (as was Pocketful and Lady For a Day), the idea that Captain Ho’s “papa and mama” may be in America is a particularly intriguing one. With America’s borders closed to Chinese immigration, how exactly would they have made it to California and remained for such a long time (the month between November and Christmas), even as tourists? What it means for a man from Spain to tour California in Pocketful is very different from what it means for a man from Hong Kong to tour California in Miracles, despite both films being set during the same time period, because – as noted in Chapter 2 – more than or equal to 50 per cent Chinese blood was considered to make a person Chinese under American law: “Thus a Chinese is classifiable under the Chinese quota regardless of where he was born, whether in Great Britain, for example, or in China itself.”19 Does Luming’s claim that Ho’s parents are visiting or living in America reveal that she is unskilled at lying? Or does Wong’s acceptance of this claim make him appear gullible? Or both? Chan could have deleted this scene from Pocketful in adaptation without hindering the overall narrative. There are certainly other ways in which the gangster and his girlfriend could have kept Wong and Ho apart; indeed, a new storyline in which the man posing as rose-seller-turned-society-woman Madame Kao’s husband gradually cheats Ho out of increasingly large sums of money while keeping him away from Wong begins shortly after this telephone conversation concludes. It is important, therefore, that Chan decides to keep the impersonation of race in his film, that he recognizes this exchange as a way to blur the boundaries of race and nationality, to tease out the transnational. At the same time, this scene also localizes the film. The humor of Luming’s impersonation of racial and national identity is based on comedic voices and dialects and therefore, according to Hong Kong cinema expert Bey Logan, distribution company Golden Harvest feared that this scene would not work in translation.20 The telephone exchange was part of 25 minutes of footage that was cut from Miracles for its international release. The scene is, arguably, not transnational but extremely regional. In other words, on one hand, Miracles is potentially evidence that Chan saw in Capra what few Western film scholars have seen. The

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tension between the domestic and the foreign was one that often took shape when Capra’s films engaged with the Far East, and yet those tensions had the potential to translate across the Pacific, even if there was skepticism that they could translate back. Miracles reflects the global discourse implicit within Pocketful, Lady for a Day, and – by extension – the rest of Capra’s films. On the other hand, Miracles complicates the idea of Chan as a global director. Historicizing Hong Kong by situating it in the past, Chan made a film that was extremely specific to its regional context. Miracles suggests that discourses of the local can be read into the work of the (arguably) most transnational of directors.

Frank Capra, the National, and the Global Perhaps it is because Chan works within what is popularly regarded as (or at least furiously argued by some to be) a transnational cinema that it is easier to believe he is interested in the global or the international than to recognize or acknowledge the pattern within Capra’s body of work. Yet, as this book has demonstrated, a tension between the national and the global characterized Capra’s films from the very beginning to the very end. Chapter 1 established that Capra’s idea of what constituted “America” changed over time. Gradually, the boundaries of the nation ceased to be geographical and became ideological. Anyone anywhere could be American if they believed in its philosophy. Rhetorical lists of favorite sons and daughters gradually grew between You Can’t Take It With You (1938), War Comes to America (1945), and State of the Union (1948) from individuals with exclusively American citizenship to individuals from across the globe. By State of the Union, Grant Matthews was campaigning for “a United States of the World,” for what he believed to be a global community. However, it was a global community imagined in America’s image and with America clearly at its centre. It was tainted by American hegemony, by America’s desire to be in control rather than to be an equal partner, and therefore it was not a balanced and equal community, not one that could represent the entire globe. Still, although its framework was flawed, the intense desire for American engagement on an international level lingered in Capra’s films. 165

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In Chapter 2, it became clear that America’s international relations had implications within its borders. In a country composed of immigrants, terms for inclusion were constantly renegotiated. Foreign policy decided which nationalities and heritages were accepted (through multiculturalism) and which required assimilation (through the melting pot). Resident Asian/Americans did not take centre stage in Capra’s stories, but the regularity with which they made cameostyle appearances helped Capra to construct and define the boundaries of his national (and, at times, potentially global) communities. The tension between the national and the international was played out at home through the ambiguous national identity of Capra’s Asian/ Americans. Meanwhile, Capra’s films set in the Far East contained an equally complex attitude toward Asian identity. Capra’s engagement with the Far East was not a simple binary where the West was inherently positive and the East was inherently negative. The tension between the national and the foreign was characterized by shades of grey rather than the stark contrast of black and white. Throughout The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), the East and West traded off positions of power. China had something to teach America, if America would only listen. If elements of China were corrupt, it was often because the West had corrupted them. As argued in Chapter 3, empathy had the potential to transcend borders, to facilitate international understanding, but only after national pride and jingoism has been restrained. The grey areas became even more complex in Chapter 4 when trying to unravel the mystery of Shangri-La in Lost Horizon. If Shangri-La was a utopian community, the question became, utopian for whom? The hierarchical structure of the society bore similarities to that of the societies of both British India and the American Philippines. If the utopia resembled empire, did it follow that imperialism was utopian? Was China a utopia only through the lens of Western imperialism or in its own right? The stakes between the national and the international became elevated. In a time of war, the tension between the domestic and the foreign became even more important. The Capra unit’s orientation films discussed in Chapter 5 characterized China as America’s ally because it resembled America or at least aspired to Americanness. Japan was represented as America’s enemy because it did not. Power

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and American hegemony were key factors in army propaganda. Peace could only be reestablished when American philosophy – with which America’s allies agreed and which they attempted to mimic – spread across the globe. America, not the Prime Meridian, sat at the centre of the map in Prelude to War (1942). The reason why American soldiers should fight World War II seemed to be because peace could (supposedly) only come when domestic ideology had spread internationally. Finally, in Chapter 6, it became apparent that the tension between the national and the foreign took on various forms throughout Capra’s body of work. At the same time that Capra was interested in Far Eastern otherness, he was also interested in the South Seas, in the East below the equator. Over time, as the exotic allure of Far Eastern otherness remained in tension with the obligations of the domestic, Polynesian otherness became gradually internalized within American borders. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, Americans no longer had to dream of traveling abroad to encounter the exotic, because it existed at home. American culture had broadened and become more accepting and diverse after World War II. In other words, throughout Capra’s oeuvre there are multiple constructions of national and global identities, but the varying reconfigurations of the global community never completely break away from the hegemonic pull of America. Instead, the United States itself shifts and broadens to embrace more of the international. When examined as a whole, Capra’s oeuvre contains a delicate balancing act between states of the world (and the dream of a global community) and Grant Matthews’s “United States of the World.” The two concepts remain inherently linked. Furthermore, the two concepts remain firmly grounded in historical context. When Donald Willis examined the field of Capra studies in 1974, he incisively observed that “depending on one’s political point of view and on what Capra film or films or parts of Capra films one is talking about, Frank Capra is an advocate of Communism, Fascism, Marxism, populism, conservatism, McCarthyism, New Dealism, anti-Hooverism, jingoism, Socialism, capitalism, middle-of-the-roadism, democracy, or individualism.”21 This book has added two more “isms” to the list: nationalism (a less belligerent variety of patriotism than jingoism and one that allows for

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non-American and even non-democratic representations of Asian national identities) and globalism. But it is the first part of Willis’s remark that is particularly astute: what constitutes a pattern in Capra’s body of work depends on which film or films or parts of a film are examined. Capra’s representations shift over time, across his oeuvre. The way that Capra has been understood has also shifted over time. Neither Capra’s films nor Capra studies are ahistorical. It is therefore no surprise to discover that throughout Capra’s career the Far East is represented in diverse ways. At times, the East is positioned as a very different place from America. It is perceived to be mysterious and inscrutable in The Bitter Tea of General Yen and Lost Horizon. It can be a locus of troubling sexuality, particularly when the East refuses to remain in the East, as in Susan Paine’s potentially Polynesian allure in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the potential menace of interracial marriage in Arsenic and Old Lace, and the unwelcome transformation of small-town America into a seedy urban nightspot in It’s a Wonderful Life. It can be the site of lethal violence: not just the murder in Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House, but also the colonial and civil wars of The Bitter Tea of General Yen and Lost Horizon and the world war in the U.S. Army orientation films. The East can be inherently “other,” as in the representation of Japan during World War II, Japan here being seen to have borrowed only the outer trappings of democracy and to be supposedly bent on conquering and/or destroying the West. However, the East can also be inherently familiar. It can mirror the West, as with the diverse mixture of ethnic heritages in Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House. Its mystery can be inherently romantic and tantalizing, as in Peter Warne’s fantasy of a Pacific island in It Happened One Night or George Bailey’s fantasy of where coconuts come from in It’s a Wonderful Life. It can be the site of seemingly utopian communities: the blissful harmony between the American military and the Filipinos in Submarine or the timeless Tibetan refuge of Shangri-La. It can be a place of art and poetry, as in The Bitter Tea of General Yen. The East can have profound wisdom that it can teach the West, as in Lost Horizon. The East can even be part of America, contained within its borders, whether represented by the “American Japanese” of Rain or Shine or the Chinese/Americans of Ladies of Leisure and whether temporarily

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borrowed during the honeymoon in It’s a Wonderful Life or vaguely implied by the tropical exoticism of Miami in A Hole in the Head. It can be literally contained within the American body, as in Hemo the Magnificent. Easternness can even be temporarily performed by the West, as in Rain or Shine, Lady for a Day, and Pocketful of Miracles. The East could be redemptive when it had something to offer the West: wisdom, culture, or – less romantically – material resources (land, commerce, manpower, etc.). It became corruptive when it was seen as opposed to American values (in a destructive rather than constructive sense), when it threatened American livelihood by endangering employment, morality, or lives. The East was not always constructed as negative in comparison to the West within Capra’s films. It was not always foreign, not always “other.” When it was presented as redemptive and when it was presented as corruptive varied, primarily in response to American foreign relations. The South Seas could be a subject of exotic speculation until World War II, when it became the site of atrocious violence. China could be an object of fantasy and even a potential friend to America until the rise of communism and its involvement in the Korean War meant that it was no longer an appropriate foil for the United States. Japan could be a nation that was viewed warily prewar and as an enemy during World War II, but the postwar American occupation of Japan created a problematic dynamic for using it as a foil. International relations dictated the ways in which Capra could comparatively construct national identity. However Capra’s East also shifted in response to forces within the United States. Although Americans were not immediately aware of the full horror of the Nazi Final Solution, they were aware that World War II had racial aspects, and the postwar period led to a re-examination of race and ethnicity in American life. As what was once considered exotic was gradually welcomed into the domestic, the territories that qualified as potential “others” were reduced. More specifically, as Capra gradually proved that the foreign had the potential to be “familiar” rather than “other” (or at least that the relationship between West and East was not a simple binary), his options for representing exotic “otherness” became limited. After suggesting that India may be like America, he had to move on to the Philippines

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to find the exotic; after suggesting that the Philippines may be an extension of America, he had to move on to China to find the exotic, and so on. Capra could not have moved geographically west, because that would have brought him closer to Europe (and the West). He potentially could have moved south, but Africa would have raised problems internally, sparking questions about the “otherness” of African/Americans, which would have upset the project of fostering national unity. As examined in Chapter 3, Capra did briefly flirt with South America (Cuba in particular) until changing politics and the rise of Communism ruled it out as a foil for America as well. Capra’s only remaining option – beyond Antarctica, which as he depicted in Dirigible (1931) was inconveniently unpopulated – was to move gradually eastward, to slowly circumnavigate the planet. Capra steadily chased the lost horizon of exoticism across the globe only to wind up back where he started: in America. His relatively early retirement therefore perhaps comes as no surprise. After Pocketful, where the imagined (and performed) “other” was either Japanese or Japanese/American – and therefore potentially part of the American “self” – there was not much more that he could say. To have investigated divisions within the self would have risked fracturing cohesive American identity, would have risked dissolving the imagined political community. Recall what Capra said about the importance of conveying a picture of a unified China during World War II: “If we had not stressed that China was on its way to unity, there wasn’t much else we could say, for surely it would have been better not to make the picture at all than to say that one of our Allies was divided and torn with internal strife.” 22 For Capra, to make no movies at all may have been better than to say that America was divided and torn with internal strife. It was important to Capra to represent America as unified (“a United States”) regardless of whether or not it was true. There was no “real” America, no “true” America, only shifting representations of Americanness. Unsurprisingly, the same was true of Capra’s Far East. Across all four decades of Capra’s oeuvre and the diverse geographical terrain with which he engaged, the pattern remains consistent in that the Capra hero (whether male or female) always ultimately chooses the obligations of the domestic over the allure of the exotic,

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but what this choice means does not remain constant. Peter Wollen posited that “Perhaps it would be true to say that it is the lesser auteurs who can be defined, as Nowell-Smith put it, by a core of basic motifs which remain constant, without variation. The great directors must be defined in terms of shifting relations, in their singularity as well as their uniformity.”23 It is precisely the shifting nature of Capra’s binaries – domestic/foreign, West/East, individual/community, etc. – within his films, their extratexual contexts, and the institutional discourse that surrounds them that make a case for Capra as a “great director” and serious auteur. If Eastern exoticness becomes gradually “familiar” and the domestic gradually expands to embrace and internalize the East, then the Capra hero’s choice of America does not always mean choosing the exclusively national. A variety of states of the world (or states of the nation) were possible within both the United States and the East.

Frank Capra and Beyond: Nationalism and National Cinema Capra’s oeuvre did not involve a physical movement between national cinemas. His productions remained firmly based in the United States.24 His body of work was not markedly shaped for foreign consumption, at least not above and beyond what was general practice in Hollywood at the time.25 Yet within Capra’s oeuvre, the imaginary boundary between nations was often porous and contentious. So it is time to finally consider the question toward which the preceding chapters have been building: Frank Capra has traditionally been celebrated as a filmmaker who uniquely championed American ideology, but given his recurring fascination with the global, does Capra’s output between 1922 and 1961 potentially qualify as transnational? Or, given that his engagement with the Far East was part of an outwardlooking construction of national identity, does his preoccupation with the exotic only serve to confirm him as the “American” filmmaker that popular discourse has always claimed that he was? This book began with Robert Sklar and Vito Zagarrio’s observation that Capra’s “name has become an instantly recognizable signifier, loosely defined but clearly understood, standing for a particular strain of national self-conception.”26 As Chapters 1 through 6 have demonstrated, however, the national self-conception of America was 171

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far from stable between 1922 and 1961 (and, I would suggest, almost certainly before and after those dates as well). As filmmaker John Cassavetes famously posited, “Maybe there wasn’t really an America, maybe it was only Frank Capra.”27 America – both in “real” and “reel” life – did not organically exist; it was an ideological construct created through imagined community, a construct that gradually changed over the course of Capra’s films. Furthermore, Capra’s construction of national identity did not occur within an exclusively national context. The tension between the domestic and the foreign was a recurring theme throughout Capra’s body of work, despite the director’s protestations to the contrary. The key to understanding Capra’s work is therefore to recognize that national identity is not constructed solely through an inwardlooking process; it therefore cannot be examined by an exclusively inward-looking approach that seeks to establish what is American purely by drawing comparisons to other American reference points. The approach with which the majority of Capra scholars have investigated Capra’s construction of national identity is inherently flawed, causing a director who was consistently interested in the global to erroneously be defined exclusively in national terms. To return to the Thomas Eriksen quote used in the Introduction, “the very idea of the nation presupposes that there are other nations, or at least other peoples, who are not members of the nation.”28 Establishing the nation – the “self” – immediately creates the potential for “others,” and therefore national identity – like any kind of identity politics – also has to consider an outward-looking approach, one that examines the differences (not just the similarities) between the nation and other nations. The boundaries of Capra’s America cannot be established by looking at American identity in exclusion. That is not to imply that the foreign only serves the national. It is true that Capra’s imagined global communities never successfully took shape (never made it beyond a state of wishing) and that even as fantasies they were tainted by echoes of American hegemony. It remains important, however, that Capra kept dreaming of global community, that he kept examining how it could be constructed, how it could function, and how it could be maintained. The global, even if profoundly problematic, is important in its own right within Capra’s body of work. Its presence establishes a consistency of personal

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vision – the very kind that Andrew Sarris once accused Capra of lacking29 – and provides a stronger, more positive case for Capra as auteur. His filmmaking becomes more nuanced and sophisticated than it has previously been given credit for through its engagement with international relations. Still, the global – just like the national – cannot be viewed in isolation. Nationalism is a dual-natured process, and any consideration of national identity must therefore consider both the inward and outward components. The “self” and the “other” are inherently connected, not just within Capra’s oeuvre, but also within any construction of national identity. The necessity to examine both the “self” and “others” is equally as applicable to the films of Jackie Chan as it is to the films of Frank Capra, as demonstrated in this conclusion’s case study. Capra was not exclusively interested in national ideology. He was not exclusively interested in global ideology. He falls somewhere in between the two. And if we consider the qualifications by which Lo argued that Hong Kong cinema qualified as transnational – international co-productions, international settings, foreign stars, and visible impact on other national cinemas30 – Capra’s cinema often meets three of the four requirements. Seven of Capra’s feature films were set (at least in part) outside the United States, his World War II orientation films examined America’s relationship with both Allied and Axis countries, and even in his fictional films set inside the United States Capra’s American characters repeatedly discussed, fantasized about, and interacted with representatives from other nations. In addition to making use of international settings, Capra occasionally cast foreign (and arguably transnational) stars, including the Swedish actor Nils Asther in The Bitter Tea of General Yen, the British actor Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon, and a long roster of uncredited Asian/American actors in multiple films. Capra motivated, if not “impacted,” Jackie Chan’s Hong Kong cinema. Capra may not have participated in international co-productions beyond Tunisian Victory (1944), but he has a tenuous claim to transnational filmmaking. Perhaps, in the end, it is the definition of “transnationalism” that requires readjustment. The majority of investigations of the “transnational” in film have focused primarily on Asian or European cinema rather than American cinema.31 In other words, Hong Kong

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cinema can be perceived as transnational, because Hong Kong itself is transnational. The United States, arguably, is not. This is strange, considering the assertion by Stephen Crofts (already quoted in the Introduction to this volume) that while national cinemas are often defined against Hollywood, “this extends to such a point that in Western discussions, Hollywood is hardly ever spoken of as a national cinema, perhaps indicating its transnational reach.”32 If Hollywood cinema has a transnational reach – particularly through its dominance of the global market – why would it not have transnational content? Research on early American silent cinema has demonstrated that transnationalism is not a new phenomenon; from its very inception cinema circulated across borders and employed international personnel.33 Within classical Hollywood, the workforce included actors (e.g. Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa) and directors (e.g. Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock) who shifted between national cinemas, living and working on more than one continent during their careers. And, of course, Ruth Vasey’s landmark study of classical Hollywood demonstrated that studios had always been conscious of shaping their output for consumption in foreign markets.34 Ideas of the “national” have always been contended and challenged, even in an American context. Yet I would note two problems with recent work on transnational cinema. First, investigations of Hollywood’s potential transnationalism continue to emphasize production rather than product, to stress the geography that precedes or follows a film rather than the geography mapped within a film itself. Second, when it comes to investigations of authorship and transnationalism, there is still a pronounced emphasis on biography. Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden have observed “the importance of Asian martial arts films to the work of Quentin Tarantino and the influence of European auteur cinema on the work of directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola, and, with parodic self-consciousness, Woody Allen,” but these are predominantly trends that were first identified and defined by the directors themselves.35 What then do we make of a director like Capra who never set foot further east than India,36 who denied any influence of other national cinemas (apart, of course, from the European and Asian films that were repurposed in the orientation films), who denied ever having investigated foreign themes, and yet who repeatedly

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engaged with conceptions of the global? It is not enough for investigations of transnational cinema simply to consider the contexts of production; they must engage with the resultant texts as well. As Alan Williams argues, “If we grant that national cinemas exist, no matter how problematic it is to define them or specify what they ‘do’ for a nation, then they will necessarily not be defined, or act, in isolation.”37 The very idea of a nation (or a national cinema) presupposes that there are other nations (or national cinemas); it presupposes that there are “others.” Williams calls these images of otherness “the most prominent part of a larger, comparatively underdeveloped area of investigation, which we might call the study of cinematic ‘international relations.’”38 While he goes on to suggest studying distribution and international remakes as avenues of investigation, the preceding chapters have shown that the international relations of national cinema exist within national texts as well. Frank Capra’s cinema may have espoused uniquely “American” ideology, but it was also – simultaneously – a cinema of international relations. Capra’s interest in the global – and particularly in the tension between the domestic and the global – was a pronounced theme, one that has simply become buried in the dominant discourse, one which Capra himself did more than anyone else to shape through the publication of The Name Above the Title and the decades of interviews and lectures that followed it. The discourse on Capra’s authorship is undeniably long and heavily fought, and – to return to one final quotation from the Introduction – perhaps Capra remains a director for whom “the battle still has to be fought,”39 only now the battle has shifted to geographical and ideological grounds. But, in the end, it is the ground of America itself that shifts. Despite Capra’s protestations to the contrary, his films challenge the boundaries of American culture and American cinema between 1922 and 1961. When we start to reexamine the process of nationalism in Capra’s body of work, America’s cultural and cinematic borders potentially begin to travel – as Capra’s films did – ever eastward.

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Notes Introduction: Mr. Capra Goes to China?: The Far East, Authorship, and National Ideology 1 2 3 4

5

6

7 8 9

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Andrew Bergman, We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 147. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, revised and updated edition (New York: Vintage, [1975] 1994), p. 209. Jeffrey Richards, Visions of Yesterday (London: Routledge, 1973), p. 234. Ray Carney, American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England, [1986] 1996). For example see Donald C. Willis, The Films of Frank Capra (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974); Leland A. Poague, The Cinema of Frank Capra: An Approach to Film Comedy (New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1975); Charles J. Maland, Frank Capra (New York: Twayne, [1980] 1995). Robert Sklar and Vito Zagarrio, “Introduction,” in Frank Capra: Authorship and the Studio System, eds. Robert Sklar and Vito Zagarrio, pp. 1–9 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), p. 1. Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968 (New York: Da Capo, [1968] 1996), p. 87. Eric Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930–1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 54. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, [1971] 1997), p. 240.

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17 18 19 20

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Interview with Colin Shindler, 10 February 1972, printed in Colin Shindler, Hollywood in Crisis: Cinema and American Society 1929–1939 (London: Routledge, 1996), p. 87. Tunisian Victory’s postproduction was based in America, however. The film is called Fulta Fisher’s Boarding House in the opening credits of the film; subsequent intertitles use the spelling “Fultah,” which coincides with Kipling’s spelling and will be used here. Only Victor Scherle and William Turner Levy call the saloon “exotically foreign-looking” in The Complete Films of Frank Capra (New York: Citadel Press, [1977] 1992), p. 35. Capra confirmed that it was a “Calcutta barroom” in The Name Above the Title, pp. 25, 26. Capra, The Name Above the Title, pp. 161, 179, 252, 295, 375, 376, 403, 404, 424, 425, 469, 490. The Life of Chopin became A Song to Remember, directed by Charles Vidor in 1945. William Wyler directed Roman Holiday in 1953. For further analysis of Soviet see Brian Daniel Harvey, “In the Stables of Hollywood: Frank Capra’s Treatment for MGM’s Soviet (1932),” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 28.1 (March 2008): pp. 37–53. Charles Wolfe, Frank Capra: A Guide to References and Resources (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987), pp. 413–421; Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (hereafter The Catastrophe of Success) (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), pp. 282–284, 327, 365, 549, 553. Richard Glatzer, “A Conversation With Frank Capra,” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. 24– 39 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 29–30. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 29. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 89. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, pp. 543, 561–610. See also Capra, The Name Above the Title, pp. 426–429. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition (London: Verso, [1983] 1991), p. 6. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 26. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991), pp. 14. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 38. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p. 7. Smith, National Identity, pp. 14–15.

NOTES

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Thomas Eriksen, “Ethnicity and Nationalism,” in Nations and Nationalism: A Reader, eds. Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman, pp. 135–148 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 138. Reprinted from Thomas Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2nd edition (London: Pluto, 2002). Michael Walzer, “What Does It Mean to Be an ‘American’?” in Race and Ethnicity in the United States: Issues and Debates, ed. Stephen Sternberg, pp. 186–196 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 187. Reprinted from Social Research 57.3 (Fall 1990). Whiteness was and is a disputed racial categorization, the boundaries of which change over time. See Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge, 1997). Andrew Higson, “The Concept of National Cinema,” Screen 30.4 (1989): p. 38. Stephen Crofts, “Reconceptualizing National Cinema/s,” in Theorising National Cinema, eds. Valentina Vitali and Paul Willeman, pp. 44–58 (London: BFI, 2006), p. 44. Reprinted from Quarterly Review of Film and Video 14.3 (1993): pp. 49–67. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 6. See Michael Sturma, South Sea Maidens: Western Fantasy and Sexual Politics in the South Pacific (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 2002); Patty O’Brien, The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Cultural Pacific (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994). Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, pp. 14–15. It should also be noted that this character is billed solely as “The Princess”; I have not been able to confirm the spelling of her stage name, which is supposed to be a pun on the way she dances “the shimmy.” For Capra’s representation of working-class heroes and heroines see Maland, Frank Capra; and Vincent Casaregola, “Love and the ‘ToughTalkin’ Career Gal’: Desire, Power, and the Figure of the ‘Hard-Boiled’ Woman Journalist,” unpublished paper presented at the Film and History Conference, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 12 November 2010. For Capra’s representation of religion see John Gilbert, “‘Our Mr Sun’: Religion and Science in 50s America,” History Today (February 1995): pp. 33–39; and

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39 40 41 42

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Mar´ıa Elena de las Carreras Kuntz, “The Catholic Vision in Hollywood: Ford, Capra, Borzage and Hitchcock,” Film History 14 (2002): pp. 121– 135. For Capra’s representation of race see Thomas Cripps and David Culbert, “The Negro Soldier (1944): Film Propaganda in Black and White,” American Quarterly 31.5 (Winter 1979): pp. 616–640. For Capra’s representation of European ethnicities see Lee Lourdeaux, Italian and Irish Filmmakers in America: Ford, Capra, Coppola, and Scorsese (Philadelphia: Temple, 1990); John Paul Russo, “An Unacknowledged Masterpiece: Capra’s Italian American Film,” in Screening Ethnicity: Cinematographic Representations of Italian Americans in the United States, eds. Anna Camaiti Hostert and Anthony Julian Tamburri, pp. 291–321 (Boca Raton: Bordighera Press, 2002); and Jonathan Cavallero, Hollywood’s Italian American Filmmakers: Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola, and Tarantino (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011). For previous considerations of Capra’s gender politics see Kaja Silverman, Male Subjectivity at the Margins (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 93–106; Sam B. Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Robert Beuka, “Imagining the Postwar Small Town: Gender and the Politics of Landscape in It’s a Wonderful Life,” Journal of Film and Video 53.3–4 (Fall 1999), pp. 36–47; and Casaregola, “Love and the ‘Tough-Talkin’ Career Gal.” Orientalism is, of course, part of a much larger debate regarding media and representation. For more generalized examples, see Steve Neale, “The Same Old Story,” Screen Education 32/33 (1979/1980): pp. 33– 38; Robert Stam and Louise Spence, “Colonialism, Racism, and Representation,” Screen 24.2 (1983): pp. 2–20; Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation,” Framework 36 (1989); Richard Dyer, The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 1993). Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, [1978] 2003), p. 3. Said, Orientalism, p. 40. Said, Orientalism, p. 95, emphasis in original. See for example Richard G. Fox, “East of Said,” in Edward Said: A Critical Reader, ed. Michael Sprinker, pp. 144–156 (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992); David Morley and Kevin Robins, “Techno-Orientalism,” Spaces of Identity (London: Routledge, 1995); Gary Needham, “Japanese

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Cinema and Orientalism,” in Asian Cinemas: A Reader and Guide, eds. Dimitris Eleftheriotis and Gary Needham, pp. 8–16 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006); Mari Yoshihara, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). See for example Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism (London: Atlantic Books, 2004). See for example Koichi Iwabuchi, “Complicit Exoticism: Japan and Its Other,” Continuum 8.2 (1994): pp. 49–82; Louisa Schein, “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China,” Modern China 23.1 ( January 1997): pp. 69–98. See for example Susan J. Napier, From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Napier’s argument will be further considered in Chapter 3. For example see Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, and Representation (London: Routledge, 1996); Ella Shohat, “Gender and Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema,” in Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film, eds. Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar, pp. 19–66 (London: I.B.Tauris, 1997); Meyda Ye˘geno˘glu, Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Daniel Martin Varisco, Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), p. 143. See also Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 2000), p. 22; Ibn Warraq, Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism (New York: Prometheus, 2007), p. 12. Varisco, Reading Orientalism, p. 143. See also Ahmad, In Theory, p. 70. “Columbia’s Gem,” Time 32.6 (8 August 1938), pp. 35–38. Lewis Jacobs, “Capra at Work,” Theatre Arts 25 ( January 1941): pp. 43– 48, 43. Otis Ferguson, “It Happened Once More,” New Republic 81 (19 December 1934): p. 167; Otis Ferguson, “Mr. Capra Goes to Town,” New Republic 86 (22 April 1936): pp. 315–316; Otis Ferguson, “Mr. Capra Goes Someplace,” New Republic 100 (1 November 1939): pp. 369– 370; Otis Ferguson, “Democracy at the Box Office,” New Republic 104 (24 March 1941): pp. 405–406; Graham Greene, “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” Spectator 157 (28 August 1936): p. 343; Graham Greene, “Lost Horizon,” Spectator 158 (30 April 1937): p. 805; Graham Greene, “You

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Can’t Take It With You,” Spectator 161 (11 November 1938): p. 807; Graham Greene, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Spectator 164 (5 January 1940): p. 16. Capra, The Name Above the Title, p. 234. The first film to have Capra’s name above the title is You Can’t Take It With You (1936). Franc¸ois Truffaut, “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,” Cahiers du Cin´ema 31 ( January 1954). See also Andr´e Bazin, “De la Politique des auteurs,” Cahiers du Cin´ema 70 (April 1957). See Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean-Andr´e Fieschi, G´erard Gu´egan, Michel Mardore, Claude Ollier, and Andr´e T´echin´e, “Twenty Years On: A Discussion about American Cinema and the Politique des Auteurs,” in Cahiers du Cin´ema, 1960–1968: New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood, ed. Jim Hillier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 205. Originally published in French as “Vingt ans apr`es: le cinema am´ericain et la politique des auteurs,” Cahiers du cin´ema 172 (November 1965). Quoted in Vito Zagarrio, “It Is (Not) a Wonderful Life: For a Counter-Reading of Frank Capra,” in Frank Capra: Authorship and the Studio System, eds. Robert Sklar and Vito Zagarrio, pp. 64–94 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), p. 93. John Raeburn, “Introduction,” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. vii–xiv (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975), p. viii. See, for example, Andrew Sarris’s discussion of this trend in Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” in Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant, pp. 35–45 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), p. 39. Originally published in Film Culture 29 (Winter 1962/1963): pp. 1–8. Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory,” p. 43. Sarris, The American Cinema, pp. 87–88. Capra, The Name Above the Title. According to McBride, Eugene Vale ghostwrote at least part of the autobiography. See McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, pp. 652–653. Capra, The Name Above the Title, pp. 34, 185. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, eds., Frank Capra: The Man and His Films (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975); Wolfe, Frank Capra; Lourdeaux, Italian and Irish Filmmakers in America. Publication dates. Jeanine Basinger, “Introduction” in Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, [1971] 1997), pp. xi–xii.

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Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (London: Secker and Warburg, [1969] 1972), p. 168. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success. Capra, The Name Above the Title, p. xix. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 648. The three of the most significant are Harry Langdon (1881–1944), Robert Riskin (1897–1955), and Harry Cohn (1891–1958). Girgus, Hollywood Renaissance; Pat McGilligan, “Introduction,” in Six Screenplays by Robert Riskin, ed. Pat McGilligan, pp. ix–lxvii (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Ian Scott, In Capra’s Shadow: The Life and Career of Screenwriter Robert Riskin (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006). See also Edward Bernds, Mr. Bernds Goes to Hollywood: My Early Life and Career in Sound Recording at Columbia with Frank Capra and Others (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1999), an autobiography inspired by his involvement in the McBride project. See Zagarrio’s analysis of this in “It Is (Not) a Wonderful Life,” p. 68. See McGilligan, “Introduction”; Scott, In Capra’s Shadow; Bernds, Mr. Bernds; and Joseph B. Walker and Juanita Walker, The Light on Her Face (Hollywood: ASC Press, 1984). V. F. Perkins, Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 184; American Film Institute, “Frank Capra: ‘One Man – One Film,’” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. 16–23 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995): p. 21. Originally published in Frank Capra: “One Man – One Film,” Discussion no. 3 (Washington: The American Film Institute, 1971). See Thomas Schatz, “Anatomy of a House Director: Capra, Cohn, and Columbia in the 1930s,” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. 10–36 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995); Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown, 1988), p. 165. See Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (London: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 5; Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 82. Timothy Corrigan, “Auteurs and the New Hollywood,” in The New American Cinema, ed. John Lewis, pp. 38–61 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), p. 40.

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Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra, 23–50. Columbia continued to single out directors for recognition in advertising campaigns even after Capra’s departure. See Bernard F. Dick, “From the Brothers Cohn to Sony Corp,” in Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio, ed. Bernard F. Dick, pp. 2–64 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1992), p. 11. Schatz, “Anatomy of a House Director,” pp. 27–28. “The Premiere Frank Capra Collection,” Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 5 December 2006, http://www.sonypictures.com/home video/frankcapracollection, accessed 17 August 2011; Frank Capra’s American Dream (dir. Kenneth Bowser, 1997). Joseph McBride, “Before ‘Capraesque’: Early Frank Capra,” University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 16 January 2010, http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/early capra, accessed 17 August 2011; Joseph McBride, “Capra Before He Became ‘Capraesque,’” Sight and Sound (December 2010), http://www.bfi.org .uk/sightandsound/feature/49664, accessed 17 August 2011. Barbara Klinger, Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994); Robert E. Kapsis, Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Scott, In Capra’s Shadow, p. 57. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, pp. 361–366. For examples of synopses see Wolfe, Frank Capra; Scherle and Levy, The Complete Films of Frank Capra. As such, this book is a history comparable in approach to the so-called “New Film History,” which has sought to consider how film style and aesthetics have been influenced by economic, industrial, and technological factors. See for example Thomas Elsasser, “The New Film History,” Sight and Sound, 55:4 (Autumn 1986): pp. 246–51; James Chapman, Mark Glancy, and Sue Harper, eds., The New Film History: Sources, Methods, Approaches (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Richard Maltby, Daniel Biltereyst, and Philippe Meers, eds., Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). Barbara Klinger, “Film History Terminable and Interminable: Recovering the Past in Reception Studies,” Screen 38.2 (1997): pp. 107–128, 111. Janet Staiger makes a similar warning about historical reception studies in Janet Staiger, Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 8.

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David Palumbo-Liu, Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).

Chapter 1: “Give Her Americanism”: Frank Capra, National Ideology, and the Global Community 1 2 3 4

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Bob Thomas, “Capra Gifted With Outsider’s Special Vision of the American Psyche,” Associated Press, 3 September 1991. Gary Arnold, “For Filmmaker Capra, a Wonderful Life Ends,” Washington Times, 4 September 1991, p. A1. “Frank Capra,” The Times (London), 5 September 1991. Jim Bawden, “All-American Moviemaker Frank Capra: 1897–1991: They Don’t Make ’Em Like This Today,” Toronto Star, 4 September 1991, p. B1. David Elliott, “3-Time Oscar Winner Dies: Director of Classic Movies Had Ties to San Diego County,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 September 1991, p. A1. As noted in the Introduction, an analysis of Capra’s biography and his disputed nationality falls outside the boundaries of this study. I only note the presence of this discourse because it is so predominant in Capra’s obituaries; it is not always clear if “American” as an adjective is meant to refer to the films or to their creator. “Frank Capra,” Times (London), 5 September 1991; Pierre Berton, “The Real Star of Capra Films Was Always Frank Capra,” Toronto Star, 7 September 1991, p. G3. This might be linked to It’s a Wonderful Life’s television revival in the United States. Failure to renew the film’s copyright led to widespread television distribution in the 1970s and 1980s, and therefore American audiences in the 1990s – unlike foreign audiences – may have been more familiar with Wonderful Life than Capra’s copyright-protected Depression-era films. They may have connected Capra’s films with more than just one decade or era. For more on Wonderful Life’s television revival see Jeanine Basinger, The It’s a Wonderful Life Book (London: Pavillion, 1987), especially p. 68. For how Republic Pictures regained control of Wonderful Life’s copyright in 1993 see “Why Wonderful Life Comes but Once a Year,” Slate, 21 December 1999, http://www.slate.com/articles/ news and politics/explainer/1999/12/why wonderful life comes but once a year.html, accessed 7 November 2011.

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Philip French, “Gentle Projector of the American Dream: The Ups and Downs in the Career of the Great Hollywood Film Director, Frank Capra, Who Died Last Week,” Observer, 8 September 1991, p. 20. Peter B. Flint, “Frank Capra, Whose Films Helped America Keep Faith in Itself, Is Dead at 94,” New York Times, 4 September 1991, p. B10, emphasis added. After “American,” the adjective used most frequently to describe Capra’s films in his obituaries is “na¨ıve.” The London Independent, for example, calls Capra “one of the great na¨ıve communicators of the American cinema” in Gilbert Adair, “Obituary: Frank Capra,” Independent (London), 4 September 1991, p. 12. French, “Gentle Projector of the American Dream,” p. 20. John Horn, “‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ Director Frank Capra Is Dead at Age 94,” Associated Press, 3 September 1991. “Topics of the Times: Capra’s Country,” New York Times, 8 September 1991, section 4, p. 18. Elliott, “3-Time Oscar Winner Dies,” p. A1. For references to the “little guy” see “Frank Capra,” Times (London); Adair, “Obituary,” p. 12; Ronald Bergan, “Pedlar of the American Dream,” Manchester Guardian Weekly, 15 September 1991, p. 24; Berton, “The Real Star of Capra Films,” p. G3; Stephen Hunter, “Frank Capra: His Films Were Fanfare for Common Man,” Baltimore Sun, 6 September 1991, p. 3F. For references to the “common man” see Bart Barnes, “Director Frank Capra Dies; Won 3 Oscars,” Washington Post, 4 September 1991, p. D4; Elliott, “3-Time Oscar Winner Dies,” p. A1; Flint, “Frank Capra,” p. B10; Hunter, “Frank Capra,” p. 3F. Elliott, “3-Time Oscar Winner Dies,” p. A1. Charles J. Maland, Frank Capra (New York: Twayne, [1980] 1995), p. 108. Ian Scott, “Populism, Pragmatism, and Political Reinvention: The Presidential Motif in the Films of Frank Capra,” in Hollywood’s White House: The American Presidency in Film and History, eds. Peter C. Rollins and John E. O’Connor, pp. 180–192 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003), p. 182. See the 20 March 1946 estimating script of It’s a Wonderful Life, excerpted in Basinger, The It’s a Wonderful Life Book, p. 325. Indeed, the Boy Rangers in Jefferson Smith’s hometown include white, black, and Asian representatives. For further analysis of the Lincoln

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Memorial scene, see Ian Scott, American Politics in Hollywood Film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), p. 41. Ray Carney, American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England, [1986] 1996), p. 52. Carney, American Vision, p. 4. Leland A. Poague, The Cinema of Frank Capra: An Approach to Film Comedy (New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1975), p. 23; Stephen Handzo, “Under Capracorn,” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. 164–176 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975). Reprinted from Film Comment 8 (November–December 1972): pp. 8–14; Allen Estrin, The Hollywood Professionals: Capra, Cukor, Brown, vol. 6 (London: Tanvity, 1980), pp. 17, 46. Poague, The Cinema of Frank Capra, pp. 89–90; Vito Zagarrio, “It Is (Not) a Wonderful Life: For a Counter-Reading of Frank Capra,” in Frank Capra: Authorship and the Studio System, eds. Robert Sklar and Vito Zagarrio, pp. 64–94 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), pp. 84–86. Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, revised and updated edition (New York: Vintage, [1975] 1994), p. 205. Capra, The Name Above the Title, p. 186. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success. The theme of neighbourliness often intersects with discussions of whether or not Capra is a populist director, one whose films celebrate a basic belief in the common man and in rural and/or small-town life. For further reading on Capra and populism see Jeffrey Richards, Visions of Yesterday (London: Routledge, 1973); Glenn Alan Phelps, “The ‘Populist’ Films of Frank Capra,” Journal of American Studies 13.3 (1979): pp. 377–392; Wes D. Gehring, “Populist Comedy,” in Handbook of American Film Genres, ed. Wes D. Gehring, pp. 125–143 (New York: Greenwood, 1988); Brian Neve, “Populism, Romanticism, and Frank Capra,” in Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (London: Routledge, 1992); John Belton, American Cinema/American Culture (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994), p. 201. Donald C. Willis, The Films of Frank Capra (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), p. 89; Handzo, “Under Capracorn,” p. 168.

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Maland, Frank Capra, p. 101. Eric Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930–1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 54. For further reading on Depression-era America’s isolationism, see T. H. Watkins, The Great Depression: America in the 1930s (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1993), pp. 27–28; Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nevada Press, 1983). Maland, Frank Capra, p. 66. Robin Wood, “Ideology, Genre, Auteur,” Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader, ed. Barry Keith Grant, pp. 84–92 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), p. 86. Originally published in Film Comment 13.1 ( January–February 1977). Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 25, emphasis in original. In Ladies of Leisure and The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Kay Arnold and Megan Davis are travellers rather than embodiments of home and hearth. Yet both are punished for their transgressions, and both are ultimately forced to choose home – if not domestic bliss – in the end. Their dilemmas will be further explored in Chapters 2 and 3. Possible exceptions are Pete Garvey choosing to become a father to French orphans in Here Comes the Groom and Megan Davis choosing General Yen over her American fianc´e in The Bitter Tea of General Yen. However, Pete relocates the orphans to the United States and finds them an American mother, and Yen commits suicide, denying Megan the option of staying with him. See Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations (Cambridge: Westview Press, 2003); J. R. Killick, The United States and European Reconstruction, 1945–1960 (Keele: Keele University Press, 1997); United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), available at http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr, accessed 10 November 2011. The Marshall Plan was named after Secretary of State George C. Marshall, with whom Capra had worked during World War II (as will be discussed in Chapter 5). Attucks was reportedly a “mulatto” who boasted both black and Native American ancestry. See Hiller B. Zobel, The Boston Massacre (New York: Norton, 1970).

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Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot: A Drama in Four Acts (London: William Heinemann, [1909] 1914), p. 33. See, for example, Bill Ong Hing, “Beyond the Rhetoric of Assimilation and Cultural Pluralism: Addressing the Tension of Separatism and Conflict in an Immigration-Driven Multiracial Society,” California Law Review 81.4 ( July 1993): pp. 863–925. John Bodnar, Rethinking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 72. For the etymology of this term in America, see Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999). Capra uses the word “Oriental” twice in his autobiography: once when discussing the character of General Yen in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) and once when discussing the extras in Lost Horizon (1937). See Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, [1971] 1997), pp. 141, 193. Vincent J. Cheng, Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture and Identity (London: Rutgers, 2004), pp. 139–140. Barbara J. Fields, “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, eds. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, pp. 143–177 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 144. Richard Feng, “In Search of Asian American Cinema,” Cineaste 21.3 (1995): pp. 32–35. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (Oxford University Press, 1960). The term “American Japanese” is used in Capra’s film Rain or Shine (1930). David Palumbo-Liu, Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999). Peter X. Feng, “Introduction,” in Screening Asian Americans, ed. Peter X. Feng, pp. 1–18 (London: Rutgers, 2002), p. 1. Joseph F. Healey, Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender, 2nd edition (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 2007), p. 26. Thomas E. La Fargue, China’s First Hundred (Pullman: State College of Washington, 1942), p. 20.

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The boundaries of racial whiteness were disputed. Various ethnic groups like the Jews and the Irish were seen to qualify as “white” within certain historical moments, but not within others. See Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge, 1997); Daniel Bernardi, ed., Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001); Lester D. Friedman, ed., Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Eugene Franklin Wong, “The Early Years: Asians in the American Films Prior to World War II,” in Screening Asian Americans, ed. Peter X. Feng, pp. 53–70 (London: Rutgers, 2002), p. 65. Reprinted from On Visual Media Racism (New York: Arno, 1978), pp. 88–119. The potential imperial undertones of the yellow menace will be further examined in Chapters 4 and 5. Healey, Diversity and Society, p. 215. “An Act to Execute Certain Treaty Stipulations Relating to the Chinese,” 6 May 1882, Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789– 1996, General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11, National Archives. In The Miracle Woman (1931), Hornsby’s office has a sign proclaiming “Heaven has no quota law,” suggesting that Capra was aware of U.S. immigration policies. E. S. Bogardus, “Racial Prejudice and Racial Stereotypes,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 30.2 (1935): pp. 175–193. Bogardus, “Racial Prejudice and Racial Stereotypes,” p. 175. The act allowed 105 individuals entry per year. A 1946 act would allow the alien Chinese wives of American citizens – predominantly war brides – to enter the country on a non-quota basis. S. W. Kung, Chinese in American Life: Some Aspects of Their History, Status, Problems, and Contributions (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), pp. 106–107. Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), p. 6. For examples of the extensive debate on the nuances of these stereotypes, see Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin, America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004); Sue Fawn Chung, “From Fu Manchu, Evil Genius, to James Lee Wong,

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Popular Hero,” Journal of Popular Culture 10 (1976): pp. 534–547; Robert MacDougall, “Red, Brown, and Yellow Perils: Images of the American Enemy in the 1940s and 1950s,” Journal of Popular Culture 32 (Spring 1999): pp. 59–75; Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril”; Thi Thanh Nga, “The Long March From Wong to Woo: Asians in Hollywood,” Cineaste 21.4 (1995): pp. 38–40; Richard A. Oehling, “The Yellow Menace: Asian Images in American Film,” in The Kaleidoscopic Lens: How Hollywood Views Ethnic Groups, ed. Randall M. Miller, pp. 182– 206 (Englewood: Jerome S. Ozer, 1980); Allen L. Woll and Randall M. Miller, Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television: Historical Essays and Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1987); Wong, “The Early Years.” Urmila Seshagiri, “Modernity’s (Yellow) Perils: Dr. Fu Manchu and English Race Paranoia,” Cultural Critique 62 (Winter 2006): pp. 162– 194; David Shih, “The Color of Fu-Manchu: Orientalist Method in the Novels of Sax Rohmer,” Journal of Popular Culture 42.2 (2009): pp. 304– 317. Fu Manchu was British in origin but used in multiple Hollywood films. Sean Metzger, “Patterns of Resistance? Anna May Wong and the Fabrication of China in American Cinema of the Late 30s,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 23 (2006); Mark Winokur, American Laughter: Immigrants, Ethnicity, and 1930s Hollywood Film Comedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). Japan had achieved decisive military victory over Russia at the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, for example. Susan J. Napier, From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 55. Ken Hanke, Charlie Chan at the Movies: History, Filmography, and Criticism ( Jefferson: McFarland, 1989); Charles J. Rzepka, “Race, Region, Rule: Genre and the Case of Charlie Chan,” PMLA 122.5 (October 2007): pp. 1463–1481. Wong, “The Early Years,” p. 60. The full text of the Production Code, including its addenda and amendments, is reprinted in Thomas Patrick Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), pp. 347–368.

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Susan Courtney, Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race, 1903–1967 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 116. Olga Martin, Hollywood’s Movie Commandments: A Handbook for Motion Picture Writers and Reviewers (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1937), p. 178. Lee, Orientals, p. 2. Lee, Orientals, p. 2, emphasis in original. Yiman Wang, “The Art of Screen Passing: Anna May Wong’s Yellowface Performance in the Art Deco Era,” Camera Obscura 20 (2005): p. 168. See also Winokur, American Laughter. See Daisuke Miyao, Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Tim Bergfelder, “Negotiating Exoticism: Hollywood, Film Europe and the Cultural Reception of Anna May Wong,” in Stars: The Film Reader, ed. Lucy Fischer, pp. 59–76 (London: Routledge, 2004); Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend (New York: Palgrave, 2004); Metzger, “Patterns of Resistance”; Wang, “The Art of Screen Passing.” This very same racial masquerade occurs in Capra’s Lady for a Day (1933), the film that Pocketful was a remake of: “Consul not home. Uh, me Japanese boy. No sir, no sir consul not home, he gone away long time. Maybe he come back next week. No, me Japanese boy, the consul not home. Sank you.” It does not, however, contain a reference to previous Hollywood Asian racial masquerades. Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937), Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937), Mr. Moto’s Gamble (1938), Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938), Mysterious Mr. Moto (1938), Mr. Moto’s Last Warning (1939), Danger Island (1939), and Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (1939). This is likely a pidgin English interpretation of the Japanese name Itsukabashi or Idzukabashi. Sarah Kozloff, “1941: Movies on the Edge of War,” in American Cinema of the 1940s: Themes and Variations, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon, pp. 48– 73 (Oxford: Berg, 2006), p. 56. Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 54. Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), p. 64.

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Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), p. 2. See Lee Lourdeaux, Italian and Irish Filmmakers in America: Ford, Capra, Coppola, and Scorsese (Philadelphia: Temple, 1990); Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992). Jonathan J. Cavallero, “Frank Capra’s 1920s Immigrant Trilogy: Immigration, Assimilation, and the American Dream,” MELUS 29.2 (Summer 2004): pp. 27–53, 44. Capra does occasionally use Asian/Americans as extras. When Governor Hopper visits Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), an Asian/American boy sits at a table in the foreground eating doughnuts and drinking milk. There is also at least one Asian/American in the jail cell with the Vanderhofs and Kirbys in You Can’t Take It With You (1938). However, African/American and white extras are used in both of these scenes as well, so the emphasis is on racial diversity rather than Asian/ American identity in exclusion. Robert Riskin, “American Madness,” in Six Screenplays by Robert Riskin, ed. Pat McGilligan, pp. 101–204 (Berkeley: University of California Press, [1932] 1997), p. 161. Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America; Takaki, A Different Mirror. California Civil Code of 1905, §69. The word “mongolian” had been specifically inserted as an amendment to the 1872 version of the code. The restrictions remained in effect until Perez v. Sharp in 1948. See for example Henry Yu, “Mixing Bodies and Cultures: The Meaning of America’s Fascination with Sex Between ‘Orientals’ and ‘Whites,’” in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, ed. Martha Hodes, pp. 444–463 (New York: New York University Press, 1999). When Warner Brothers purchased the rights to Arsenic and Old Lace, they agreed that they would not release the film until the eponymous play had finished its run on Broadway. See Capra, The Name Above the Title, p. 309.

Chapter 3: “Where the Fruit Trees Look Like Women and the Women Look Like Fruit Trees”: The Bitter Tea of General Yen and the Blurring of the East/West Binary 1

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Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, [1971] 1997), p. 140. This strategy – if indeed genuine – was unsuccessful; Bitter Tea was not nominated for an Academy Award.

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Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 14–15. Louis A. P´erez Jr., Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), p. 4. Sam Shain, “The Bitter Tea of General Yen,” Variety, 17 January 1933, p. 14. Allen Estrin, The Hollywood Professionals: Capra, Cukor, Brown (London: Tantivy Press, 1980), p. 32. Thomas Patrick Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), p. 273. Peter X. Feng, “Introduction,” in Screening Asian Americans, ed. Peter X. Feng, pp. 1–18 (London: Rutgers, 2002), p. 2. Western influence in Shanghai was emphasized through its geography, which was divided into the International Settlement (where Mr. and Mrs. Jackson reside), the French Concession (where Megan first meets Yen), and the Chinese Municipality (where the orphanage is located). See Eric Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity and American Film Studies, 1930–1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 60. Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood, p. 272. Grace Zaring Stone, The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1930), p. 167. Stone, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, p. 72. Sean Metzger, “Patterns of Resistance? Anna May Wong and the Fabrication of China in American Cinema of the Late 30s,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 23 (2006): pp. 2–3. Chinese nationalism, however, established what was Chinese against what was not Chinese. Anti-foreign sentiment ran high, and Nationalists campaigned for all foreign interference – both spiritual and economic – to be halted. See Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra, p. 57. Hu Shih, “China in Stalin’s Grand Strategy,” in Nationalism and Communism in China: The American Response, ed. Norman A. Graebner, pp. 43– 65 (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1977), p. 52. Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990), p. 393; Louise Young, “Imagined Empire: The Cultural Construction of Manchukuo,” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, 1931–1945,

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eds. Peter Duus, Ramon H. Meyers, and Mark R. Peattie, pp. 71–96 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 73. David Palumbo-Liu, “The Bitter Tea of Frank Capra,” positions 3.3 (1995): p. 772. Palumbo-Liu identifies the “Burning of Chapei” as occurring on September 18, 1931: “Chapei was bombed by the Japanese during a series of attempts to consolidate its hold on Manchuria.” While this is true, the bombings before 1932 were not generally by air. Smoodin follows Palumbo-Liu’s lead and identifies the opening of the film as occurring in 1931 in Regarding Frank Capra, p. 53. Barbara Bowman, Master Space: Film Images of Capra, Lubitsch, Sternberg, and Wyler (New York: Greenwood, 1992), p. 44. There were, of course, multiple audiences for the film, who may have had vastly different reactions. Yet according to Smoodin, Columbia never intended to show the film in China, given the problems that Paramount’s Shanghai Express (1932) had recently encountered there. Despite this, the Chinese government exerted political pressure on other countries to ban or censor Capra’s film, delaying its release abroad and limiting its Eastern audience (Regarding Frank Capra, p. 54). Eugene Franklin Wong, “The Early Years: Asians and the American Films Prior to World War II,” in Screening Asian Americans, ed. Peter X. Feng, pp. 53–70 (London: Rutgers, 2002), p. 58. Reprinted from Visual Media Racism: Asians in the American Motion Picture (New York: Arno Press, 1978), p. 65. In the novel upon which Capra’s film was based, the Jacksons are identified as British (Stone, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, p. 18). Their nationality is not identified in Capra’s film. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 361. Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), p. 51. Letter from John V. Wilson to Will Hays, 21 January 1933, Bitter Tea of General Yen Production Code Administration file, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles, California. Emphasis in original. The Production Code Administration had few concerns about the film while it was in production; a censorship debate occurred only after its release. See Hollywood and the Production Code: Selected Files from the Motion Picture Association of America Production Code Administration Collection, Microfilm,

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Reel 6, filmed from the holdings of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, California; and Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood, p. 272, for further analysis. Donald C. Willis, The Films of Frank Capra (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), p. 89. Edward Said, “Orientalism Reconsidered,” Race and Class 27.1 (Fall 1985): pp. 1–15. See Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, especially pp. 141–189; Meyda Ye˘geno˘glu, Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), especially pp. 1–56; Mari Yoshihara, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Rana Kabbani, Europe’s Myths of the Orient: Devise and Rule (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 6. Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, pp. 148, 163; Ye˘geno˘glu, Colonial Fantasies, p. 56; Yoshihara, Embracing the East. Capra, The Name Above the Title, p. 141. Capra’s belief that height equates to power perhaps says more about the diminutive director’s personal insecurities than it does about the requirements of the role. Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies: A Guide from A to Z (New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1982), p. 58. Mark Winokur, American Laughter: Immigrants, Ethnicity, and 1930s Hollywood Film Comedy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), p. 222. Yiman Wang, “The Art of Screen Passing: Anna May Wong’s Yellowface Performance in the Art Deco Era,” Camera Obscura 20 (2005): pp. 159–191. Wang cites Philip Leibfried, “Anna May Wong,” The Silents Majority (1995), www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/Guest/Wong.htm (accessed 21 March 2001), which is no longer available online. Press clippings in The Bitter Tea of General Yen Scrapbook in the Frank Capra Collection at the Wesleyan Cinema Archive (compiled for Capra by a clipping service), indicate that there was initial confusion about Toshia Mori’s heritage. Irene Thirer declared in the New York News that Mori was “of Chinese descent,” and the Denver Colorado Post agreed that “Chinese Girl Will Appear in New Film.” It appears to take until September 1932 for the press to realize that although Mori had been living in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, she did not necessarily come from China: “Toshia was born in Kyoto Japan, January 1, 1913, and came to America with her father and sisters when she was 10. She had been

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in Los Angeles only two years when she began playing extra roles in pictures. [. . . ] A diminutive miss, Toshia without makeup could pass for American, but she has no intention of playing other than oriental roles” (“Family Custom Not for Toshia: She’s in Films – Not a Doctor,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, 11 September 1932). Capra, The Name Above the Title, p. 141. Capra, The Name Above the Title, p. 141, emphasis in original. See also “Asther Now Oriental,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 30 November 1932. Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), p. 2. Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992), p. 280. Winokur, American Laughter, p. 202. Winokur, American Laughter, p. 204. Yoshihara, Embracing the East, p. 6. Brian T. Edwards, “Yankee Pashas and Buried Women: Containing Abundance in 1950s Hollywood Orientalism,” Film and History 31.2 (2001): p. 17. Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, p. 163. Susan J. Napier, From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 13. Childishness is a quality often attributed to the East. As noted in the Introduction, according to Said “the Orient is irrational, depraved, childlike, [and] ‘different’; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, [and] ‘normal.’” See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, [1978] 2003), p. 40. For further reading about self-Orientalization, see Koichi Iwabuchi, “Complicit Exoticism: Japan and Its Other,” Continuum 8.2 (1994): pp. 49–82; Louisa Schein, “Gender and Internal Orientalism in China,” Modern China 23.1 (January 1997): pp. 69–98. Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril,” p. 56. Stone, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, p. 313. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 195. The other occurs in The Way of the Strong. McBride considers George’s death in Lost Horizon, which will be discussed in Chapter 4, to be an accident, and Sam Thorndyke’s suicide at the beginning of State of the Union (1948) occurs offscreen. Willis, The Films of Frank Capra, p. 89; McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 279. The quotation is from McBride.

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Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood, p. 274. Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), p. 281. This law would be repealed in 1936. Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril,” p. 56. Isabel O. Santaolalla, “East Is East and West Is West? Otherness in Capra’s ‘The Bitter Tea of General Yen,’” Literature Film Quarterly 26.1 (1998): p. 71. Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril,” p. 55.

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Chapter 4: “Sometimes He Calls It Utopia”: Lost Horizon and the Politics of Imperialism 1

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Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), p. 328; Leland A. Poague, The Cinema of Frank Capra: An Approach to Film Comedy (New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1975), p. 70; Donald C. Willis, The Films of Frank Capra (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), pp. 104–105. Although reported budget figures vary, consensus is that Lost Horizon cost substantially more than any Columbia Pictures film that had preceded it, and it was slow to recoup its production costs. Andrew Bergman, We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 144; Barbara Bowman, Master Space: Film Images of Capra, Lubitsch, Sternberg, and Wyler (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 55. Bergman, We’re in the Money, p. 144; McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 355; Willis, The Films of Frank Capra, p. 102. See also Stephen Handzo, “Under Capracorn,” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. 8–14 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975), p. 168. Charles J. Maland, Frank Capra (New York: Twayne, [1980] 1995), p. 101. The “friend” Maland refers to may be Willis, who described the film as “no struggle, just solution” several years earlier in The Films of Frank Capra, p. 99. Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968 (New York: Da Capo, [1968] 1996), pp. 87–88. John Baxter, Hollywood in the Thirties (London: A. Zwemmer Limited, 1968), p. 103. 197

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John Raeburn, “Introduction,” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. vii–xiv (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. x; Robert Sklar, “The Imagination of Stability: The Depression Films of Frank Capra,” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. 121–138 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), p. 135. Maland, Frank Capra, p. 101. “News of the Screen: 88,000,000, a 10% Gain, Attended Movie Theatres in 1936 – New Ending for ‘Lost Horizon’ – News From Hollywood,” New York Times, 16 March 1937. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 352. For a relatively thorough chronology of when scenes were initially cut, see Sam Frank, “Lost Horizon Losses Restored,” American Cinematographer 68.7 (1987): pp. 46– 54. Frank, “Lost Horizon Losses Restored,” pp. 47–48. Capra claimed that Benito Mussolini had the film dubbed into Italian and that “the fine Italian propaganda hand had twisted Lost Horizon’s utopian philosophy into a deification of Il Duce’s fascism” in The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, [1971] 1997), p. 204. While this chapter will only examine English-language versions of Lost Horizon, future work on the film in translation is warranted. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 370n. See Frank, “Lost Horizon Losses Restored,” pp. 48–54. This chapter will consider Tibet to be a part of China, because that was and remains the official position of the U.S. government; see for example A. Tom Grunfeld, “Tibet and the United States,” in Contemporary Tibet: Politics, Development, and Society in a Disputed Region, eds. Barry Sautman and June Teufel Dreyer, pp. 319–349 (London: East Gate, 2006). There are, however, indications that Capra considered Tibet to be culturally distinct, if not separate: he identifies it as a region of China that – along with Mongolia and Manchuria – was differentiated from “China Proper” in The Battle of China (1944). In his autobiography, Capra also made a distinction, proclaiming that “Tibetans are Orientals, but taller, rangier than Chinese or Japanese” (The Name Above the Title, p. 192). Whether or not this is how he felt in 1937 is up to speculation. James Hilton, Lost Horizon (New York: Pocket Books, 1933). See Charles Allen, The Search for Shangri-La: A Journey into Tibetan History (London: Abacus, 1999), p. 35; Leslie Halliwell, Return to Shangri-La

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(London: Grafton, 1987), p. 66; Tomoko Masuzawa, “From Empire to Utopia: The Effacement of Colonial Markings in Lost Horizon,” positions 7.2 (Fall 1999): pp. 541–572, 552; Michael McRae, In Search of ShangriLa: The Extraordinary True Story of the Quest for the Lost Horizon (London: Penguin, 2002), p. 81; Brett Nielson, “Inside Shangri-La/Outside Globalisation: Remapping Orientalist Visions of Tibet,” Communal/Plural 8.1 (2000): pp. 95–112, 98. Andrew Sarris, “You Ain’t Heard Nothing Yet”: The American Talking Film, History and Memory, 1927–1949 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 487. Of course, it somewhat undermines his argument that Lost Horizon’s exoticism was atypical if it demonstrates a trademark flair. “New Films in London: ‘Lost Horizon,’” The Times (London), 19 April 1937. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 353. More detail is available in Rudy Behlmer, America’s Favorite Movies: Behind the Scenes (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1982), p. 30. Nielsen, “Inside Shangri-La/Outside Globalisation,” pp. 96, 98. McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 370; Charles Wolfe, Frank Capra: A Guide to References and Resources (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987), p. 117. Barbara Klinger, “Film History Terminable and Interminable: Recovering the Past in Reception Studies,” Screen 38.2 (1997): pp. 108. Frank Capra Collection curator Jeanine Basinger notes that “Capra’s personality is reflected in his tendency to save letters, reviews and tributes, photos and souvenirs, but not financial records, box-office returns, or budgets. He saved what he wanted to save and his files are incomplete.” See The It’s a Wonderful Life Book (London: Pavilion, 1987), p. 71. Eric Smoodin, “American Madness (1932),” in America First: Naming the Nation in US Film, ed. Mandy Merck, pp. 65–82 (London: Routledge, 2007); Eric Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930–1960 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004). Smoodin largely omitted Lost Horizon from these studies. “Lost Horizon – A Timeless Journey,” American Cinematographer 67.4 (1986): pp. 30–39, p. 32. Anne Massey, Hollywood Beyond the Screen: Design and Material Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2000), p. 91. Richard Guy Wilson and Sidney K. Robinson, The Prairie School in Iowa (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1977), p. 6.

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For example see Kevin Nute, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (New York: Ban Nostrand Reinhold, 1993). “The New Pictures,” Time 29.10 (8 March 1937): pp. 54, 56; Frank S. Nugent, “The Screen: Columbia’s Film of Hilton’s ‘Lost Horizon’ Opens at the Globe – ‘Maid of Salem’ at the Paramount,” New York Times, 4 March 1937. Graham Greene, “Lost Horizon,” The Spectator, 30 April 1937, p. 805. “Lost Horizon,” Monthly Film Bulletin 4.40 (30 April 1937): p. 82. “New Films in London: ‘Lost Horizon.’” Hilton, Lost Horizon, p. 66. Massey, Hollywood Beyond the Screen, p. 90. David Gebhard, The California Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), p. 3. Maland, Frank Capra, p. 101. Poague, The Cinema of Frank Capra, p. 108. See Krishan Kumar, “Utopia and Anti-Utopia in the Twentieth Century,” in Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World, eds. Roland Schaer, Gregory Claeys, and Lyman Tower Sargent, pp. 251– 267 (New York: New York Public Library / Oxford University Press, 2000). Maria arrived in 1888 when she was twenty. The story is set in 1935. Willis, The Films of Frank Capra, p. 105; Wolfe, Frank Capra, p. 119. Wolfe appears to have seen Lost Horizon of Shangri-La, as he describes the opening scene as depicting the Japanese invasion of China (p. 117). It is unclear which version of the film Willis saw. Allen, The Search for Shangri-La, p. 38. Hilton, Lost Horizon, p. 106. Lucy Fischer, Designing Women: Cinema, Art Deco, and the Female Form (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 230. The same claim is made in Leland Poague, Another Frank Capra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 132. Peter Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred Landscape (London: Athlone Press, 1989), pp. 215–216. The terminology derives from Hilton’s novel, in which Conway’s narrative begins with an announcement of the necessity “to evacuate the white residents” from Baskul (Lost Horizon, p. 20). Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2003), p. xii.

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P. J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India, and America c. 1750–1783 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 4; Charles S. Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendency and Its Predecessors (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 24. Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850–2004, 4th edition (Harlow: Pearson, 2004), p. 283. See also Denis Judd, The Lion and the Tiger: The Rise and Fall of the British Raj, 1600– 1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (London: Little, Brown, 1997). “New Films in London: ‘Lost Horizon.’” McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 356. Exactly when Capra made this comment is unclear; McBride simply identifies it as “later” (presumably post-1942). Conway uses the same word to refer to the residents of Baskul at the start of the film: “Make sure none of the natives get in,” he tells his brother when he asks him to guide the incoming airplanes onto the field. Poague, however, identifies her as French in Another Frank Capra, p. 132. See Tom Brass, “Popular Culture, Populist Fiction(s): The Agrarian Utopiates of A. V. Chayanov, Ignatius Donnelly and Frank Capra,” Journal of Peasant Studies 24.1 (1996): pp. 153–190, especially p. 162. See Masuzawa, “From Empire to Utopia,” p. 553: “The natives of Shangri-La figure in the story only peripherally as docile agrarian workers, servants, and bearers of sedan chairs.” McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, pp. 356–357; see also Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La, p. 217; Maland, Frank Capra, p. 99; Masuzawa, “From Empire to Utopia,” p. 544. Frank notes that this scene had been cut by the 1942 rerelease of Lost Horizon of Shangri-La in “Lost Horizon Losses Restored,” p. 48. This scene had been cut by the 1942 rerelease of Lost Horizon of ShangriLa as well. Frank, “Lost Horizon Losses Restored,” p. 48. Robert Riskin, “Lost Horizon,” in Six Screenplays by Robert Riskin, ed. Pat McGilligan, pp. 469–575 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 541–542. Riskin, “Lost Horizon,” p. 543. Donald S. Lopez Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 5.

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McBride, The Catastrophe of Success, p. 357. According to Edward Connor, this scene was also removed from Lost Horizon of Shangri-La, making the avalanche appear to be a chance occurrence. See Edward Connor, “Revisiting Lost Horizon,” Screen Facts ( January–February 1963): p. 12. Masuzawa, “From Empire to Utopia,” p. 562. See Gordon T. Stewart, Journeys to Empire: Enlightenment, Imperialism, and the British Encounter with Tibet, 1774–1904 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, p. 6. See Smith, Tibetan Nation. Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-La, p. 10. Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La, p. 212. See David Healy, U.S. Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), particularly pp. 4, 54. Amy Kaplan notes that “no major films have chronicled the threemonth-long war in Cuba or the subsequent three-year-long war in the Philippines, although films have been made about virtually every other war in U.S. history” in The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 146. Hollywood, in other words, is not proud of this phase of American history. H. W. Brands, Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 20. Brands, Bound to Empire, p. 25. For more on the role that race played in American imperialism in the Philippines see Rubin Francis Weston, Racism in U.S. Imperialism: The Influence of Racial Assumptions on American Foreign Policy, 1893–1946 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), especially p. 113. For a counterargument about how race was an antagonistic force to American empire, rather than a driving force behind it, see Eric T. L. Love, Race Over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004). Frank Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), p. 77; see also Brands, Bound to Empire, p. 173. The film ends with Mason and Dorgan returning to active duty somewhere with palm trees, which may or may not be the Philippines. Either way, neither of them winds up with “Almond-Eyes.” She is left behind and quickly forgotten as the men fight over an American woman.

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See Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism, pp. 153–199. Stuart Creighton Miller draws a distinction between American imperialism in the Philippines and American economic monopoly in China in Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 4. Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism, p. 38. See also Brands, Bound to Empire, p. vi. Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion (New York: Vintage, 2009), p. 273. For more differences between British and American imperialism see Philip Darby, Three Faces of Imperialism: British and American Approaches to Asia and Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); Maier, Among Empires, p. 4.

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Chapter 5: “A Free World and a Slave World”: The Fractured Far East in The Battle of China and Know Your Enemy: Japan 1 2 3

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Donald C. Willis, The Films of Frank Capra (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), p. 9. Charles J. Maland, Frank Capra (New York: Twayne, 1995), pp. 91– 93. Several of the “Why We Fight” films later received domestic and/or international theatrical exhibition, including Prelude to War, which went on to receive an Academy Award for Best Documentary. See Eric Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930–1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 160– 202. “How to Tell Your Friends From the Japs,” Time (22 December 1941). The sidebar struggles to pinpoint precisely what characterizes Chinese and Japanese nationality, repeatedly using qualifying phrases such as “most,” “often,” and “some.” Despite Capra’s claim in The Name Above the Title (New York: Da Capo, [1971] 1997) that the short film Two Down and One to Go! was about the complicated points system that determined who would be redeployed to the Pacific (pp. 364–365), it is largely about the rationale for why the Axis fought in Europe before attempting an all-out campaign in the Pacific. (In fact, Two Down does not even mention a points system.) In other words, the majority of the film is about the European Front rather than the Pacific Front. The bulk of the short film Our Job in Japan was 203

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finished after Capra left the Army, and the extent of his involvement in the project is uncertain (see note 19 below). Capra would later be transferred to the Signal Corps Army Pictorial Service’s (APS’s) Special Coverage Section, Western Division, on detached duty to Army Public Relations, where he would make Tunisian Victory, but he was made commanding officer with the proviso that he finish Battle of China, Know Your Enemy: Japan, and The Negro Soldier. John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 15. Richard M. Barsam, Nonfiction Film: A Critical History, revised and expanded edition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 75. For a record of where all the footage in the “Why We Fight” films originated (captured enemy footage, newsreels, fiction film, etc.), see David Culbert, Film and Propaganda in America: A Documentary History, 1945 and After (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991). Edward L. Munson, Statement on “Why We Fight Series,” Memorandum to Col. Robert Cutler, 18 August 1945, Unclassified Central Decimal Files, 1941–57, Record Group 111 (hereafter RG 111), Box 170, National Archives, College Park, Maryland (hereafter NA). The Battle of China script, 5 April 1944, Box 10, Frank Capra Collection, Wesleyan Cinema Archives, Middletown, Connecticut (hereafter FCC). Munson, Statement on “Why We Fight Series.” Robert Lord, Production Activities Report to Commanding Officer, Signal Corps Photographic Center, Long Island, 8 October 1943, RG 111, Box 169, 062.2 Policy and Organization (Special Coverage) 1942– 1944, NA. Capra, The Name Above the Title, p. 327, emphasis in original. Testimony that Capra gave under oath in 1942 suggests that his initial directive may have actually come from General Osborn. See David Culbert, “‘Why We Fight’: Social Engineering for a Democratic Society at War,” in Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion: New & Classic Essays, eds. Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, pp. 169–188 (Thousand Oaks: Sage, [1983] 2006), p. 175. Reprinted from Film and Radio Propaganda in World War II, ed. Ken Short, pp. 173–191 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983). Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: Patriotism, Movies and the Second World War From “Ninotchka” to “Mrs. Miniver” (London: Tauris Parke, [1988] 2000), p. 49.

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For the use of army propaganda in World War I, see Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 4th edition (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2006). Lord, Production Activities Report to Commanding Officer. Lord, Production Activities Report to Commanding Officer. Dower, War Without Mercy, p. 18. Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), pp. 499, 727. The film was finally released in 1982. McBride stands alone in attributing this film to Capra; there is no record of Our Job in Japan in the Frank Capra Collection at Wesleyan University – which is, of course, hardly definitive proof of Capra’s uninvolvement, but it makes the extent of his supervision of this project difficult to determine. For further consideration of the effectiveness of the “Why We Fight” films at the time of their release, see the Information and Education Division’s sociological studies from February and April 1943 on the first four films, which were eventually published by Carl I. Hovland, Arthur A. Lumsdaine, and Fred D. Sheffield in Experiments on Mass Communication, vol. 3 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), p. 60. F. H. Osborn, Memorandum to General George C. Marshall, 1 November 1944, Security-Classified General Correspondence, 1941–47, Office of the Chief of Staff, Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs Record Group 165, Box 133, entry 13, decimal #062.2 (case 36), NA. Osborn, Memorandum to General George C. Marshall. Dower cautions that “The U.S. government’s own catalogue to the films simply notes that The Battle of China was withdrawn” (War Without Mercy, p. 321), but see Culbert, Film and Propaganda in America, vol. 5, documents M-31 through M-44, for the initial release date, the official withdrawal, and the official rerelease with a verbal introduction to be given at each showing pointing out errors of fact and interpretation. There may well have been additional (verbally issued) terms set for the film’s rerelease. On 15 November, Signal Corps officer Lt. Col. Emanuel Cohn wrote to Capra, “I am Air Mailing immediately directive we have received on distribution of the ‘Battle of China.’ I do not know if you have had any prior information on the subject and so I am getting it out to you as fast as possible.” Letter to Col. Frank Capra, 15 November 1944, Box 6, Why We Fight Correspondence Folder, FCC.

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Frank Capra, Letter to Major General F. H. Osborn, Director Morale Services, 21 November 1944, Box 8, Why We Fight Correspondence Folder, FCC. Capra, Letter to Major General F. H. Osborn, emphasis in original. Erik Barnow, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, 2nd revised edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 160. Barnow, Documentary, p. 160. The inclusion of footage shot for The Good Earth in The Battle of China is particularly striking, because the narration describes the Yangtze River as “bringing fertility to the good earth” and the Chinese as “the people determined to fight for their freedom – their good earth – the people who can’t be beaten.” While a connection between the novel, the film, and popular conceptions of China is implicitly highlighted through the borrowed footage, it is explicitly highlighted through the narration. Capra, Letter to Major General F. H. Osborn. Capra, Letter to Major General F. H. Osborn. Capra, Letter to Major General F. H. Osborn. “Hollywood Cued on Hitler and Hirohito, But Doesn’t Even Bother With Musso,” Variety, 20 May 1942. Dower contends that “By his own account, [Dutch filmmaker Joris] Ivens was fired [from Know Your Enemy: Japan] on orders from Washington after producing a script which presented the emperor as a war criminal and suggested he should be executed after the war” (War Without Mercy, p. 19). See Bernard F. Dick, The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1985), p. 5; Peter C. Rollins, “Frank Capra’s Why We Fight Film Series and Our American Dream,” Journal of American Culture 19.4 (Winter 1996): pp. 81–86; Steven Casey, Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War Against Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 158; Robert McLaughlin and Sally E. Parry, We’ll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema During World War II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), pp. 13–14. Vito Zagarrio, “It Is (Not) a Wonderful Life: For a Counter-Reading of Frank Capra,” in Frank Capra: Authorship and the Studio System, eds. Robert Sklar and Vito Zagarrio, pp. 64–95 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998).

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Kathleen M. German contrarily argues that parallel editing in The Battle of China constructs the Chinese as a “mass” undifferentiated from the Japanese masses in “Frank Capra’s Why We Fight Series and the American Audience,” Western Journal of Speech Communication 54 (Spring 1990): pp. 237–248. McLaughlin and Perry, We’ll Always Have the Movies, p. 138, emphasis in original. There are markedly fewer references to Italy than there are to either Germany or Japan in the orientation films. McBride implies that this may be due to Capra’s Italian heritage (The Catastrophe of Success, p. 468), but by the time the orientation films were released, Mussolini had been politically toppled; the threat posed by Italy was significantly less than the threat posed by Germany or Japan after 1943. Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, p. 35. Dower, War Without Mercy, p. 8. The potential for such a distinction, however, would begin to surface in Our Job in Japan, where increased blame is put on the military. Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), pp. 383–384. Phyll Smith, email to author, 10 February 2010. My sincere thanks to Phyll for sharing his research on Toshia Mori’s family history from the War Relocation Authority Records, 1942–1945.

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Chapter 6: “Tahiti? Inside Me?”: Frank Capra, South Sea Exoticism, and American Domesticity 1

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The same case could arguably be made for India, which gained its independence from Great Britain in 1947, although America’s foreign relations with India were naturally different from British foreign relations with India. In his autobiography, Capra retrospectively expressed concern that India too was on the verge of turning Communist in 1951. See Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, [1971] 1997), pp. 430–439. Frank Ninkovich, The United States and Imperialism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 185–186. In State of the Union (1948), for example, Norah assures Mary Matthews that the cat’s-eye glasses on the dresser are Kay Thorndyke’s property because she recognizes that they are “the Chinese kind.” Chinese (or 207

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Chinese/American) identity has become associated with villainesses and is derogatory. In Here Comes the Groom (1951) Pete Garvey would outright sacrifice the opportunity to work in the Far East – specifically Burma, Indochina, and Hong Kong – in order to raise a family in the United States. The case for the existence of a “South Sea” genre is itself tenuous. For attempts to construct it, see Larry Langman, Return to Paradise: A Guide to South Sea Island Films (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1998); Luis I. Reyes, Made in Paradise: Hollywood’s Films of Hawaii and the South Seas (Honolulu: Mutual, 1995). Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 13. James Cook, The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery: The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768–1771 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Louis de Bougainville, A Voyage Round the World, trans. Johann Reinhold Forster (Amsterdam: N. Israel, [1772] 1967). Bougainville’s account was translated from French into English in 1772. Bougainville was in Tahiti for nine days. Cook and his crew were there for four months. See Michael Sturma, South Sea Maidens: Western Fantasy and Sexual Politics in the South Pacific (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 2002), pp. 16–17. Margaret Jolly observes the typical Western conflation of South Sea cultures in the film South Pacific (1958), particularly in the boar-tooth ceremony set in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), which contains drums that sound more African than Pacific and dancing which is a combination of New Guinea marked men, Rapanui birdmen, Fijian fire walkers, and Polynesian hula dancers. See Jolly, “From Point Venus to Bali Ha’i: Eroticism and Exoticism in Representations of the Pacific,” in Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure: Sexualities in Asia and the Pacific, eds. Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly, pp. 99–122 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 112. For one analysis of how Cook and de Bougainville’s descriptions of Tahiti are imperialist, see Sturma, South Sea Maidens, pp. 16–17. Patty O’Brien, The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Cultural Pacific (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), p. 213. Guam and American Samoa are still American territories. The Marshall Islands were awarded their independence in 1986.

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See John S. Whitehead, Completing the Union: Alaska, Hawai‘i, and the Battle for Statehood (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004). Rubin Francis Weston, Racism in U.S. Imperialism: The Influence of Racial Assumptions on American Foreign Policy, 1893–1946 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), pp. 73–74. For racial statistics relating to Hawaii see Weston, Racism in U.S. Imperialism, p. 57. Sturma, South Sea Maidens, p. 59. Olga Martin, Hollywood’s Movie Commandments: A Handbook for Motion Picture Writers and Reviewers (New York: Arno, 1937), p. 209. See also “Mutiny on the Bounty,” Variety, 13 November 1935, p. 16. Victor Scherle and William Turner Levy label this performance as “hula dancing” in The Complete Films of Frank Capra (New York: Citadel Press, [1977] 1992), p. 40. Sturma, South Sea Maidens, pp. 16–17. Michael Sturma, “South Pacific,” in The Movies as History: Visions of the Twentieth Century, ed. David W. Ellwood, pp. 177–185 (London: Sutton, 2000); Jane Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Elizabeth Buck, Paradise Remade: The Politics of Cultural History in Hawaii (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), p. 90. For analysis of the South Sea expeditionary film, see Thomas Patrick Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). Sarah Berry, “Hollywood Exoticism,” in Stars: The Film Reader, ed. Lucy Fischer, pp. 181–198 (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 187. For discussion of American’s Hawaiian music craze in the early 1930s, for example, see Sturma, “South Pacific,” p. 175. Sturma, South Sea Maidens, pp. 35, 42–51. Clark Gable, who plays Peter, would go on to find his island paradise when he starred as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). The Bounty story had also appeared in a 1916 Australian film and would feature in Hollywood films in 1962 and 1984. This reputation was launched, predictably, by the director himself. See Capra, The Name Above the Title, pp. 256, 261, 276. See also Charles J. Maland, Frank Capra (New York: Twayne, [1980] 1995), pp. 107–108. Leland A. Poague, The Cinema of Frank Capra: An Approach to Film Comedy (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1975), p. 105.

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Mark Hain, “Black Hair, Black Eyes, Black Heart: Theda Bara and Race Suicide Panic,” in Early Cinema and the “National,” eds. Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini, and Rob King, pp. 295–306 (New Barnet: John Libby, 2008), p. 295. See also Diane Negra, Off-White Hollywood: American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom (London: Routledge, 2001). Langman, Return to Paradise, p. 143. See also Sean Brawley and Chris Dixon, “The Hollywood Native: Hollywood’s Construction of the South Seas and Wartime Encounters with the South Pacific,” Sites: A Journal for South Pacific Cultural Studies 27 (Summer 1994): pp. 15–29. See J. R. Killick, The United States and European Reconstruction, 1945– 1960 (Keele: Keele University Press, 1997). Buffalo and Rochester are both discussed as nearby cities in the film. Although a fictional town, Bedford Falls appears to be located in Upstate New York. See Robert B. Ray’s frame-by-frame analysis of this scene in A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930–1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 184–186. John Costello, Love, Sex, and War: Changing Value, 1939–45 (London: Collins, 1985), p. 361. Sturma, South Sea Maidens, p. 8. See also O’Brien, The Pacific Muse, p. 267. Margaret Mead, From the South Seas: Studies of Adolescence and Sex in Primitive Societies (New York: William Morrow, 1939). See also Betty Friedan’s discussion of Mead in The Feminine Mystique, 20th anniversary edition (New York: W. W. Norton, [1963] 1983), pp. 137–147. Vito Zagarrio, “It Is (Not) a Wonderful Life: For a Counter-Reading of Frank Capra,” in Frank Capra: Authorship and the Studio System, eds. Robert Sklar and Vito Zagarrio, pp. 64–94 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), p. 75. Ray Carney, American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England, [1986] 1996), p. 382. Carney, American Vision, p. 382. O’Brien, The Pacific Muse, p. 255. See also Teresia K. Teaiwa, “Bikinis and Other S/pacific N/oceans,” The Contemporary Pacific 6.1 (Spring 1994): pp. 87–109. Nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands would last until 1958.

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Dorothy Lamour was French/Irish/Spanish/American, and her portrayal of South Sea sensuality was clearly coded as a performance in overtly selfreflexive films like Road to Singapore. See Reyes, Made in Paradise, pp. 268, 347. United Artists announced that it was launching a diversified advertising campaign including off-the-amusement-page ads in the women’s, sports, and news sections of “12 leading newspaper publications”; heavy Sunday supplement schedules; and radio-TV commercials in “Big Campaign to Begin for ‘Hole in the Head,’” Motion Picture Daily, 8 June 1959. See A Hole in the Head Scrapbook, Frank Capra Collection, Wesleyan Cinema Archive, Middletown, Conn. (hereafter FCC). For further analysis of Eve’s dichotomy see Pamela Norris, Eve: A Biography (New York: New York University Press, 1999), p. 276. Reyes, Made in Paradise, pp. xxv, xxviii. Sturma, “South Pacific,” p. 175; O’Brien, The Pacific Muse, p. 250. See also p. 5. See Wini Breines, “The ‘Other’ Fifties: Beats and Bad Girls,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz, pp. 382–408 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). Shirl sings new lyrics to the folk song “The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga.” The original lyrics were racist, comparing Filipinos to assorted animals. See The Book of Navy Songs, ed. The United States Naval Academy (Garden City: Doubleday, Page, and Company, 1926), pp. 152–153. Capra, however, was almost certainly aware of where Zamboanga was, because he wrote a letter to Filippine Film cameraman W. H. Jansen in Manila on 30 September 1937 saying that he found the photography of Jansen’s film Zamboanga “beautiful regardless of conditions.” See Letter from Frank Capra to Mr. W. H. Jansen, Filippine Films, Inc., September 30, 1937, Box 3, Lost Horizon files, FCC. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, p. 11.

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Conclusion: Mapping “a United States of the World”: Authorship and the Cinema of International Relations 1

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For example, parallels were made between then–presidential candidate Barack Obama and Jefferson Smith in Lisa Mundy, “Power Player: How ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’ Became the Standard by Which We Measure Political Newcomers,” Washington Post, 28 June 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2009/06/23/AR2009062302343.html, accessed 17 August 2011; and Tea Party spokeswoman Sarah Palin cast herself as a Jefferson Smith– type in Sarah Palin, America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), pp. 1–5. Susan King, “Director Frank Capra to be Honored with U.S. Postage Stamp,” Los Angeles Times online, 10 August 2011, http://latimesblogs .latimes.com/movies/2011/08/oscar-winning-director-frank-capraimmortalized-as-a-forever-stamp.html, accessed 17 August 2011. When Charles Jarrott ventured outside the Capra canon to adapt Lost Horizon (1937) as a musical in 1973, the result was perceived as a phenomenal flop, both artistically and commercially. See Vincent Canby, “Ross Hunter’s Version of ‘Lost Horizon’ Opens,” New York Times, 15 March 1973. In addition to the Hong Kong adaptation that will be considered in the case study, there have been multiple Bollywood adaptations of Capra films, including the It Happened One Night remakes Chori Chori (1956), Chaowa Pawa (1959), Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahin (1991), Hudugaata (2005) and the Meet John Doe remake Main Azaad Hoon (1989). See Richard R. Ness, “Mr. Smith Goes to Mumbai: Class, Caste, and Karma in Indian Versions of Frank Capra Films,” unpublished paper presented at the SCMS Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, 24 March 2012. Eric Smoodin has already considered the international audiences of the Capra films themselves in Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity and American Film Studies, 1930–1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), but there are questions about adaptation (and particularly subtitling and dubbing) that deserve further study. In the Hollywood Christmas film Home Alone (1990), for example, the McAllister family watch a French-dubbed version of It’s a Wonderful Life on television in Paris. The use of a contrasting case study is in the style of Robert Kapsis, who uses a series of case studies (including Capra) to extend his analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s legacy beyond the director. See Kapsis, Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

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Jackie Chan with Jeff Young, I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action (London: Pan Books, 1998), p. 349. For more on Chan’s star persona, see Mark Gallagher, “Rumble in the USA: Jackie Chan in Translation,” in Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond, ed. Andy Willis, pp. 113–139 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). Smoodin argues in Regarding Frank Capra that Capra was a celebrity recognizable to contemporary audiences but solely in a behindthe-camera capacity. For a sample of the extensive debate on Hong Kong cinema see David Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Poshek Fu and David Desser, eds., The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Kwai-Cheung Lo, Chinese Face/Off: The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005). Lo, Chinese Face/Off, p. 130. Bey Logan claims that the casting of an actress with “fresh youthful beauty” for the part of Belle was specifically so the film would have appeal to the Japanese market (audio commentary for Miracles, Hong Kong Legends, 2003). See also Gallagher, “Rumble in the USA,” p. 119, on the importance of Asian audiences for Rumble in the Bronx (1995) and its marketing campaign in the United States; and see Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong, pp. 72–74, regarding the importance of audiences in Taiwan to Hong Kong cinema between 1986 and 1993. Bordwell, Planet Hong Kong, pp. 58–59. Leon Hunt also defines “international settings” as one of Chan’s hallmarks in “Jackie Chan,” in Fifty Contemporary Film Directors, ed. Yvonne Tasker, pp. 107–116, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 108. Gina Marchetti, “Jackie Chan and the Black Connection,” in Keyframes: Popular Cinema and Cultural Studies, eds. Matthew Tinkcom and Amy Villarejo, pp. 137–158 (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 157. Gallagher, “Rumble in the USA,” p. 126. Stephen Tao, Hong Kong Cinema: The Extra Dimensions (London: BFI, 1997), p. 129; Bey Logan, audio commentary for Miracles (Hong Kong Legends, [1989] 2003). There is an earlier reference to India in Miracles: The flower seller pretends that she goes to the Indian Consulate for curry dinners in one

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of the falsehood-filled letters that she writes to her daughter. All four key nations of Capra’s Far East are therefore accounted for in Chan’s film. See Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). Great Britain acquired Hong Kong as part of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 and returned the city to China in 1997. The hotel where the action takes place is called the King George, and Western extras were used in its interior shots; approximately half of the guests at the concluding party of dignitaries are Western. For more information on British rule in Hong Kong in the 1930s see Kevin Rafferty, City on the Rocks: Hong Kong’s Uncertain Future (London: Penguin, 1989), especially pp. 138–139; Norman Miners, Hong Kong Under Imperial Rule, 1912–1941 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), especially pp. 23, 80–81. S. W. Kung, Chinese in American Life: Some Aspects of Their History, Status, Problems, and Contributions (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), pp. 106–107. Logan, audio commentary for Miracles. Donald C. Willis, The Films of Frank Capra (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974), p. 8. Frank Capra, Letter to Major General F. H. Osborn, Director Morale Services, 21 November 1944, Box 8, Why We Fight Correspondence Folder, Frank Capra Collection, Wesleyan Film Archives, Middletown, Connecticut. Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (London: Secker and Warburg, [1969] 1972), pp. 103–104. Even Tunisian Victory was assembled in America, despite Capra travelling to England to coordinate the international production of the film. For an overview of classical Hollywood’s relationship with foreign markets see Ruth Vasey, The World According to Hollywood, 1918–1939 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997). As demonstrated in Chapter 5, censorship of The Battle of China was due to U.S. military concerns about American military audiences, not about how the film would play abroad. Furthermore, as Eric Smoodin has demonstrated, China’s opinion of The Bitter Tea of General Yen was only considered after the movie was in circulation in American theatres. See Smoodin, “Going Hollywood Sooner or Later: Chinese Censorship and The Bitter Tea of General Yen,” in Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method,

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eds. John Lewis and Eric Smoodin (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). Robert Sklar and Vito Zagarrio, “Introduction,” in Frank Capra: Authorship and the Studio System, eds. Robert Sklar and Vito Zagarrio, pp. 1–9 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), p. 1. Quoted on the back cover of Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, eds., Frank Capra: The Man and His Films (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975). Thomas Eriksen, “Ethnicity and Nationalism,” in Nations and Nationalism: A Reader, eds. Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman, pp. 135–148 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 138. Reprinted from Thomas Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2nd edition (London: Pluto, 2002). Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968 (New York: Da Capo, [1968] 1996), pp. 87–88. Lo, Chinese Face/Off, p. 130. For example, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, eds., Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003); Leon Hunt and Leung Wing-Fai, eds., East Asian Cinemas: Exploring Transnational Connections on Film (London: I.B.Tauris, 2008); Michael Baskett, The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008); Kenneth Chan, Remade in Hollywood: The Global Chinese Presence in Transnational Cinemas (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009); Andrew Nestingen and Trevor G. Elkington, eds., Transnational Cinema in a Global North: Nordic Cinema in Transition (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005). For an extensive summary of this trend within American studies see Robert A. Gross, “The Transnational Turn: Rediscovering American Studies in a Wider World,” Journal of American Studies 34 (2000): pp. 373– 393. Stephen Crofts, “Reconceptualizing National Cinema/s,” in Theorising National Cinema, eds. Valentina Vitali and Paul Willeman, pp. 44–58 (London: BFI, 2006), p. 44. Reprinted from Quarterly Review of Film and Video 14.3 (1993): pp. 49–67. For example, Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini, and Rob King, eds., Early Cinema and the “National,” (New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2008); Giorgio Bertellini, Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010).

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Vasey, The World According to Hollywood. See also John Trumpbour, Selling Hollywood to the World: U.S. and European Struggles for Mastery of the Global Film Industry, 1920–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, “General Introduction: What Is Transnational Cinema?” in Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, eds. Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, pp. 1–12 (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 2. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Da Capo, [1971] 1997), pp. 430–437. Alan Williams, “Introduction,” in Film and Nationalism, ed. Alan Williams, pp. 1–22 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002), p. 10. Williams, “Introduction,” p. 10. Jean-Louis Comolli, Jean-Andr´e Fieschi, G´erard Gu´egan, Michel Mardore, Claude Ollier, and Andr´e T´echin´e, “Twenty Years On: A Discussion about American Cinema and the Politique des Auteurs,” in Cahiers du Cin´ema, 1960–1968: New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood, ed. Jim Hillier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 205.

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Filmography (by theatrical release) Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House (Path´e, 1922) The Strong Man (First National, 1926) Long Pants (First National, 1927) For the Love of Mike (First National, 1927; no known print survives) That Certain Thing (Columbia, 1928) So This Is Love (Columbia, 1928) The Matinee Idol (Columbia, 1928) The Way of the Strong (Columbia, 1928) Say It With Sables (Columbia, 1928; no known print, but trailer survives) The Power of the Press (Columbia, 1928; existing print is incomplete) Submarine (Columbia, 1928) The Younger Generation (Columbia, 1929) The Donovan Affair (Columbia, 1929; existing print is missing soundtrack) Flight (Columbia, 1929) Ladies of Leisure (Columbia, 1929) Rain or Shine (Columbia, 1930) Dirigible (Columbia, 1931) The Miracle Woman (Columbia, 1931) Platinum Blonde (Columbia, 1931) Forbidden (Columbia, 1932) American Madness (Columbia, 1932) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Columbia, 1933) Lady for a Day (Columbia, 1933) 217

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It Happened One Night (Columbia, 1934) Broadway Bill (Columbia, 1934) Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Columbia, 1936) Lost Horizon (Columbia, 1937) You Can’t Take It With You (Columbia, 1938) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Columbia, 1939) Meet John Doe (Warner Bros., 1941) Arsenic and Old Lace (Warner Bros., 1944) Prelude to War (U.S. Army, 1942) The Nazis Strike (U.S. Army, 1943) Divide and Conquer (U.S. Army, 1943) The Battle of Britain (U.S. Army, 1943) Know Your Ally Britain (U.S. Army, 1943) The Battle of Russia (U.S. Army, 1943) Army-Navy Screen Magazine (U.S. Army, 1943–1945, 50 issues) The Negro Soldier (U.S. Army, 1944) Tunisian Victory (U.S. Army, 1944) The Battle of China (U.S. Army, 1944) War Comes to America (U.S. Army, 1945) Your Job in Germany (U.S. Army, 1945) Two Down and One to Go! (U.S. Army, 1945) Know Your Enemy: Japan (U.S. Army, 1945) Here Is Germany (U.S. Army, 1945) Our Job in Japan (U.S. Army, 1946) It’s a Wonderful Life (Liberty Films, 1946) State of the Union (Liberty Films, 1948) Riding High (Paramount Pictures, 1950) Here Comes the Groom (Paramount Pictures, 1951) Our Mr. Sun (Bell Telephone/CBS-TV, 1956) Hemo the Magnificent (Bell Telephone/CBS-TV, 1957) The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (Bell Telephone/CBS-TV, 1957) The Unchained Goddess (Bell Telephone/CBS-TV, 1958) A Hole in the Head (United Artists, 1959) Pocketful of Miracles (United Artists, 1961)

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Bibliography Archives Frank Capra Collection, Wesleyan Cinema Archive, Middletown, Connecticut National Archive, College Park, Maryland Production Code Administration Files, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles, California

Publications Abel, Richard, Giorgio Bertellini, and Rob King, eds. Early Cinema and the “National.” New Barnet: John Libbey Publishing, 2008. Adair, Gilbert. “Obituary: Frank Capra,” the Independent (London), 4 September 1991, p. 12. Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. London: Verso, 2000. Allen, Charles. The Search for Shangri-La: A Journey into Tibetan History. London: Abacus, 1999. American Film Institute. “Frank Capra: ‘One Man – One Film,” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. 16– 23. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Originally published in Frank Capra: “One Man – One Film,” Discussion no. 3. Washington: The American Film Institute, 1971. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised edition. London: Verso, (1983) 1991. Arnold, Gary. “For Filmmaker Capra, a Wonderful Life Ends,” Washington Times, 4 September 1991, p. A1. “Asther Now Oriental,” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, 30 November 1932. 219

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Balio, Tino. Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993. Barnes, Bart. “Director Frank Capra Dies; Won 3 Oscars,” Washington Post, 4 September 1991, p. D4. Barnow, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. 2nd Revised Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Barsam, Richard M. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. Revised and Expanded Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973. Basinger, Jeanine. “Introduction,” in Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: Da Capo, (1971) 1997. Baskett, Michael. The Attractive Empire: Transnational Film Culture in Imperial Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2008. ———. The It’s a Wonderful Life Book. London: Pavillion, 1987. Bawden, Jim. “All-American Moviemaker Frank Capra: 1897–1991; They Don’t Make ’Em Like This Today,” Toronto Star, 4 September 1991, p. B1. Baxter, John. Hollywood in the Thirties. London: A. Zwemmer Limited, 1968. Bazin, Andr´e. “De la Politique des auteurs,” Cahiers du Cin´ema 70 (April 1957). Behlmer, Rudy. America’s Favorite Movies: Behind the Scenes. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1982. Belton, John. American Cinema/American Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994. Benshoff, Harry M., and Sean Griffin. America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality at the Movies. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Bergan, Ronald. “Pedlar of the American Dream,” Manchester Guardian Weekly, 15 September 1991, p. 24. Bergfelder, Tim. “Negotiating Exoticism: Hollywood, Film Europe and the Cultural Reception of Anna May Wong,” in Stars: The Film Reader, ed. Lucy Fischer, pp. 59–76. London: Routledge, 2004. Bergman, Andrew. We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Bernardi, Daniel, ed. Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Bernds, Edward. Mr. Bernds Goes to Hollywood: My Early Life and Career in Sound Recording at Columbia with Frank Capra and Others. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1999. Berry, Sarah. “Hollywood Exoticism,” in Stars: The Film Reader, ed. Lucy Fischer, pp. 181–198. London: Routledge, 2004.

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Bertellini, Giorgio. Italy in Early American Cinema: Race, Landscape, and the Picturesque. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Berton, Pierre. “The Real Star of Capra Films Was Always Frank Capra,” Toronto Star, 7 September 1991, p. G3. Beuka, Robert. “Imagining the Postwar Small Town: Gender and the Politics of Landscape in It’s a Wonderful Life,” Journal of Film and Video 53.3–4 (Fall 1999): pp. 36–47. “Big Campaign to Begin for ‘Hole in the Head,’” Motion Picture Daily, 8 June 1959. Bishop, Peter. The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred Landscape. London: Athlone Press, 1989. Bodnar, John. Rethinking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Bogardus, E. S. “Racial Prejudice and Racial Stereotypes,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 30.2 (1935): pp. 175–193. Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Continuum, 2000. Bordwell, David. Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. London: Routledge, 1985. Bougainville, Louis de. A Voyage Round the World. Trans. Johann Reinhold Forster. Amsterdam: N. Israel, (1772) 1967. Bowman, Barbara. Master Space: Film Images of Capra, Lubitsch, Sternberg, and Wyler. New York: Greenwood, 1992. Brands, H. W. Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Brass, Tom. “Popular Culture, Populist Fiction(s): The Agrarian Utopiates of A. V. Chayanov, Ignatius Donnelly and Frank Capra,” Journal of Peasant Studies 24.1 (1996): pp. 153–190. Brawley, Sean, and Chris Dixon. “The Hollywood Native: Hollywood’s Construction of the South Seas and Wartime Encounters with the South Pacific,” Sites: A Journal for South Pacific Cultural Studies 27 (Summer 1994): pp. 15–29. Breines, Wini. “The ‘Other’ Fifties: Beats and Bad Girls,” in Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz, pp. 382–408. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.

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Buck, Elizabeth. Paradise Remade: The Politics of Cultural History in Hawaii. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. Buruma, Ian, and Avishai Margalit. Occidentalism: A Short History of AntiWesternism. London: Atlantic Books, 2004. Canby, Vincent. “Ross Hunter’s Version of ‘Lost Horizon’ Opens,” New York Times, 15 March 1973. Capra, Frank. The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: Da Capo, (1971) 1997. Carney, Ray. American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England, (1986) 1996. Casaregola, Vincent. “Love and the ‘Tough-Talkin’ Career Gal’: Desire, Power, and the Figure of the ‘Hard-Boiled’ Woman Journalist,” paper presented at the Film and History Conference, Milwaukee, Wisc., 12 November 2010. Unpublished. Casey, Steven. Cautious Crusade: Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion, and the War Against Nazi Germany. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Cavallero, Jonathan. “Frank Capra’s 1920s Immigrant Trilogy: Immigration, Assimilation, and the American Dream,” MELUS 29.2 (Summer 2004): pp. 27–53. ———. Hollywood’s Italian American Filmmakers: Capra, Scorsese, Savoca, Coppola, and Tarantino. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Chan, Jackie, with Jeff Young. I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action. London: Pan Books, 1998. Chan, Kenneth. Remade in Hollywood: The Global Chinese Presence in Transnational Cinemas. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009. Chapman, James, Mark Glancy, and Sue Harper. “Introduction,” in The New Film History: Sources, Methods, Approaches, eds. James Chapman, Mark Glancy, and Sue Harper, pp. 1–10. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Chen, Vincent J. Inauthentic: The Anxiety Over Culture and Identity. London: Rutgers, 2004. “Chinese Girl Will Appear in New Film,” Denver Colorado Post, 10 July 1932. Chung, Sue Fawn. “From Fu Manchu, Evil Genius, to James Lee Wong, Popular Hero,” Journal of Popular Culture 10 (1976): pp. 534–547. Cole, Wayne S. Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945. Lincoln: University of Nevada Press, 1983. “Columbia’s Gem,” Time 32.6 (8 August 1938), pp. 35–38.

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Comolli, Jean-Louis, Jean-Andr´e Fieschi, G´erard Gu´egan, Michel Mardore, Claude Ollier, and Andr´e T´echin´e. “Twenty Years On: A Discussion about American Cinema and the Politique des Auteurs,” in Cahiers du Cin´ema, 1960–1968: New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood, ed. Jim Hillier. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. Originally published in French as “Vingt ans apr`es: le cinema am´ericain et la politique des auteurs,” Cahiers du cin´ema 172 (November 1965). Connelly, Mark, ed. Christmas at the Movies: Images of Christmas in American, British, and European Cinema. London: I.B.Tauris, 2000. Connor, Edward. “Revisiting Lost Horizon,” Screen Facts ( January–February 1963): p. 12. Constable, Nicole. Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. Cook, James. The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery: The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768–1771. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968. Corrigan, Timothy. “Auteurs and the New Hollywood,” in The New American Cinema, ed. John Lewis, pp. 38–61. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Costello, John. Love, Sex, and War: Changing Value, 1939–45. London: Collins, 1985. Courtney, Susan. Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race, 1903–1967. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Cripps, Thomas, and David Culbert. “The Negro Soldier (1944): Film Propaganda in Black and White,” American Quarterly 31.5 (Winter 1979): pp. 616–640. Crofts, Stephen. “Reconceptualizing National Cinema/s,” in Theorising National Cinema, eds. Valentina Vitali and Paul Willeman, pp. 44–58. London: BFI, 2006. Reprinted from Quarterly Review of Film and Video 14.3 (1993): pp. 49–67. Culbert, David. Film and Propaganda in America: A Documentary History, 1945 and After. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991. ———. “‘Why We Fight’: Social Engineering for a Democratic Society at War,” in Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion: New & Classic Essays, eds. Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell, pp. 169–188. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2006. Reprinted from Ken Short, ed., Film and Radio Propaganda in World War II. Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1983. Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990.

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Darby, Philip. Three Faces of Imperialism: British and American Approaches to Asia and Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Desmond, Jane. Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Dick, Bernard F. The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1985. ———. “From the Brothers Cohn to Sony Corp,” in Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio, ed. Bernard F. Dick, pp. 2–64. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1992. Doherty, Thomas Patrick. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Dower, John W. War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. New York: Pantheon, 1986. Dyer, Richard. The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation. 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 1993. ———. White. London: Routledge, 1997. Edwards, Brian T. “Yankee Pashas and Buried Women: Containing Abundance in 1950s Hollywood Orientalism,” Film and History 31.2 (2001): p. 17. Elliott, David. “3-Time Oscar Winner Dies: Director of Classic Movies Had Ties to San Diego County,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 4 September 1991, p. A1. Elsasser, Thomas. “The New Film History,” Sight and Sound, 55:4 (Autumn 1986): pp. 246–51. Eriksen, Thomas. “Ethnicity and Nationalism,” in Nations and Nationalism: A Reader, eds. Philip Spencer and Howard Wollman, pp. 135–148. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Reprinted from Thomas Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism. 2nd edition. London: Pluto, 2002. Estrin, Allen. The Hollywood Professionals: Capra, Cukor, Brown. Vol. 6. London: Tanvity Press, 1980. Ezra, Elizabeth, and Terry Rowden. “General Introduction: What Is Transnational Cinema?” in Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader, eds. Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden, pp. 1–12. London: Routledge, 2006. “Family Custom Not For Toshia: She’s in Films – Not a Doctor,” Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, 11 September 1932. Feng, Peter X. “Introduction,” in Screening Asian Americans, ed. Peter X. Feng, pp. 1–18. London: Rutgers, 2002.

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Feng, Richard. “In Search of Asian American Cinema,” Cineaste 21.3 (1995): pp. 32–35. Ferguson, Niall. Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. London: Allen Lane, 2003. Ferguson, Otis. “It Happened Once More,” New Republic 81 (19 December 1934): p. 167. ———. “Mr. Capra Goes to Town,” New Republic 86 (22 April 1936): pp. 315– 316. ———. “Mr. Capra Goes Someplace,” New Republic 100 (1 November 1939): pp. 369–370. ———.“Democracy at the Box Office,” New Republic 104 (24 March 1941): pp. 405–406. Fields, Barbara J. “Ideology and Race in American History,” in Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward, eds. J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, pp. 143–177. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Fischer, Lucy. Designing Women: Cinema, Art Deco, and the Female Form. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Flint, Peter B. “Frank Capra, Whose Films Helped America Keep Faith in Itself, Is Dead at 94,” New York Times, 4 September 1991, p. B10. Fox, Richard G. “East of Said,” in Edward Said: A Critical Reader, ed. Michael Sprinker, pp. 144–156. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992. Frank, Sam. “Lost Horizon – A Timeless Journey,” American Cinematographer 67.4 (1986): pp. 30–39. ———. “Lost Horizon Losses Restored,” American Cinematographer 68.7 (1987): pp. 46–54. “Frank Capra,” The Times (London), 5 September 1991. French, Philip. “Gentle Projector of the American Dream: The Ups and Downs in the Career of the Great Hollywood Film Director, Frank Capra, Who Died Last Week,” Observer, 8 September 1991, p. 20. Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 20th Anniversary Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, (1963) 1983. Friedman, Lester D., ed. Unspeakable Images: Ethnicity and the American Cinema. Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Fu, Poshek, and David Desser, eds. The Cinema of Hong Kong: History, Arts, Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Gabler, Neal. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown, 1988.

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Gallagher, Mark. “Rumble in the USA: Jackie Chan in Translation,” in Film Stars: Hollywood and Beyond, ed. Andy Willis, pp. 113–139. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Gebhard, David. The California Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Thames and Hudson, 1988. Gehring, Wes D. “Populist Comedy,” in Handbook of American Film Genres, ed. Wes D. Gehring, pp. 125–143. New York: Greenwood, 1988. Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. German, Kathleen M. “Frank Capra’s Why We Fight Series and the American Audience,” Western Journal of Speech Communication 54 (Spring 1990): pp. 237–248. Gilbert, John. “‘Our Mr Sun’: Religion and Science in 50s America,” History Today (February 1995): pp. 33–39. Girgus, Sam B. Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Glatzer, Richard. “A Conversation With Frank Capra,” in Frank Capra: The Man and His Films, eds. Richard Glatzer and John Raeburn, pp. 24–39. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Glatzer, Richard, and John Raeburn, eds. Frank Capra: The Man and His Films. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975. Greene, Graham. “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,” The Spectator, 28 August 1936, p. 343. ———. “Lost Horizon,” The Spectator, 30 April 1937, p. 805. ———. “You Can’t Take It With You,” The Spectator, 11 November 1938, p. 807. ———. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” The Spectator, 5 January 1940, p. 16. Gross, Robert A. “The Transnational Turn: Rediscovering American Studies in a Wider World,” Journal of American Studies 34 (2000): pp. 373–393. Grunfeld, A. Tom. “Tibet and the United States,” in Contemporary Tibet: Politics, Development, and Society in a Disputed Region, eds. Barry Sautman and June Teufel Dreyer, pp. 319–349. London: East Gate, 2006. Hain, Mark. “Black Hair, Black Eyes, Black Heart: Theda Bara and Race Suicide Panic,” in Early Cinema and the “National,” eds. Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini, and Rob King, pp. 295–306. New Barnet: John Libby, 2008. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation,” Framework 36 (1989). Halliwell, Leslie. Return to Shangri-La. London: Grafton, 1987.

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Index Academy Awards, 13, 97, 193n.1, 204n.3 Adams, Samuel, 30, 39 Afghanistan, 95 Africa, 123, 170 and African/Americans, 54 in Capra films, 55, 150–151 culture as inspiration, 98, 161, 209n.7 African/Americans, 45, 47, 161, 170 in Capra films, 31, 53, 54–55, 56, 59, 60, 62, 65, 170, 186n.21, 193n.46 Hollywood’s representation of, 48 and miscegenation, 49–50, 65 Allen, Woody, 174 Aloma of the South Seas, 150 America, 11 and the American Dream, 1, 18, 28, 38 Capra films and, 1–3, 5, 25–31, 44, 157, 165, 170, 172, 175 immigration and citizenship, 7, 43–44, 46–47, 89, 132–133, 164, 190n.20 238

international relations, 166–167, 169 with China, 20, 22, 23, 73, 109, 111, 116–117, 128, 135 with Cuba, 68–69, 70, 109–110, 203n.68 with Japan, 20, 23, 48–49, 85, 109, 116, 135, 138, 145 with the Philippines, 20, 22, 110, 135, 137–138, 203n.68 isolationism, 36, 39 as melting pot, 7, 43–44, 46–48, 53–58, 193n.56 presidents, 31, 39, 41, 46, 69, 94–95, 213n.2 see also communities, national; imperialism, American; national identity, American American Madness, 18, 21, 33, 36, 44, 58–61, 62–63, 65 American President, The, 158 American Samoa, 137, 149, 209n.10 Anna Karenina, 4–5 Antarctica, 2, 170 Aquinas, Thomas, 41

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see also Chinese/Americans; Japanese/Americans Asther, Nils, 79–80, 173 Attucks, Crispus, 41, 54, 188 audiences American, 27, 28, 73, 74, 77, 97, 185n.8, 204n.3 global, 160, 195n.17, 204n.3, 213n.5, 214n.11, 215n.25 U.S. Army, 116, 206n.20, 215n.25 Austrians, Capra’s representation of, 4 auteur theory, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 171, 174 auto-Orientalism. See self-Orientalism

INDEX

Arabia, 10, 36, 147 Argentina, 35 Arlington National Cemetery, 30 Arsenic and Old Lace, 21, 35, 36, 44, 63–66, 168, 193n.51 Art Deco, 82–83, 87, 98–100 Arthur, Chester, 46 Asians, 46, 138, 151 in Bitter Tea of General Yen, The, 22, 67, 70–91, 166 Hollywood’s representations of, 48–49, 50–51, 79–80, 116 in Lost Horizon, 95, 96, 102–103, 104, 113 see also yellowface Asian/Americans, 21–22, 44–46, 55, 58, 166 in American Madness, 21, 36, 44, 58–61, 62, 65–66 in Arsenic and Old Lace, 21, 36, 44, 63–65 in Broadway Bill, 21, 36, 44, 59–61, 62, 65–66 discrimination, 45–48, 57, 65 Hollywood’s representation of, 48–49, 50–51, 53 immigration, 46–47, 65 in Ladies of Leisure, 21, 36, 61–62, 168 in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 186, 193n.46 in Rain or Shine, 21, 36, 51–52 whites masquerading as, 21, 51–52, 66, 162, 192n.37 in You Can’t Take It With You, 193n.46

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Bacon, Roger, 41 Bara, Theda, 144 Baskul, 95, 104, 113, 201n.44, 202n.50 Battle of Britain, The, 115, 121 Battle of China, The, 23, 35, 115, 116–117, 199n.14, 205n.6, 206n.23, 206n.24, 215n.25 representation of Chinese nationality, 119–123, 126–129, 134, 207n.29 representation of Japanese nationality, 131 Battle of Russia, The, 115, 121 Bedford Falls, 37, 146, 147, 149, 211n.27 Belgians, Capra’s representation of, 35, 101, 104 Bell Laboratory Science series, 13, 150. See also Hemo the Magnificent Bernds, Edward, 183n.68 239

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Bitter Tea of General Yen, The (film), 2, 22, 34, 35, 36, 37, 67–68, 166, 168, 188n.37, 188n.38, 189n.4, 193n.1 cast, 133, 173, 196n.31 censorship, 77–78, 215n.25 cultural cross-dressing, 81–83 empathy for the “other,” 84–85 representation of Americans, 76–77, 78–79, 81–83, 87, 89–90 representation of Chinese, 72–73, 75, 84–89, 108 representation of Japanese, 72–73 representation of war, 71–74, 96, 113 reviews of, 71 yellowface, 79–81 and “Yellow Peril,” 74–75 Bitter Tea of General Yen, The (novel), 72, 78, 88, 195n.19 blackface, 50, 54 blacks. See African/Americans Bolivar, Sim´on, 40, 41 Bougainville, Louis de, 137, 209n.6 Bounty, HMS, 142–143, 145, 210n.21 Brazil, 35 Britain, 3, 103, 215n.24 Capra’s representation of citizens, 4, 41, 56, 195n.19 citizens as characters in Lost Horizon, 22, 35, 93–94, 101, 103–109, 173 criticism of Lost Horizon, 97–100 Hollywood’s representation of citizens, 142, 191n.24 international relations with China, 72, 109, 163

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with India, 22, 94, 103–104, 109–110, 208n.1 and World War II, 23, 115, 117, 121, 123, 125, 128 see also imperialism, British Broadway Bill, 21, 36, 44, 54, 59–60, 62, 65, 159, 160 Brooklyn, N.Y., 35 Buddhism, 41, 102 Burma, 5, 209n.3 Cahiers du Cin´ema, 13–14 California, 100, 133 Asian/Americans in, 48 in Capra films, 51, 56, 130, 162–164 Civil Code, 65, 193n.49 Los Angeles, 149, 196–197n.31 Canada, 163 capitalism, 37, 75, 167 Capra, Frank autobiography, 14–15, 16, 19, 175, 182n.59 biography, 15–16, 33 obituaries, 25–29, 31, 42, 185n.6, 186n.11 Capra, Frank, Jr., 18 Capramerica, 25, 28 Caribbean, 147, 155 Catastrophe of Success, The. See Capra, Frank, biography Catholicism, 102 censorship, 191n.30 of Bitter Tea, 77–78, 195n.17, 215n.25 of miscegenation, 49–51, 65, 79, 138–139 Chan, Charlie, 48, 49

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Chinese Exclusion Act, 46–48, 89. See also immigration Chinese/Americans, 44, 45, 46–48, 66, 164, 190n.20, 208–209n.4 in American Madness, 21, 36, 44, 58–61, 62, 65–66 in Arsenic and Old Lace, 65 in Broadway Bill, 21, 36, 44, 59–61, 62, 65–66 Hollywood’s representation of, 49, 51 in Ladies of Leisure, 21, 36, 61–62, 168 in War Comes to America, 56 see also Asian/Americans chinoiserie, 61, 82–83, 87, 95 Christ, Jesus, 40, 41 Christianity, 64, 73, 76, 78, 84, 112, 113, 139 citizenship American, 7, 31, 39, 41, 43, 45, 46–47, 65, 66, 89, 151, 190n.20 Capra’s, 5 German, 132–133 international, 38, 63 Japanese, 130, 132–133 versus ethnicity, 55–56 see also immigration; national identity civil war American, 30 Chinese, 72–74, 96, 103, 120, 169, 194n.12 class, economic, 36, 43, 46, 54, 60–61, 79, 104–105, 107, 113, 152, 162, 179n.36

INDEX

Chan, Jackie, 159–165, 173, 214n.12, 215n.16 China: 2, 8, 9, 109, 159, 166, 195n.17, 215n.18 in The Battle of China, 23, 35, 66, 115, 116–117, 119–123, 126–131, 134, 199n.14, 205n.6, 207n.29 in Bitter Tea, 2, 22, 67–68, 70–77, 79– 83, 85, 87, 89–91 citizens represented in American Madness, 21, 36, 44, 58–61, 62, 65–66 citizens represented in Broadway Bill, 21, 36, 44, 59–61, 62, 65–66 citizens represented in Lost Horizon, 95, 96, 102–103, 104, 113 Civil War, 72–74, 96, 103, 120, 169, 194n.12 Communism, 23, 72–74, 96, 120, 135, 169 emigrants, 164, 190n.20 international relations with America, 20, 22, 23, 73, 109, 111, 116–117, 128, 135, 204n.73 with Japan, 72, 73–74, 96, 103, 120, 195n.15, 201n.39 in Miracles, 160, 161, 162, 163 nationalism, 72–74, 96, 120, 194n.12 and Tibet, 22, 93, 95, 98, 99, 100, 104, 108, 109, 112, 150, 168, 199n.14 trade, 20, 111, 129, 134 Chinatown, 36, 61–62, 196n.31

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coconuts, 36, 146, 153, 155, 168 Cohn, Harry, 12, 18, 183n.67 Cold War, 23, 135 Colman, Ronald, 173 colonialism. See imperialism Columbia Pictures, 12, 17–18, 95, 98, 121, 184n.75, 195n.17, 198n.1 Columbus, Christopher, 150 “common man,” 25, 29, 31, 44, 187n.29. See also “little guy” Communism, 5, 23, 70, 72–74, 96, 120, 135, 169, 170 communities familial, 33–34, 37, 52, 54, 65, 155 global, 4, 21, 22, 23, 26, 38–39, 42, 63, 96, 112–116, 125, 159, 165, 167, 172 imagined, 6, 168, 170, 172 local, 32–34, 54, 56, 61–63, 104, 139, 147, 150, 151 national, 22, 23, 32, 33–34, 35, 37, 42, 43–44, 49, 55–56, 58, 65–66, 67, 115–116, 117, 125, 126, 134, 137 versus the individual, 21, 23, 29, 32, 42, 134, 171 Confucianism, 40, 41, 102 conservatism, 167 Cook, James, 137, 141, 147, 209n.6 Coppola, Francis Ford, 174 cross-dressing, cultural, 81–83, 139–140 Cuba, 2, 22, 35, 67, 68–70, 75, 110, 138, 155, 170, 203n.68 Dante, 41 De Gaulle, Charles, 122

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De Leon, Walter, 117 democracy, 39, 46, 70, 130, 135, 167, 168 Denmark, citizens of, in Capra films, 4, 56 Depression, Great, 27, 32, 36, 39, 65, 83, 98–99, 109, 110, 185n.8 Dirigible, 2, 54, 67, 170 Distinguished Gentleman, The, 158 Divide and Conquer, 115, 121, 122 documentary footage, 96, 121–122, 151. See also orientation films Doolittle, James, 95 Dragon Lady, archetype, 48–49, 86 Dwan, Allan, 18 East, the. See Far East, the; Near East, the Easter Island, 8, 136 Easternization, 81–83 Eden, Garden of, 137, 142, 145, 152–153, 155 Edison, Thomas, 39, 41 Egypt, 55, 144 Einstein, Albert, 41 Ellis Island, 55. See also immigration empire. See imperialism England. See Britain Ethiopia, 150 ethnicity, 190n.13 Asian, 21–22, 44–45, 46, 51, 52, 65, 68, 80, 96, 132–133, 138, 196n.31 in Capra films, 54, 55, 66, 149, 154, 180n.37, 208n.39 and citizenship, 7, 40, 56–57, 145, 166

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Far East, the as a Capra trademark, 2, 35, 44, 67, 163, 165, 166, 168–169, 171 definition of, 8–9, 21, 116, 136, 197n.42 embodied, 22, 48, 79, 84–85 as “familiar,” 85, 86, 90–91, 113, 168–169, 171 fractured, 123, 126, 132, 134

as “other,” 21, 23, 45, 46, 74, 79, 84–85, 95, 135, 159, 168 versus the South Seas, 137, 138, 154, 156, 167 Western attitudes toward the, 20, 51, 100, 197n.42 see also Orientalism Fascism, 167, 199n.11 feminism, 90, 155. See also gender Fiji, 137, 146, 209n.7 Filipino/Americans, 44 Finland, citizens of, in Capra films, 4 Flight, 2, 35, 67 Florida, 37, 148, 152–153, 154, 156, 169 Flying Yorkshireman, The, 4 Forbidden, 2, 22, 35, 67, 68–70, 77 Ford, John, 14 France, citizens of, in Capra films, 2, 3, 40, 41, 59–60, 137 Francis, Saint, 41 Frank Capra’s American Dream, 18 Franklin, Benjamin, 31, 41 Friedan, Betty, 155, 211n.31 frontier, 30, 95, 104, 111–112 Fu Manchu, 48, 75, 80, 191n.24 Fuller, Sam, 15 Fultah Fisher’s Boarding House, 3–4, 5, 67, 94, 103, 168, 178n.12

INDEX

diversity of, in America, 5, 9, 43–44, 60, 61, 98, 100, 138, 142, 160, 162, 168, 169 and gender, 10, 144–145 see also Chinese/Americans; Italian/Americans; Japanese/ Americans; Jewish/ Americans; race Europe in Capra films, 2, 35, 98, 100, 123, 125, 147, 170 ethnicity, 43, 44, 46, 53, 103, 104, 107, 138, 180n.37 and Eurocentrism, 9, 10, 197n.42 World War II, 132, 133, 145, 204n.5 see also Britain; France; Greece; Italy; Norway; Spain exoticism Far Eastern, 22, 23, 34, 49, 61, 84–85, 137 as romantic, 22, 70, 142 tropical, 23, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 144, 145, 151, 154–155, 169 versus domesticity, 2, 36–37, 38, 147–149, 154–156, 159, 167, 170–171

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Gable, Clark, 12, 210n.21 Galileo, 41 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 40–41 gender, 9, 37, 84, 144, 145, 148, 150, 155, 180n.37 and domesticity, 21, 36, 37, 147–148, 150, 155, 156 243

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gender (cont.) and exoticism, 36, 37, 49, 61, 84, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147, 149, 151, 154–155, 156 and femininity, 140–143, 147, 149, 151 and masculinity, 16, 149 and Orientalism, 3, 22, 68, 78–79, 83–84 Germany citizens of, in Capra films, 4, 41, 56, 126 Hollywood’s representation of, 132 and World War II, 115, 116, 123, 125, 145, 208n.39 Gettysburg Address, 31 Giraud, Henri, 122 Gleason, James, 12 Good Earth, The, 121–122, 207n.29 Goosson, Stephen, 18, 98 Grant, Ulysses S., 39 Great Britain. See Britain Greece, citizens of, in Capra films, 41, 56, 146 Guam, 110, 137, 209n.10 Hamilton, Alexander, 30 Hancock, John, 30 Hawaii, 8, 94, 112, 133, 136, 137–138, 141, 148, 154, 210n.20 Hawks, Howard, 13, 15, 18 Hayakawa, Sessue, 51, 174 Hays, Will, 77 Hemo the Magnificent, 23, 36, 137, 150–152, 169 Henry, Patrick, 39

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Here Comes the Groom, 2, 3, 5, 34, 35, 150, 188n.38, 209n.4 Here Is Germany, 115 heritage. See ethnicity Hilton, James, 95, 99, 102, 117–118 Hirohito, Emperor, 131 Hitchcock, Alfred, 13, 15, 18, 174, 213n.6 Hitler, Adolf, 123 Hole in the Head, A, 23, 34, 36, 37, 137, 152–156, 169 Home Alone, 213n.5 Homer, 41 Hong Kong, 5, 111, 159–165, 173, 174, 209n.3, 215n.18 Hoover, Herbert, 167 hula dancers, 9, 140, 141, 143–144, 145, 154, 209n.7, 210n.16 Hungary, citizens of, in Capra films, 56 Ichioka, Toshio, 133 If You Could Only Cook, 17 immigration in Capra films, 40, 53–54, 55, 57, 190n.17 melting-pot America, 43–44, 46–48, 49, 133, 164 to the Philippines, 163 imperialism, 103 American, 20, 22, 94, 109–112, 113, 129, 134, 135 136, 137, 138, 190n.14, 203n.70 British, 22, 94, 103–105, 109–110, 111–112, 113, 137, 163, 166, 208n.1, 215n.18 economic, 20, 103, 111, 129, 204n.73

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Japan, 8, 9, 49, 109, 159, 161, 163, 199n.14, 204n.4, 214n.11

international relations with America, 20, 23, 48–49, 85, 109, 110, 116, 123, 125–126, 135, 138, 145, 169, 208n.39 with China, 72, 73–74, 96, 103, 120, 127, 195n.15, 201n.39 with Russia, 191n.26 in Know Your Enemy: Japan, 23, 35, 115, 116, 119, 121, 126, 129–134, 166, 168, 205n.6, 207n.34 in Our Job in Japan, 115, 119, 145, 204–205n.5, 206n.19, 208n.42 Japanese/Americans, 44, 47, 56, 132–133, 138, 168, 189n.8, 196–197n.31 Hollywood’s representation of, 51 whites masquerading as, 21, 51–52, 66, 162, 170, 192n.39 see also Asian/Americans Jefferson, Thomas, 30, 31, 39–41 Jericho, Walls of, 139, 143, 147 Jewish/Americans, 43, 45, 53, 56–57, 59–61, 190n.13 jingoism, 166, 167 Joan of Arc, 41 Jones, John Paul, 39

INDEX

Japanese, 72, 73–74, 96, 103, 110, 120, 195n.15, 201n.39 India, 95, 174, 208n.1, 214–215n.16; and British empire, 22, 94, 103–104, 109, 166 in Capra films, 3–4, 5, 8, 23, 67, 94, 159, 169, 178n.13 remakes of Capra films, 213n.5 individualism and national identity, 7, 29, 43, 126–129, 132, 134 versus the community, 14, 21, 22–23, 31–34, 42, 116, 125–126, 167, 171 Ireland, citizens of, in Capra films, 56 Italian/Americans, 15, 53, 55, 180n.37, 208n.39 Italy, citizens of, in Capra films, 4, 41, 15, 40, 53, 55, 56, 123, 146, 199n.11, 208n.39 It Happened One Christmas, 158 It Happened One Night, 27, 34, 158 South Seas in, 23, 35, 136, 137, 142–143, 147, 168, 213n.5 It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, 158 It’s a Wonderful Life, 27, 28, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37, 54, 55, 88, 125, 157, 158, 212n.1, 213n.5 South Seas in, 23, 36, 136, 137, 146–150, 151, 153, 168, 169 Ivens, Joris, 207n.34

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Kabul, Afghanistan, 95 Kai-shek, Chiang, 72–73, 122 Kansas City, Kansas, 150 Keaton, Buster, 161 Kipling, Rudyard, 4, 178n.12 Know Your Ally Britain, 115 Know Your Enemy: Japan, 23, 35, 115, 116, 119, 121, 126, 129–134, 205n.6, 207n.34 Korean War, 135, 169 245

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Kosciusko, Tadeusz, 40–41 Ladies of Leisure, 21, 35, 36, 61–62, 168, 188n.37 Lady for a Day, 21, 35, 159–165, 169, 192n.37 Lafayette, Marquis de, 40–41 Lamour, Dorothy, 150, 212n.36 Langdon, Harry, 12, 17, 183n.67 language Cantonese, 159, 160, 162, 163 English, 60–61, 62, 75, 84, 105, 107, 159 Mandarin, 160, 162, 163 pidgin English, 49, 51, 66, 162–163, 192n.39 Yiddish, 59, 61 Lee, Robert E., 39 Liberty Films, 17 Life of Chopin, The, 4, 178n.14 Lincoln, Abraham, 31, 39–41, 128 Lithuania, citizens of, in Capra films, 40, 41 “little guy,” 28, 29, 31, 44, 158. See also “common man” Litvak, Anatole, 118–119 Lloyd, Harold, 161 Long Pants, 34 Lord, Robert, 118–119 Lorre, Peter, 51 Lost Horizon (film), 2, 14, 18, 34–35, 36, 37, 91, 168, 173, 189n.4, 197n.46, 198n.1, 199n.16, 213n.4 and imperialism, 22, 94, 103–109, 111–112, 166 Lost Horizon (novel), 95, 99, 102, 201n.44

14:48

Lost Horizon of Shangri-La (reissue), 95, 96, 104, 201n.39, 202n.45, 202n.46, 203n.61 representation of British, 22, 35, 93–94, 101, 103–109, 173 representation of Chinese, 95, 96, 102–103, 104, 113 representation of Japanese, 95–96 reviews of, 93, 95, 97–100 Shangri-La as utopia, 101–103, 109, 111–114, 115, 166 versions of, 94–95, 96, 101, 199n.10, 199n.11 Louisiana, 56 Loy, Myra, 80 Luther, Martin, 41 Macronesia, 8 Madame Butterfly, 48–49 make-up, 14, 50–51, 80–82, 83, 89, 101, 110, 197n.31. See also blackface; yellowface Malaysia, 4, 161 Manchuria, 135, 195n.15, 199n.14 marketing, 17–18, 152, 154, 214n.11 Marshall, George C., 118, 119, 122, 188n.39 Marshall Islands, 137, 149–150, 209n.10, 211n.35 Marshall Plan, 38, 188n.39 Martin, Olga, 50, 138–139 Marxism, 167 Mask of Fu Manchu, The, 48, 80 Matinee Idol, The, 54 McBride, Joseph, 15–16. See also Capra, Frank, biography McCarthy, Joseph, 5, 167 Mead, Margaret, 149, 211n.31

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Murphy, Eddie, 158 Mussolini, Benito, 199n.11, 208n.39 Mutiny on the Bounty, 142–143, 145, 210n.21

INDEX

Meet John Doe, 13, 31, 33, 34, 53, 116, 125, 213n.5 Melanesia, 8 melting pot America as, 7, 43–44, 46–48, in Capra films, 22, 51, 53–58, 66, 162, 166, 193n.56 Mexico, citizens of, in Capra films, 36, 56, 145 Miami, Florida, 37, 152–153, 154, 156, 169 Michelangelo, 41 Middle East, the. See Near East, the Minnelli, Vincente, 13 Miracles, 159–165, 214–215n.16 Miracle Woman, The, 35, 190n.17 miscegenation, 49–51, 63–65, 79–80, 138–139 Moana of the South Seas, 141 Mohammed, 40 Mongolia, citizens of, in Capra films, 74, 199n.14 Monroe, James, 39 Mori, Toshia, 79–80, 133, 196–197n.31 Moses, 40–41 Moto, Mr. Kentaro, 49, 51, 150, 192n.38 Mr. Deeds, 158 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 13, 27, 31, 33, 34, 35, 55, 158 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 13, 27, 34, 125, 158, 186–187n.21, 193n.46, 213n.2 American iconography in, 30–31 South Seas in, 23, 136, 137, 143–145, 168 Munson, Edward L., 117–118

14:48

Name Above the Title, The. See Capra, Frank, autobiography Nanking, China, 72, 127–128, 131, 215n.18 national cinema, 7, 8, 158, 174–175 American, 7–8, 159, 173–174, 175 British, 100 French, 13 Hong Kong, 160–161, 173, 214n.11 Indian, 213n.5 Japanese, 160 national identity, 2, 6–7, 8, 20, 24, 169, 171–173 American, 1, 21, 25–26, 29–30, 39–42, 43–44, 55–56, 157, 165–167 Chinese, 23, 116, 126–129, 204n.4 Japanese, 23, 116, 129–134, 204n.4 of Shangri-La, 96, 97–101, 112 see also citizenship nationalism, 6, 9, 11, 23, 29, 31, 96, 126, 159, 167, 173, 175. See also trasnationalism Nationalists (Chinese), 72–73, 96, 120, 194n.12 Native Americans, 48, 76, 188n.40 Nazis, 43, 115–116, 121, 132, 169 Nazis Strike, The, 115 Near East, the: 35, 55, 83, 147 definition of, 8, 10 Negro Soldier, The, 54, 115, 205n.6 247

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Nelson, O. L., 120 Netherlands, citizens of, in Capra films, 56, 207n.34 New England, 56, 78 New Guinea, 137, 149, 209n.7 New Mexico, 56 Newton, Isaac, 41 New York City, 30, 35, 37, 61, 62, 65, 142, 149, 162 New York (state), 56, 211n.27 New Zealand, 8, 36, 136, 137, 154 Nicaragua, 2, 35 Norway, citizens of, in Capra films, 36, 56 Obama, Barack, 213n.2 Occidentalism, 11 Odell, Cary, 98 Office of War Information, 118, 122–123 Orient, the. See Far East, the Orientalism, 3, 10–12, 20, 22, 68, 85, 180n.38 and empathy, 11, 68, 79, 84–85, 87, 89–91 as gendered, 11, 22, 68, 78–79, 83–84 see also self-Orientalism Orientals. See Asian/Americans orientation films, 2, 9, 32, 36, 40, 115, 145, 168, 173, 204n.3, 208n.39 army correspondence regarding, 119–123 and national identity, 23, 116–117, 123–134, 166 production of, 3, 117–119, 174

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as propaganda, 118, 206n.20 versus “fiction” film, 119–122 see also Battle of China, The; Prelude to War; War Comes to America Osborn, Frederick, 117, 119–121, 122, 205n.13 Our Job in Japan, 115, 119, 145, 204–205n.5, 206n.19, 208n.42 Pacific Islanders, 20, 48, 138–139, 147, 149. See also Polynesia Pacific Islands. See South Seas Palin, Sarah, 213n.2 Panama, 35 Papua New Guinean, citizens of, in Capra films, 4, 209n.7 Pasteur, Louis, 41 Patagonia, 38 patriotism, 7, 27–30, 167 Pearl Harbor, 9, 116, 134, 145 Peterson, Edgar, 117 Philippines, 8, 9, 23, 155, 159, 163, 169–170 and American citizenship, 47, 138 American imperialism in, 20, 68, 94, 110–111, 112, 134, 135, 138, 166, 203n.68 Hollywood’s representation of Filipinos, 51 Manila, 163, 212n.43 in Submarine, 2, 22, 94, 110–111, 168 Zamboanga, 154, 212n.42, 212n.43 Pictorial Service, U.S. Army, 2, 23, 115–123, 126, 168, 205n.6

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Quota Act, 47–48, 65, 164, 190n.17 race, 48 and miscegenation, 49–51, 63–65, 79–80, 138–139 see also African/Americans; Asians; Asian/Americans; ethnicity;

Native Americans; whiteness Rain or Shine, 9, 21, 23, 36, 51–52, 54, 136, 140–141, 168, 169, 189n.8 Republic Pictures, 185n.8 reviews, of Capra films, 12, 19, 22, 26, 27, 50, 94, 95, 97–101 Riding High, 54, 160 Riskin, Robert, 12, 15–16, 18, 60, 183n.67 Rivkin, Alan, 117 Road to Singapore, The, 150, 212n.36 Rohmer, Sax, 48 Roman Holiday, 4, 178n.14 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 43, 95 Runyon, Damon, 160 Russia, 4, 38, 144, 161 citizens of, in Capra films, 4, 5, 55, 56, 101, 102, 104 and Russo-Japanese War, 191n.26 and World War II, 23, 115, 117, 123, 125, 128

INDEX

Platinum Blonde, 36–37, 39 Plato, 41 Pocketful of Miracles, 35, 66, 169, 170, 192n.37 adapted as Miracles, 159–160, 162, 164, 165 whites masquerading as Japanese/Americans, 21, 51, 52, 150, 162 Poland, citizens of, in Capra films, 4, 55, 56 Polish/Americans, 55 Polynesia, 8, 23, 145, 159, 209n.7 absence of Polynesians in Capra’s films, 136, 139, 145 and imperialism, 136, 137–138 and sexuality, 138–139, 143, 149, 151 whites masquerading as, 35, 139–142 see also Pacific Islanders; South Seas populism, 167, 187n.29 Portugal, citizens of, in Capra films, 56 Prelude to War, 21, 40, 115, 123–125, 167, 204n.3 Production Code. See censorship propaganda, 118, 125, 167, 199n.11. See also orientation films

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Sahara Desert, 161 Said, Edward, 10–12, 78, 85. See also Orientalism Sandler, Adam, 158 Sarris, Andrew, 2, 14, 93, 95, 173, 200n.16 Scorsese, Martin, 174 Scotland, citizens of, in Capra films, 56 Seiter, William A., 17 self-Orientalism, 11, 87 Selznick, David O., 121 Sen, Sun Yat, 128 249

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set design, 22, 57, 61, 97–100, 143–144, 152 Shakespeare, William, 41 Shanghai, 71–73, 111, 129, 160, 162, 194n.8 Chapei, 71–72, 73, 194n.8, 195n.15 French Concession, 129, 194n.8 International Settlement, 73, 129, 194n.8 Shanghai Express, 195n.17 Shangri-La as global community, 22, 112–113 and imperialism, 94, 103–109, 111–112, 166, 202n.33 set design of, 98–100 as utopian, 101–103, 109, 111–114, 115, 166, 168 see also Lost Horizon Siberia, 36 Sicily, 5, 25 Signal Corps, U.S. Army, 117, 205n.6, 206n.24 Simpsons, The, 158 Sino-Japanese War, 72, 73–74, 96, 103, 120, 195n.15, 201n.39 Sirk, Douglas, 18 Slovakia, citizens of, in Capra films, 56 Socialism, 167 Song to Remember, A, 178n.14 South Seas, 209n.4 as Capra trademark, 2, 23, 35–36, 139, 156, 167, 169 definition of, 8–9, 136 in Hemo the Magnificent, 150–152 in A Hole in the Head, 153, 154, 155 in It Happened One Night, 142–143

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in It’s a Wonderful Life, 147–149 and patriarchy, 105, 137, 148–149 and sexuality, 35, 137–139, 140–141, 143–145, 149, 151, 168 see also Pacific Islanders; Polynesia Soviet, 4, 5 Spain citizens of, in Capra films, 4, 35, 36, 48, 51–52, 56, 66, 145, 162, 164 and the Spanish-American War, 68, 110 Spielberg, Steven, 28 Stanwyck, Barbara, 12, 79 star system, 12, 17, 159, 160, 161, 173, 214n.8 State of the Union, 21, 34, 38–39, 41–42, 54, 55, 165, 197n.46, 208–209n.3 Stone, Grace Zaring, 72, 78, 79, 88 Strong Man, The, 23, 34, 35, 55, 125, 136, 139–141, 147 studio system, 4, 12, 13, 14, 17–18, 117, 174 Submarine, 2, 22, 67, 94, 110–111, 168 suicide, 82, 88–89, 90, 103, 197n.46 Sweden, citizens of, in Capra films, 56, 79, 173 Swerling, Jo, 12 Switzerland, citizens of, in Capra films, 56 Tabu, 141 Tahiti, 36, 137, 142–143, 146–147, 150–151, 153, 156, 209n.6 Taoism, 102

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United Kingdom. See Britain United Nations, 38, 41 United States of America. See America Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 38 Uruguay, 35 utopia, 22, 101–103, 109, 111, 112, 153, 166, 168, 199n.11 Vale, Eugene, 182n.59 Veiller, Anthony, 118 Venezuela, citizens of, in Capra films, 40, 41 Vidor, Charles, 178n.14 Vorkapich, Slavko, 18, 30 Wales, citizens of, in Capra films, 56 Walker, Joseph, 18

Wallace, Henry A., 123 War Comes to America, 56, 115, 121, 165 Warner Bros., 17, 121, 193n.51 Washington, D.C., 30, 117, 149 Washington, George, 30–31, 39–41, 128 Way of the Strong, The, 197n.46 West, the, 20, 72, 76, 90–91, 168–169, 171 definition of, 9, 11, 85, 113, 123, 136, 166 embodied, 22, 77, 78–79, 81, 83–84, 86 and militarism, 48–49, 75, 168 see also Orientalism Westernization, 75, 83–84, 86, 109 White House, 30, 41, 54, 69, 158 whiteness, 7, 44, 138, 179n.28, 190n.13 and assimilation, 57 and “Yellow Peril,” 46, 65, 75 White Shadows of the South Seas, 141 “Why We Fight” series. See orientation films Wilson, John V., 77–78 Wilson, Woodrow, 31 Wong, Anna May, 51, 80, 174 Wong, Mr. James Lee, 49 World War I, 5, 36, 109 World War II Capra’s fiction films and, 40–41, 66, 95, 143, 145, 147, 166–167, 168, 169 Japanese/American internment, 133

INDEX

Tarantino, Quentin, 174 television, 13, 17, 150, 157, 185n.8, 212n.37, 213n.5. See also Hemo the Magnificent Texas, 56 That Certain Thing, 34 Tibet, 22, 93, 95, 98, 99, 100, 104, 108, 109, 112, 150, 168, 199n.15 Tiomkin, Dmitri, 18 transnationalism, 7, 24, 96, 159–165, 171, 173–175 Tunisian Victory, 3, 115, 173, 178n.11, 205n.6, 215n.24 Twain, Mark, 39 Two Down and One to Go! 115, 131, 145, 204n.5 Tydings-McDuffie Act, 110

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FRANK CAPRA’S EASTERN HORIZONS

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Pacific Front, 9, 145, 204n.5 postwar, 20, 23, 38, 41, 47, 135, 145, 148–149, 151, 154, 156, 167, 169, 190n.20 race and, 116, 132–133 see also orientation films Wright, Frank Lloyd, 98, 100 Wyler, William, 178n.14 yellowface, 22, 50–51, 67–68, 80–81, 83, 110

252

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“Yellow Peril,” 46–48, 65, 75, 79, 80–81, 133, 138, 190n.14 You Can’t Take It With You, 21, 27, 33, 34, 39, 54, 55, 109–110, 165, 182n.52, 193n.46 Younger Generation, The, 56–57 Your Job in Germany, 115 Zamboanga, Philippines, 154, 212n.42, 212n.43 Zangwill, Israel, 43 Zedong, Mao, 72, 122