June 25 movie: The Crimson Kimono. James Shigeta's first movie, this was a detective story and a love triangle. Shigeta and Glenn Corbett are partners and best friends who fall for the same woman, Victoria Shaw. Also starred the wonderful Anna Lee as a modern artist and modern woman, Hollywood style. In her first scene she sprays beer on an abstract canvas, laughs and declares it "Nude Attending Celestial Bodies!"
In terms of depictions of Asian Americans, this movie was a case of two steps forward, one step back. On the one hand, the romance between Shigeta and and Shaw is portrayed in a positive light. As is a fascinating look at the "little Tokyo" neighborhood in LA. On the other, when racism comes up in the movie, it's presented as being all in Shigeta's imagination. The movie seems to be suggesting that in 1959 white Americans were completely free of racism, and if only those pesky ethnic people would stop imagining things and get over it. Which, um, yeah. Also straining credulity is when Shigeta says he had never once experienced racism before. As TCM's guest expert pointed out, the character would have been 10 or 11 when the war broke out, and would have been in an internment camp. I think that being imprisoned based solely on one's race counts as experiencing racism.
The best thing about the movie is James Shigeta. He said in The Slanted Screen that during the filming of Flower Drum Song a studio exec told him he would have been a huge star if he had been white. He really did have a movie star quality about him. I found a nice tribute on Youtube with clips from a bunch of his movies:
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