CHINA SKY (1945)

With its all-star cast of ‘YellowFace’ principals, the 1937 adaptation of Pearl Buck’s magnum opus THE GOOD EARTH/’37 makes uncomfortable modern-day viewing. (Same for DRAGON SEED/’44.) But this relatively modest effort is hardly an adequate substitute. Here, China & its people are merely exotic background to a love triangle between a female doctor at a Chinese clinic and the American doctor who got the hospital up and running, now returned from America with a new wife. Even as WWII erupts around them, and ‘Japs’ threaten to overrun the town, these three play out romantic jealousy tropes until Randolph Scott’s handsome doc notices he married the wrong dame! Under journeyman megger Ray Enright, lady doc Ruth Warrick & bitchy bride Ellen Drew telegraph their entire character arcs at first glance, so the film drags even at 80 minutes. Anthony Quinn & Carol Thurston get the only two Yellowface spots (she almost passes; Tony’s cosmetic Asian eye-lid crease defeats his face), but at least the other Asian roles are cast with actual Asians, so that’s something. Just not enough.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Quinn, in real life Mexican/Irish, got away playing almost every ethnic type out there, generally without serious prosthetic help. Not here.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Buck’s THE GOOD EARTH, especially in its first half, still an impressive watch, though anyone under 35 may find the whole YellowFace concept not so much insulting as bizarre. Yet, even in dramatic roles, the custom lasted decades after the far more stylized BlackFace was laid to rest. It still shows up in comic mode, but does seem to have died out for drama back in the ‘80s.