James B. Leong

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James B. Leong
Leong But-jung (James B. Leong).jpg
Born
Leong But-jung

November 2, 1889
Shanghai, China
DiedDecember 16, 1967
Los Angeles, California, USA
EducationIndiana State University
OccupationActor, director
Spouse(s)Agatha Tarwater (m. 1934)

James B. Leong (born Leong But-jung and sometimes credited as Jimmy Leong) was a Chinese-American character actor and filmmaker who had a long career in Hollywood beginning during the silent era.

James was born in Shanghai, and he moved to the United States with his parents when he was young.[1] He graduated from college in Muncie, Indiana, in 1915[2] and briefly worked at a newspaper before moving to Hollywood, where he worked at first as a technical director for filmmakers like D. W. Griffith and Wesley Ruggles.[1][3][4]

By 1919, he had started his own production company — James B. Leong Productions, later known as the Wah Ming Motion Picture Company — to show Chinese life as it really was.[5] (He had grown tired of seeing Chinese people portrayed as kidnappers and assassins on the screen.)[6] Under this banner, he wrote and directed the 1921 film Lotus Blossom.[7] He said he planned to write and direct four films a year, but this doesn't seem to have come to fruition. (A planned follow-up, The Unbroken Promise, doesn't seem to have been filmed.)[8][9]

Instead, he appears to have taken on work as an actor: Over the ensuing decades, he'd play more dozens of smaller roles in Hollywood films, and also continue to work as a technical director and dialect coach.[10] He also appears to have earned a good deal of money as a grower of silk crops in the 1940s.[11][12]

He married Agatha Tarwater in 1934; the pair had a son together. Leong became a U.S. citizen in 1958.[1]

Selected filmography[]

As writer-director

As producer

  • (1937)

As actor

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Veteran Chinese Actor Becomes U.S. Citizen". The Los Angeles Times. 26 July 1958. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  2. ^ "Young Chinese, Former Student Here, in City to Exhibit Film Play". The Muncie Evening Press. 22 August 1921. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  3. ^ "Shadowgrams". The Wausau Daily Herald. 21 June 1920. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  4. ^ "Brief Notes of Movie Land". The Casper Star-Tribune. 10 December 1922. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  5. ^ "The Silent Drama". The Cincinnati Enquirer. 26 June 1921. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  6. ^ "Movie Notes". The Austin American-Statesman. 10 April 1921. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  7. ^ "The Real China on Celluloid". The Los Angeles Times. 13 June 1920. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  8. ^ "Secrets of the Movies Revealed". The Evening News. 13 January 1922. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  9. ^ "Camera Chatter". The Oakland Tribune. 10 December 1922. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  10. ^ "Behind the Scenes in Hollywood". The Ottawa Journal. 20 January 1934. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  11. ^ "United States, China Weaving a Silken Noose for Japan's Doomed Industry". The Moline Dispatch. 6 May 1943. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  12. ^ "Leong in "Blood Alley"". The El Paso Times. 16 October 1955. Retrieved 9 November 2019.

External links[]

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