MovieChat Forums > Lost Horizon (1937) Discussion > Lack of Asians in a story that takes pla...

Lack of Asians in a story that takes place in Asia

posted 7 years ago by [deleted]
2 replies | jump to latest

As I recall, the only Asians who appeared in this movie were the bandits. The young/old Manchu woman Lo-Tsen was nowhere to be seen.

What's up with that?

Was middle America of the time really not able to handle the idea of seeing Asian people depicted positively in a motion picture that took place in Asia? Or was the idea of white/Asian romance just too taboo? Well, the novel was already widely read and achieved high popularity among the American public, so the public apparently was perfectly OK with reading about it in book form.

Thoughts?

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

I guess I'll never know.

[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

The studios weren't going to go out and hire a bunch of free-lance Asian actors to play the Shangri-La-ians, not when they had tons of white actors and a makeup department under contract! Middle America would never know the difference!

It's probably just a money issue, money and thoughtlessness. Putting yellowface makeup on the white actors they already had under contract was the cheapest way to go, and it's not like anyone who mattered would object. And really, most Americans of that time had probably never seen a person of Asian descent in real life, and not many on the movie screen except for Anna May Wong and Emperor Hirohito. And they were so used to seeing white actors in Yellowface play Chinese or and other races that they probably expected it.