The lack of revenue in Shanghai has for a great deal been due to the rebuilding of our second-run theater, the Isis Theater. This theater is located in Chinese territory and suffered very much from the strict Chinese martial law regulations.
By a smart operation Mr. Lo Kan bought last winter a strip of land behind the theater facing one of the principal streets in the International Settlement and rebuilt the theater in such a manner that it now will have its entrance from the International Settlement and no doors leading out to the Chinese territory, whereby it will not suffer from the Chinese military troubles.160
This is an excerpt of the General Report in October 1927 to Arthur W. Kelly, vice president and treasurer of the United Artists, written by John Albeck, the third managing director of the UA office in the Far East since 1922. The office was expected to submit a monthly report to its headquarters in New York regarding the political, economical, social, and cultural events that had affected the operation of each branch office in the East and Southern Asian countries.161
160 John Albeck to Arthur Kelly, November 20, 1927, O’Brien, 95/5, UAC.
In the company’s monthly review regarding the film business in China, Shanghai had always
161 The countries that the UA office in Tokyo covers include Japan, China, the Philippine Islands, and India.
November 20, 1927, O’Brien, 95/5, UAC.
been a major focus as it was the hub of film industry in China. Moreover, run by Alexander Krisel, a cunning and diligent lawyer of intellectual property, the UA Shanghai Office could be considered as the most efficient one among UA branch offices in Asia. Unlike the reports in 1922, those in 1923 and after no longer address the issue of piracy, one issue that I have examined in Chapter One. Instead, factors that might affect regular distribution business were more often reported.
The above-mentioned passage also describes one of the many daily activities that the Shanghai office of the United Artists did on a daily basis: in order to bypass the Chinese martial law, Lo Kan, a British citizen who worked for Krisel, made the entrance of the Isis Theatre face Sichuan Road, a busy street in the International Settlement, therefore, relocating the Isis Theatre from the martial-law controlled Chinese territory to the less restricted International Settlement.
Of the city’s three regions including the International Settlement, the French Concession, and the Chinese territory, the International Settlement was known for its better management and greater freedom. As each region was supposed to be governed under its own laws and regulations, a business in the International Settlement was only subject to the laws and regulations made by the Shanghai Municipal Council, an Anglo-American government established in 1854 for the management and development of the Shanghai International Settlement.162
162 R.S. Gundry, “the Status of the Shanghai Municipality,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, 3d ser., 2:1 (1920): 52. According to him, when the council was first formed in 1854, French consul was also one member. Later, the France withdrew from the council, and had control over its own French Concession.
Despite the fact that there was no gate between the two foreign sectors, there were gates between the International Settlement and the Chinese territory. Whenever a martial law was enforced, the gates between the two regions would be shut, which prevented pedestrians from passing freely. As a martial law was frequently carried out in the Chinese territory, movie theatres in that region were often
closed before nine o’clock in the evening, which apparently hurt late business. Through the renovation, Lo Kan managed to bypass Chinese martial law. Later, in an announcement in a fan magazine in Shanghai, he covered up his real reason for changing the direction of the door by saying that it was out of convenience that the door would be moved from the Qiujiang Road to the Sichuan Road. The notice, together with a picture of the old door says, “it is decided that the door of the movie theatre will be rebuilt so that audience will be able to enter from Sichuan Road directly instead of turning from Qiujiang Road.” Obviously, changing the door’s location made a difference in business because the theatre would not to conform to curfews as it used to do.163
In an article on the activities of Hollywood agents in China, Zhiwei Xiao mentions several major functions Paramount offices in China served including “dealing with local censors, providing feedback to headquarters in New York about the performance of American films, collecting data about China’s film market, supervising Chinese theaters contracted to show American films, handling the profits, etc.”
Lo Kan’s tactic is a good case in point that illustrates the daily operation and function of a Hollywood major’s branch.
164
163 China Film Pictorial 7 (July 1, 1927): 51.
Obviously, Lo Kan’s behavior can be broadly categorized as practicing supervision over a contracted theatre. As Hollywood monopolized the Chinese film market through its distributing system rather than through directly investing in building movie theatres, it was crucial for a Hollywood agent to establish a cinema chain with first, second, and third-run theatres and to supervise them closely. In her article, Marie Cambon discusses the ownership of movie theatres in Shanghai between the early 1920s and mid-1940s.
According to her, in the 1920s, few movie theatres were American owned, “there were actually
164 Zhiwei Xiao, “Hollywood in China, 1897-1950: A Preliminary Survey,” Chinese Historical Review 12:1 (Spring 2005): 71-96.
very few American-owned, or even foreign owned, theatres in Shanghai by the thirties.”165
As mentioned in the previous chapter, Hollywood major studios started their global expansion during and after World War I. The international market including China was extensively tapped by Hollywood in the late 1910s and early 1920s, as evidenced by an increasing number of American film exports. According to Thomas Guback, in 1913, the United States exported about 32 million feet of motion pictures to the world; in 1923, the amount increased to 128 million feet, and by 1925 the amount almost doubled to 235 million feet. During over two decades, “American film exports increased fivefold to Europe and tenfold to the other parts of the world, as the industry developed markets in the Far East, Latin American, and in a few parts of Africa.”
It seems that Cambon uses the three phrases “foreign-owned,” “American-owned,” and
“Hollywood studio-owned” interchangeably. Actually, as I discussed in Chapter One, in the early and middle 1920s, Antonio Ramos, a Spanish businessman in Shanghai owned many movie theatres in the city. Therefore, most movie theatres in that period in Shanghai were foreign owned if not owned by Hollywood studios.
166
165 Marie Cambon, “The Dream Palaces of Shanghai: American Films in China’s Largest Metropolis Prior to 1949,”
Asian Cinema (Winter 1995): 38.
Comparing two groups of figures: —U.S. exports of films to China about 190,000 feet in 1913 and U.S. exports of films to the world some 32 million feet in 1913; U.S.
exports of films to China around 6 million feet in 1925 and U.S. exports of films to the world 235 million feet in 1925—we can find that the percentage of U.S. export of motion pictures to China increased from around 0.6 percent in 1913 of its film export to the world to 2.5 percent in 1925. The percentage increased almost five times. The percentage increased, however, not as big as the industry developed markets in some other parts of the Far East, Latin American, and some
166 Thomas H. Guback, “Hollywood’s International Market,” in The American Film Industry, ed. Tino Balio, (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 465.
parts of Africa.167 Kristin Thompson confirms in her book that “In spite of China’s huge population, the market was relatively small.”168 However, in the small market, American films took a big share, which is around 90 percent of the 1920s Chinese film market. Thompson quoted estimate by Luther M. Jee, a Chinese distributor and film-maker in the 1920s, who observed that of the 450 films shown in China in 1926, over 400 were American films and around 50 were Chinese films.169
With a growing number of American film exports every year, Hollywood started to set up its own agents and offices to distribute films all over the world including China. According to Zhiwei Xiao, it was Universal that first established its branch office in China. “By the mid 1920s, Columbia, First National, Fox Paramount, RKO, United Artists, and Warner Brothers all followed suit” in setting up branch offices.170
167 Zhiwei Xiao, “Hollywood in China, 1897-1950: A Preliminary Survey,” Chinese Historical Review (Shixue Pinglun) 12:1 (Spring 2005): 77.
While the reports from UA’s Eastern Asia office confirmed the lead Universal took in China, they indicated a smaller number of Hollywood branch offices in China: in early 1927, Universal and Fox were the only two majors’ that had their offices in China, while the other American distributors only had their agents in Shanghai.
Peacock Motion Picture Corporation was an agent for the First National. Pictures of the Warner Brothers and of Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin were distributed by the Pathé. The Odeon Theatre handled Paramount productions, and the Klein-Kwei Orient Company handled those of Columbia’s. And the Krisel and Krisel was an agent for the United Artists. By the late 1920s, Hollywood’s majors started to merge. For instance, MGM merged with the Far Eastern
168 Kristin Thompson, Exporting Entertainment: America in the World Film Market, 1907-34 (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1985), 143.
169 Thompson, Exporting Entertainment, 144.
170 Xiao, “Hollywood in China,” 77.
Headquarters of the UA on September 1, 1929.171 According to the agreement between the two American film companies, the MGM started to take over some of the UA operations in Asia including five offices in Tokyo, one in Singapore, and one in Korea. Understandably, Krisel and Krisel, the one in Shanghai, was not included in the merging of the two distributors because as an agent, it did not belong to the UA company.172 However, the merger actually expanded the business for the Krisels as it gave the Shanghai agent more first-run films to sell.173
Before getting into details of Hollywood film distribution business in 1920s Shanghai, I will examine the reasons why Shanghai became China’s center of culture and entertainment. In his article called “Early Film Industry in Shanghai and the Course of Shanghai Modernization,”
Chaoguang Wang examines the city’s development in the 1920s. According to him, the film industry in late 1910s and 1920s Shanghai was part of the city’s modernization and industrialization process. Shanghai became a birthplace for China film industry for several reasons. First, Shanghai had a large population of immigrants from both home and abroad.
Second, unlike some other big cities like Beijing, Shanghai was not dominated by traditional Chinese literary men and gentry, instead, small urbanities (xiao shimin) formed an urban culture characterized by a pursuit of new and Western ideas and images. Also, as China’s commercial and financial center, Shanghai saw a rising middle and upper class who interacted with foreigners at work and who was more ready to enjoy Hollywood movies. Finally, as a semi-colonial city, the large number of foreign population was also potential audiences of movies.174
171 United Artists Corporation to Christopher Dunphy, “Proposed Plan for the Acquisition by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation of United Artists Corporation of Far East,” June 21, 1929, O’Brien, 157/10, UAC.
Aside from the above-mentioned reasons regarding potential audiences of American films in
172 Ibid.
173 Edmund H. Benson to Arthur Kelley, September 10, 1928, O’Brien, 95/4, UAC.
174 Chaoguang Wang, “Early Film Industry in Shanghai and the Course of Shanghai Modernization,” Archives and History 3 (2003): 29.
Shanghai, there are other factors that contributed to Hollywood’s popularity in the city.175 First, as a port city with its convenient transportation to other parts of China and of the world, Shanghai was the hub of trade and transportation. Second, as almost all film distributing companies were located in the International Settlement, they were seldom affected by the local Chinese laws, which enabled them to maintain a steady business. Next, with its first movie theatre established in 1908, the city had seen a fair number of movie-goers by the 1920s, which made film distribution a profitable business. Finally, 1920s Shanghai was also the center of the Chinese film industry as evidenced by nearly two hundred Chinese films that were produced in the city.176 Also, for foreign entrepreneurs, the city’s positive attitude towards foreign business made it more attractive. For example, when Isaac O. Upham first came to China in 1919 with the intention of establishing a film distribution company called Oriental Pictures Corporation, his first choice was Beijing, where the American Legation was located. However, after an unresponsive presentation to the potential investors in Beijing, he decided to go to Shanghai to try his luck because he believed that people there were “more used to foreign ways of doing business.”177 Eventually, Upham managed to open a business in Shanghai dealing with Chinese films in overseas market.178
In 1920s semi-colonial Shanghai, film distribution became an important business in film industry. Following the narration of the first chapter, I will focus upon a Hollywood agent’s activities in Shanghai, mainly using United Artists as a case study, based upon such primary
175 William W. Lockwood, Jr. “The International Settlement at Shanghai, 1924-1934,” American Political Science Review 28:6 (Dec. 1934): 1031. According to him, geographic, historical, and political factors combined to make Shanghai one of China’s most important cities in modern history.
176 Kann, Atsu, Benjamin Cheng, and D.S. Chen, 1927 China Film Yearbook (Shanghai: Dadong Printing House 1927). By January 1927, over one hundred and seventy Chinese films were produced in Shanghai.
177 LWM (Acting Commercial Attache, American Legation in Beijing) to director of the Bureau of the Foreign and Domestic Commerce, December 4, 1919, National Archive and Registration Administration (NARA), 281, RG-59.
178 1927 China Cinema Yearbook.
sources as the company’s records and the 1927 China Cinema Yearbook, this chapter will investigate Hollywood majors’ branch offices in Shanghai, their daily activities, and functions, as well as the communication between a branch and its home office. In so doing, this chapter will be divided into three parts: in the first part, I will give a general picture of the Hollywood’s major offices in 1920s Shanghai, including their locations and their developments; then, I will examine the distributing practice of an agent; finally, using the United Artists Shanghai office as an example, I will examine their daily activities and functions in distributing American films in Shanghai and other parts of China. Again, as mentioned in the first chapter, I use the United Artists as a case study mainly for two reasons: availability of primary sources of the company and popular films it distributed in China, which can help us get a relatively complete picture of Hollywood business (distribution, exhibition, and reception) in the city.