Chu Chin Chow

Chu Chin Chow was a well-known stage musical that started during the First World War years and lasted through the twenties and the thirties. Then mention of it suddenly stopped and was heard of no more. Of the songs used in the musical, only the Shoemaker's Song was catchy enough to survive outside the musical, and was covered by all kinds of musicians from trad jazz bands to Paul Robeson.

As others have said, the musical is set in Baghdad and is a variant of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. The costumes are exaggerated, with grotesque turbans and fezzes.

What is unusual for a British film is that the background music is almost non-stop. Often the background music has nothing to do with what is happening in the scene, and is thus more like Muzak in a supermarket or an elevator. This was sometimes done in early thirties films by First National/Warner Brothers. This is the first time I have encountered this in a British film.

The orchestration is adventurous and the higher pitches feature unusual instruments. These include domras that tremolo in the string section, and - soloing in the woodwind - are a sopranino recorder, and even an ocarina, to accentuate clownishness. As big jars, each containing a thief, are rolled into a pit, we hear the timpani making a thunderous noise - inappropriate due to the size of the jars, but unbelievably effective.

With one exception, the singers are not very good. The exception is the Australian basso profondo, Malcolm McEacharn, who is billed as "Jetsam," because he was a member of the Flotsam and Jetsam duo. An exceptionally rich and powerful voice that can reach down, down, down to depths that a basso cantate like myself can only dream about.

I have never seen anything quite like this in a British film of the period.

Sumptuous British Gainsborough Pictures production with a huge budget for its day ($500K) plays a lot like a cross between THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD and KISMET all bumbling through meters of silk and pearls on their way to a Gilbert and Sullivan convention.

Anna Mae Wong is just so beautiful and this very funny - delicious- farce is a pleasure to watch. Often referred to as an antique musical in that creaky British manner of 30s films - it is actually a lot better than that and viewers will find the whole concoction quite intoxicating. I am sure it did influence Hollywood and had Selznick known it was possible to make such a lavish fantasy musical I am sure he would have made in color too. Instead he made THE GARDEN OF ALLAH which this gives more than a veiled nod towards. Of course if Howard Hughes press-ganged RKO onto it we would have got ...huh? we did? oh yes...THE SON OF SINBAD. Chu Chin is good Chow. Enjoy!

Think of Michael Powell/the Korda brothers' Thief of Bagdad but better, even! An Arabian nights adventure but no stops for spectacle, rather a seamless story and an unrestrained telling almost unprecedented in British film. The sets are wonderful, there are songs popping up in the least expected places, the direction has a verve rarely seen elsewhere in British film and the story is adapted with guts and no fear that restraint (any) must be employed, as it usually is, it seems neccesarily, in British film. It's a film which goes all the way in all departments, astonishing for any age let alone for 1934, just a year after Korda's Private Lives of Henry VIII had opened things up a bit for Britfilm.

Michael Balcon certainly pulled out all the stops for his production. Originally conceived by Oscar Ashe as a combination of Christmas pantomime and operetta, based on the success of KISMET, it had become the West End's biggest wartime hit, as soldiers on leave flocked to see it -- with the censors reading the mail to and from their girlfriends, I imagine some of them felt the closest they could come to discussing what their plans would be "Get some tickets for the show and a hotel room since it will be too late to return home after. Bert said he and his girl had a great time."

In any case, the show not only played for over 2,000 performances, it toured for decades. The movie had to compete with that, so director Walter Forde had enormous sets built. Cinematographer Mutz Greenbaum keeps his camera moving constantly, and a great cast, including George Robey as Ali Baba, Fritz Kortner, Anna May Wong, Francis L. Sullivan, and Frank Cochrane reprising his role of "the Cobbler" from the original stage show, keep things hopping.

There are lots of complaints about British musicals, but considering MGM was about to enter on a series of stolid and very successful operettas starring Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy the following year, this lively example of the genre is a lot of fun.

CHU CHIN CHOW (1934) is one of the best films from Anna May Wong's British period. Disappointed that her career had been stuck in a succession of oriental vamp roles, she went to Europe and accepted an invitation from E. A. Dupont (director of VARIETY with Emil Jannings) to do PICCADILLY.

First filmed in 1925 with Betty Blythe, CHU CHIN CHOW is the Arabian Nights story of Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves, with musical numbers as you might expect to see them in a British music hall of the era---------including some pre-Busby Berkeley choreography. It was London's longest running musical and is given an elaborate screen adaptation. The production boasts sumptuous sets and lush cinematography, meant to suggest the Western view of the mysterious orient, and has a lavishness usually missing from the films of depression era Britain. The choreography, while interesting as a record of the time period, gave Busby Berkeley few sleepless nights.

An international cast, with wildly varying accents, lent CHU CHIN CHOW an odd otherworldly flavor, which fit nicely with the Arabian Nights fantasy. Besides the very beautiful and American Anna May Wong, the role of Ali Baba is played by comedian George Robey, known in Great Britain as "the Prime Minister of Mirth."

Austrian born Fritz Kortner brought a malicious enthusiasm to the role of Abu Hassan, the bandit chief. Kortner plays the part with his usual over-the-top expressionist style-------almost as if he were a very wicked little boy----------cruel and murderous one moment, cuddly and boyish the next. It was only in his American films that he approached a role with anything like restraint. He had been something of a popular curiosity in Europe for staging "eccentric" versions of Shakespeare. His right hand man in the film is Dennis Hoey, best known to American audiences as the baffled and long-suffering Inspector Lestrade opposite Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes.

Pearl Argyle, one of the most beautiful leading ladies in British films, has the romantic lead of Marjanah, but is best known for her appearance as Katherine Cabal opposite Raymond Massey in THINGS TO COME. The part of Abdullah, the singer with the very low voice, is the famous Mr. Jetsam (Malcolm McEachern), the deeper half of the popular singing duo of Flotsam and Jetsam.

Most amusing of all, though, is Francis L. Sullivan, who specialized in comically pompous and officious types, playing the Caliph toward the end of the film. The famous story told about him is from the early days when British television was still live. He was reputedly playing a passenger on a plane in flight, but had evidently forgotten his lines. On camera, he blithely ad-libbed to the passenger next to him, "Excuse me, this is my stop" and left the set. But whatever his eccentricities, he and his broad girth gave an immensely enjoyable performance in one of the most fondly remembered British films of the 30's.

Jay F.