Image: “Just a Little Longer,” illustrated by Keye Luke for Harold Weeks Melody Shop. Credit: Mary Mallory.
Note: This is an encore post from 2011.
Keye Luke, the talented and respected Chinese American actor, is probably best known to moviegoers and television viewers as the Number One son Lee Chan in 1930s Charlie Chan movies, as well as the role of Po in the 1970s TV show “Kung Fu.” Little do most people realize that he was also a talented artist whose job as an illustrator led to his career in acting.
As Charles Caldwell Dobie wrote in “The San Franciscan” in 1928, “Some twenty-five years ago, a young Chinese merchant who was born in San Francisco, upheld his native tradition by returning to China for a bride. He chose, or possibly his parents chose for him, a maiden with the charming name of Golden Chrysanthemum who lived in a village just outside of Canton bearing the equally charming name of Joyous People… As a result of this union, during the Festival of Rice Cakes, the little village of Joyous People found its population increased by the arrival of a prospective male citizen who was given the name of Keye Luke.”Hollywood at Play, by Donovan Brandt, Mary Mallory and Stephen X. Sylvester is now on sale.
After a two-year absence due to the Covid pandemic, the TCM Classic Film Festival triumphantly returned to Hollywood, four-day nirvana for vintage film fans. The festival joyfully celebrated classic cinema, screening mostly 35-millimeter film prints on the big screen the way they were meant to be seen and happily reunited long-missed friends. Overloaded with films, special programming, and celebrity appearances, the event offered the opportunity to immerse oneself in the glamour of Golden Age Hollywood.
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