Cinema: The New Pictures: Aug. 31, 1931

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Daughter of the Dragon (Paramount) shows the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (Warner Oland) far less insidious than he seemed in the stories of Sax Rohmer, engaged in homicide on an ambitious scale but in a manner too placid to be awful. Brought to his deathbed early in the picture, he charges his daughter (Anna May Wong) to continue his program of extermination. This she attempts to do, in the case of a British aristocrat and his son, who falls in love with her. She is hindered by the ministrations of a Chinese detective, who loves her also but does not permit affection to interfere with professional obligations. The picture, lacking the thickly gruesome atmosphere contrived by Author Sax Rohmer, is further handicapped by poor dialog and ineffective acting; the blood that is spilled in it seems scarcely as thick as water. Ablest members of the cast are the orientals—Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa, who has not made a picture in Hollywood since 1921. After disbanding the company he had formed to make pictures featuring himself, Cinemactor Hayakawa acted in English and French cinemas, wrote a novel, played a brief dramatization of it in vaudeville. For the last year he has been acting in Japan—an unprecedented feat since Japanese stage tradition required that an actor come from a family of actors, and the father of Sessue Hayakawa was a provincial governor. His repertory in Tokyo included Honorable Mr. Wang, in Japanese costume; Seventh Heaven, in Japanese language, European clothes; and his own translation of The Three Musketeers.