Shanghai Express is a 1932 American pre-Code film about a group of train passengers held hostage by a warlord during the Chinese Civil War. It was directed by Josef von Sternberg and stars Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong and Warner Oland. The screenplay was written by Jules Furthman based on a 1931 short story by Harry Hervey. Shanghai Express was the fourth of seven films that Sternberg and Dietrich created together.
The year 1949 in film involved some significant events.
Robert Preston Meservey was an American stage and film actor and singer of Broadway and cinema, best known for his collaboration with composer Meredith Willson and originating the role of Professor Harold Hill in the 1957 musical The Music Man and the 1962 film adaptation; the film earned him his first of two Golden Globe Award nominations. Preston collaborated twice with filmmaker Blake Edwards, first in S.O.B. (1981) and again in Victor/Victoria (1982). For portraying Carroll "Toddy" Todd in the latter, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 55th Academy Awards.
Wong Liu-tsong, known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio. As one of the first women depicted on the reverse of the quarter in the 2022-2025 American Women quarters series, she will also be the first Asian American to appear on US currency.
Takeshi Kaneshiro is a Japanese-Taiwanese actor and singer. Beginning his career as a teen pop idol, he has since moved his focus towards the film industry, where he achieved both commercial success and critical acclaim. He has worked with some of the most renowned directors in East Asia, namely, Wong Kar Wai, Peter Chan, Zhang Yimou and John Woo. Kaneshiro is also well known in the gaming industry for being the model and voice for the samurai character, Samanosuke Akechi, in Capcom’s Onimusha video game series.
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is a 1944 American war film produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by Dalton Trumbo is based on the 1943 book of the same name by Captain Ted W. Lawson. Lawson was a pilot on the historic Doolittle Raid, America's first retaliatory air strike against Japan, four months after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The raid was planned, led by, and named after United States Army Air Forces Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, who was promoted two ranks, to Brigadier General, the day after the raid.
Steven Geray was a Hungarian-born American film actor who appeared in over 100 films and dozens of television programs. Geray appeared in numerous famed A-pictures, including Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) and To Catch a Thief (1955), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950), and Howard Hawks' Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). However, it was in film noir that be became a fixture, being cast in over a dozen pictures in the genre. Among them were The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), Gilda (1946), The Unfaithful (1947), In a Lonely Place (1950), and The House on Telegraph Hill (1951).
Ernst Deutsch, also known as Ernest Dorian, was a Jewish Austrian actor. In 1916, his performance as the protagonist in the world première of Walter Hasenclever's Expressionist play The Son in Dresden was praised. Deutsch also played the antihero Famulus in Paul Wegener's The Golem: How He Came into the World in 1920. He is known by English-speaking audiences for his role as Baron Kurtz in Carol Reed's 1949 film noir, The Third Man.
Ellen Drew was an American film actress.
Flight 93 is a 2006 television film, directed by Peter Markle, which chronicles the events onboard United Airlines Flight 93 during the September 11 attacks in 2001. It premiered on January 30, 2006, on the A&E Network and was re-broadcast several times throughout 2006.
Air Force is a 1943 American World War II aviation film directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Garfield, John Ridgely, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, and Harry Carey. The film was distributed by Warner Bros. and produced by Hal B. Wallis and Jack L. Warner. Made in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, it was one of the first of the US patriotic films, sometimes referred to as wartime propaganda.
Peking Express is a 1951 Film-noir crime, thriller, action, adventure film made by Paramount Pictures. It is the second remake of Paramount's earlier Shanghai Express (1932), remade as Night Plane from Chungking (1943) and the first film to be set in the newly emerged People's Republic of China (PRC). It was directed by William Dieterle and produced by Hal B. Wallis, from a screenplay by John Meredyth Lucas, based on the original screenplay by Jules Furthman and Harry Hervey. The film stars Joseph Cotten, Corinne Calvet and Edmund Gwenn with Marvin Miller.
The Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943) is a Universal movie serial based on the popular comic strip The Adventures of Smilin' Jack by Zack Mosley. It was directed by Lewis D. Collins and Ray Taylor.
XXX: Return of Xander Cage is a 2017 American action thriller film directed by D.J. Caruso and written by F. Scott Frazier. The film stars Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Kris Wu, Ruby Rose, Tony Jaa, Nina Dobrev, Toni Collette, Ariadna Gutiérrez, Hermione Corfield, and Samuel L. Jackson. It is the third installment in the XXX film series and a sequel to both XXX (2002) and XXX: State of the Union (2005).
Hans Steinhoff was a German film director, best known for the propaganda films he made in the Nazi era.
Paul Richter was an Austrian film actor. He owed his great popularity in German films of the silent era largely to the directors Joe May and Fritz Lang.
China Sky is a 1945 RKO Pictures film based on the novel by Pearl S. Buck. It was directed by Ray Enright and featured movie idol Randolph Scott, teamed with Ruth Warrick, Ellen Drew and Anthony Quinn. Although set in wartime China, Quinn and other lead actors portrayed Chinese characters, in keeping with other period films that employed Caucasian actors in Asian roles.
Wu Yin was a Chinese film and drama actress active from the 1930s to 1990. She appeared in 45 films and 48 plays, most notably in the classics The Spring River Flows East (1947), Myriad of Lights (1948), and Crows and Sparrows (1949). Famous for playing roles of older women, she was dubbed the "First Old Lady" of Chinese cinema. In 2005 she was chosen as one of the 100 best actors of the 100 years of Chinese cinema.
The Kweilin incident occurred on August 24, 1938 when a Douglas DC-2 airliner named Kweilin carrying 18 passengers and crew was shot down by Japanese aircraft in China. There were fourteen fatalities. It was the first civilian airliner in history to be shot down by hostile aircraft. The pilot was American and the crew and passengers Chinese. As it was unprecedented for a civilian aircraft to be attacked, there was international diplomatic outrage over the incident. In the United States, it helped solidify the view that Japan was morally wrong in their war against China, but the incident was not enough to spur the US into action against Japan despite Chinese entreaties. The Kweilin was rebuilt, renamed as the Chungking and destroyed by the Japanese in a second attack two years later.
W. Rhoads Murphey was a geographer and historian of Asia who taught at University of Washington, Seattle, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He served for many years as executive director of the Association for Asian Studies, and in 1987-88 as its president. He was editor of the Journal of Asian Studies.
