Olive Young

Olivia Young was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on June 21, 1903, according to her August 2, 1922 testimony at the Immigration Service, Kansas City, Missouri. A copy of the testimony was in her Chinese Exclusion Act case file and obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration branch in Seattle, Washington. This file also had a copy of her birth certificate.

Her father, Dr. Mung Fung Young, had been a resident of Kansas City, Missouri since 1896, according to an advertisement in the Kansas City Star (Missouri), July 14, 1908 (below).

Dr. Young advertised in the Star as early as 1900; below are two advertisements dated February 19, and October 23, 1900.

The Leader (Guthrie, Oklahoma), February 17, 1900, reported that Dr. Young had sued the railroad for discrimination. Dr. Young expressed his opinion on the Boxer Revolution to the Kansas City Journal; the article was reprinted in the Indianapolis Journal, June 21, 1900.

Dr. Young and his family have not been found in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Federal Censuses; they may have been in China during the 1910 census.

In the 1919 article below, Olive had lived in Hong Kong for several years and thus spoke Cantonese. When the family returned to America, they stayed for a time in San Francisco before settling in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, where Olive aspired to be a writer.

The Evening Missourian

(Columbia, Missouri)

October 7, 1919

Olive was an independent, and perhaps impulsive, young woman as demonstrated in the following articles.

Kansas City Star

(Missouri)

September 9, 1920

Kansas City Star

September 11, 1920

Kansas City Star

October 2, 1920

How long Olive stayed in Salt Lake City, Utah is not known. At some point her attention turned to the visual and performing arts, and she moved to China.

Buffalo Evening News

(New York)

November 21, 1925

The World-Herald

(Omaha, Nebraska)

December 17, 1925

Asia
March 1926
photograph

“Olive Young, an American-born Chinese, is seen here grinding out a street scene in Canton. She is the first woman motion-picture-photographer to produce films in China.”

(The story behind the photograph can be read at the Soft Film post, Woman with a Movie Camera.)

Syracuse Journal

(New York)

September 30, 1926

The American Weekly

October 24, 1926

(Syracuse Journal Sunday supplement)

Cleveland Plain Dealer

(Ohio)

March 31, 1927

The Oregonian Sunday Magazine

(Portland, Oregon)

April 15, 1928

The American Weekly

November 17, 1928

page 21

(Milwaukee Sentinel Sunday supplement)

The American Weekly

August 4, 1929

(Syracuse Journal Sunday supplement)

On October 11, 1929, Olive departed Yokohama, Japan, aboard the S.S. Asama Maru. She had been living in Shanghai. Her arrival in Los Angeles, California, was October 29, 1929. Olive’s final destination was Kansas City, Missouri, where her uncle, Dr. C.B. Young, was at 315 West 12th Street.

The Oregonian

November 7, 1929

Trenton Evening Times

(New Jersey)

November 9, 1929

The World-Herald

November 10, 1929

Canton Repository

(Ohio)

November 15, 1929

Cleveland Plain Dealer

(Ohio)

November 17, 1929

Greensboro Record

(North Carolina)

November 26, 1929

The 1930 census recorded Olive in Los Angeles, California, at 1823 North Vine Street, Apartment 110. The twenty-six year-old was a film studio actress. Her father was born in California and her mother in China.

Rockford Register Gazette

(Illinois)

April 25, 1930

Seattle Daily Times

(Washington)

May 28, 1930

Seattle Daily Times

July 7, 1930

Seattle Daily Times

July 8, 1930

San Diego Union

(California)

November 6, 1930

San Diego Union

November 7, 1930

San Diego Union

November 16, 1930

San Diego Union

November 22, 1930

U.S. Department of Labor
Immigration Service
Form 430 Triplicate

Olive’s travel application was approved. According to her January 27, 1931 testimony, at the Immigration Service, Los Angeles, California, she intended to travel through San Ysidro, San Diego to visit Mexico. A copy of the testimony was in her Chinese Exclusion Act case file and obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration branch in Riverside, California.

Aberdeen Daily News

(South Dakota)

March 22, 1931

Canton Repository

October 28, 1932

Los Angeles Times
(California)
March 26, 1933

Olive was “being coached by Bud Murray in American songs and dances, to be used in her homeland cinema productions”. (from Soft Film’s Woman with a Movie Camera)

Around 1933 Olive married Alfred C.S. Lum, a Hawaiian native born August 21, 1902. Presumably they met in Missouri. In 1938, Lum was a senior at the Kansas City Western Dental College. Below are his photographs from the school yearbook, Bushwhacker, for 1937 and 1938. The 1940 census said he attended college for five years. According to the 1937 Bushwhacker, Lum attended the University of Southern California and San Jose State College before enrolling at Western Dental College.

 

The World-Herald

January 25, 1934

In 1934 Olive performed at Chicago’s World’s Fair, A Century of Progress, in the ethnic village, Streets of Shanghai. K. Bernard Kim, a Korean, was a Chicago restaurant operator.

The Chicago Tribune
July 1, 1934
Blossom Chan pictured in the
advertisement which is here.

Asia

October 1934

...In Old China it was highly offensive for a woman so much as to touch the hand of any man not her husband, and for her to touch even her husband’s hand in public was forbidden. In Young China, when unmarried couples began to associate in public in the western manner, they scrupulously observed the taboo against even the slightest physical contact; today, however, it is very common in Shanghai to see Chinese couples, eager to imitate screen heroes and heroines, walking along the street hand in hand or with their arms around each other, and “petting” in the parks is not unknown.

Another once unsanctioned familiarity between men and women is kissing. The kiss is by no means unknown in the East, but it never has been so extensively nor so casually indulged in as in the West. No longer than ten years ago a kiss in public was more shocking to the Chinese than nudism probably still is to most Americans. Early Chinese motion pictures contained no kissing scenes; such a display in public in western motion pictures was enough of a sensation without any defiance of the national code by Chinese actors and actresses. In 1926, however, Olive Young, an American-born Chinese cinema star, ventured a kiss that was shown only in silhouette through a semitransparent screen. Chinese audiences gasped when they saw it...

Nashua Reporter

(Iowa)

October 31, 1934

According to the 1940 census, Olive resided in Topeka, Kansas in 1935.

Augusta Chronicle
June 2, 1935

Augusta Chronicle
June 5, 1935

The Sandusky Register
(Ohio)
September 15, 1935

...Another unusual feature of the revue is the Chinese girl singer, Olive Young Lum, combining oriental song numbers and renditions of popular American songs...

Buffalo Courier Express

(New York)

April 10, 1936

Buffalo Courier Express

April 12, 1936

Buffalo Courier Express

April 18, 1936

Buffalo Courier Express

April 19, 1936

Buffalo Courier Express
April 23, 1936

Buffalo Courier Express

April 26, 1936

Buffalo Courier Express

April 27, 1936

New-Journal
(Mansfield, Ohio)
May 1, 1936
...Club Circus...Olive Young Lum, Chinese singer...

Buffalo Courier Express

May 3, 1936

Richmond Times Dispatch

(Virginia)

December 8, 1937

Richmond Times Dispatch

December 10, 1937
see second column

1939 Kansas City, Missouri
City Directory
Olive and her husband were named in the listing.

In the 1940 census, thirty-six year-old Olive was counted twice. Under the name “Olive Young”, she resided in New York City at the Hotel Somerset, 150 West 47th Street. Her profession was singer in the theater industry and she earned twelve-hundred-and-twenty dollars in 1939 for 30 weeks of work. She had two years of high school education.

Olive’s other residence was Kansas City, Missouri, at 313A East 12th Street. Her name was recorded as “Olive Lum”.

New York Sun

October 3, 1940

The New York Times

October 5, 1940

Bayonne, N.J., Oct. 4 (AP)—Olive Young of New York, American-born former motion-picture actress whose parents were Chinese, died today in Bayonne Hospital at the age of 37. Death was caused by pneumonia which followed her collapse on Sunday, after she had appeared as a singer in a night club floor show.

According to the Social Security Death Index, Alfred Lum passed away January 9, 2002, in Hawaii.

• • •

An illustrated profile of Young is at The Chiseler.

Photographs of Young and an annotated filmography can be viewed at Soft Film:
The Enigma of Olive Young
Looking for Olive Young 楊愛立
Olive Young 楊愛立: An Annotated Filmography (1925-1932)

Photographs of Young can be viewed at Orientally Yours, and in Chinese in Hollywood (2013).

Additional information and photographs of Young are at The Chinese Mirror.

Young is mentioned in the 2012 book, Hollywood Unknowns: A History of Extras, Bit Players, and Stand-Ins.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) stated incorrectly that Young was born in 1907.

(Updated January 7, 2014; today’s post supports Arthur Dong’s upcoming exhibition, “Forbidden City, USA: Chinese American Nightclubs, 1936-1965.”; next post January 10: Florence Hin Low)