Film: The Rainbow Pass

The Rainbow Pass on YouTube

MGM, 1937, 10-minute short

Ching Wah Lee as Wong the farmer

Bessie Loo as Wong’s wife

Walter Soo Hoo as Wong’s son

Richard Loo as Chen Wen Li or Shen Wen Lai

James Zee-min Lee as Wong Pai Tong or Wang Pei Tung

Soo Yong as Tung Fong or Toong Fong

Buffalo Evening News (New York), October 14, 1936

Chinese Digest, October 23, 1936

The Young Companion, January 15, 1937

Ching Wah Lee

This scene was not in the film.

Soo Yong

Left to right: James Zee-min Lee, Soo Yong and Richard Loo.

This scene was not in the film.

James Zee-min Lee aimed arrow at Richard Loo.

James Zee-min Lee and Richard Loo (without arrow).

This scene was not in the film.

James Zee-min Lee, Soo Yong and Richard Loo (with arrow).

This scene was not in the film. 

 

Soo Yong and Richard Loo (with arrow).

Soo Yong battled James Zee-min Lee.

Film still in Theater Pictorial (1953)

Audience

Soo Yong with make-up artist was not in the film.

Spartanburg Herald (South Carolina)
October 21, 1937

Daily News-Journal (Wilmington, Ohio)

November 19, 1937

Fredonia Censor (New York)

December 31, 1937

Chattanooga Times (Tennessee)
March 10, 1938

Daily Alaska Empire (Juneau, Alaska)

August 17, 1938

Hongkong Telegraph 

November 6, 1939

 

 

Further Reading and Viewing

Internet Movie Database

Letterboxd

MGM Shorts Story, May-June 1938

From the Rollins Archives, Soo Yong

The 1937 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures

Secrets of the Chinese Drama (1937), photographs of Mei Lan-fang, in The Rainbow Pass, are here, here, here, and here.

 

 

(Next post on Wednesday: “An Evening in Cathay”, 1938–1939)