Donegal Dawn (Secrets of Chinatown)

Created by Guy Morton

“You’re a white girl — what are you doing in a place like this?”

Dapper Vancouver, B.C. private eye DONEGAL DAWN is called in by the police commissioner, and reluctantly asked to look into the recent rash of “mysterious deaths” in Vancouver’s Chinatown after one of the commissioner’s own detectives is murdered in Secrets of Chinatown, a cheapie 1935 cheesie filmed on location.

Meanwhile, Dawn’s young partner Robert “Bob” Rand has it bad for Zenobia, a blonde-haired clerk working at Chan Tow Ling’s curio shop, despite Dawn’s warnings. But when both Robert and Zenobia disappear, Dawn suspects there’s more going on than a few tong killings.

Don’t expect a lost Canadian classic. This is strictly Grade B: a shaky plot, dubious acting and mostly meandering direction, capped off with enough Yellow Peril and B-movie clichés to make your eyes water. There are opium dens, a damsel in distress, drug dealers, curio shops, chop suey joints and Chinese restaurants, smugglers, secret passages, a sinister cult (the “Order of the Black Robe”), hypnotism, lots of stuffy white folks and scads of skulking, suspicious looking “Orientals.” Hell, the rampant racism and xenophobia is so over the top it hurts.

Serious cheese, for sure. But not to be taken seriously. And some of the camera work is impressive, some of the location shots of old Vancouver simply amazing. And for those of you who like dancing on the head of a pin, it might even be considered proto-noir.

HISTORICAL NOTE

Secrets of Chinatown was one of about a dozen low-budget films,  produced by Kenneth J. Bishop between 1935 and 1938 that were intended mainly for the British market, that included The Secrets of Chinatown, Convicted (1938), the first-ever Cornell Woolrich adaptation, and a couple featuring Theodore Tinsley’s gossip columnist sleuth, Jerry Tracy.

According to  the loiner notes for a 2015 DVD release, they were made

 “to fulfill restrictions imposed by the British Cinematograph Act of 1927. This legislation decreed that 20 percent of films screened in the UK had to be of British origin. Canada, being part of the British Empire, became a source of quickie low-budget films that England could use to meet this quota. Ironically… by hiring Hollywood director Fred C. Newmeyer and a cast of American actors, unknowingly disqualified Secrets of Chinatown from entering the British market. After premiering in Victoria, British Columbia on March 8, 1934, the film had to be retitled The Black Robe when the Chinese Consul of Vancouver asked for it to be redrawn, citing its unflattering depiction of citizens of Asian descent.”

FILMS

• SECRETS OF CHINATOWN | Buy the DVD | Watch it on YouTube
  (aka “The Black Robe”)
  (1935, Northern Films/Commonwealth Productions)
  Based on the 1927 novel The Black Robe by Guy Morton
  Screenplay and continuity by Guy Morton
  Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer
  Produced by Kenneth J. Bishop
  Starring Raymond Lawrence as DONEGAL DAWN
  Also starring Nick Stuart, Lucile Browne, James Flavin, Harry Hewitson, James McGrath, Reginald Hincks

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• Vancouver & Beautiful British Columbia
  Private Eyes of the West Coast

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.