Let me preface this comment by saying that I LOVE this movie and always watch it when it airs on TV. (I even have it on video!) But come on, little sweetheart, Ruby Keeler, as a call girl? And an Asian one at that! That was stetching the bounds of realism just a tad, don't you thnk?
shareI know what you mean. I always had a little giggle about that, too. I mean, here we have this 5 minute exposition of these shady characters in this seedy bar, singing about the notorious man-killer "Shanghai Lil", who is supposed to have lain-waste to men from Singapore to Timbuktu, leaving them shells of their former selves. And when this dragon lady is finally revealed to us, it is none other than........Ruby Keeler! But since this is one of my ALL-TIME favorite movies, this hardly matters. It just adds to the charm.
"I told you a million times not to talk to me when I'm doing my lashes"!
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Keeler was interviewed when a whole bunch of these Busby Berkeley films were shown on successive nights on our local KHJ Channel 9 "Million Dollar Movie" feature in the late 1970's here in Los Angeles. She herself laughs at the thought that everybody in the bar scene is singing about this supposedly exotic temptress Shanghai Lil for whom the sailor is desperately searching, and then all of a sudden "out pops this little nobody" (referring to herself). Quite modest and self-depracating, I would say.
share And when this dragon lady is finally revealed to us, it is none other than........Ruby Keeler!
So you don't think she impresses as being a (what's the lyric...) 'fascinatin' heathen'?
cinefreak
Perhaps Ruby was trying to expand her own boundaries.
shareYeah, it "stretched the bounds of realism", alright. Not like the rest of the sequence. or the movie. or the genre.
But audiences weren't looking for realism. They woke up in the morning with it and went to bed at night with it.
The past is a series of presents. The present is living history we are privileged to witness
You seem to be missing the point. The bounds of realism were not unduly stretched.
Ruby Keeler was playing Bea, an American actress, in a theater prologue playing the part of Shanghai Lil, an Asian streetwalker. The film's producers did not intend the audience to believe that Ruby Keeler was playing the part of a real Asian streetwalker in their movie.
Wmousie has the best response here. This sort of reminded me of Judy Garland in "Ziegfeld girl" playing a South American while singing "Minnie from Trinidad".
shareAnna May Wong would probably have been perfect, but I don't think she could dance.
BTW, I doubt that Shanghai Lil was a "streetwalker".
With her reputation, she was probably the queen of the bordello that employed her.