"There's also a huge difference between being an extra and being a lead actor. It doesn't take much to stand around and do menial things, but it takes a lot to support an entire film."
As I said, they didn't need to hire big name, known actors to fill these parts. What you are saying is that out of the hundreds of Asian actors they auditioned and hired for smaller parts, not one of them was worthy or talented enough to do anything more than "menial things". That's racist. Even if there were, they wouldn't have been hired to play main characters. Asians were not hired to play the main characters because, at the time it was made, society (and studios) had many prejudices against most groups of people in the U.S. that were not white and it is reflected in the movies produced, not just in this movie, but countless others made in those days. Black people had to produce their own movies in their own studies, not because there weren't any black actors capable of carrying a major motion picture but because the majority of the time, if they wanted a role, it was that of a step-n-fetchit. They had to either accept those demeaning parts or make their own productions. If you've ever seen any of those black studio produced movies, you'll notice that the characters in those movies behave close to the way you'd see black characters in current movies. They aren't stereotypical as "beneath white people" kinds of parts. They weren't just playing servants or mammies to white people the way they always were in white studio productions of the time. Asians and latinos and other non-white races were treated the same way. And I'm not the only one who got that: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028944/board/thread/131271100?d=131273448 &p=1#131273448 "Irving Thalberg (the movie's original producer, before he died) seeked to cast all chinese actors in this movie. However, that was not possible, because studio executives cast Paul Muni. This meant the actress who would play his wife had to be white under the Hays Code's ultra-conservative miscegenation act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code" (user,haadurin)
One of the reasons this movie is dying to be remade to correct that error.
"Which lever do I pull to be crushed by a safe?"-Karen(Will & Grace)
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