Showing posts with label Sax Rohmer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sax Rohmer. Show all posts
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Thursday, 3 December 2009
The Joys of Sax Rohmer (and Dope and the Yellow Peril personified in Fu Manchu)
Sax Rohmer was a British ex-journalist who used his knowledge of the Limehouse area in the East End of London - a very controversial area and the original so called "Chinatown" area of London - to write some of the most popular fiction of the early 20th Century.
Most notably, he wrote the incredibly successful Fu Manchu stories about a depraved Chinese man whose evil empire’s headquarters was based, however improbably, in the midst of Limehouse.
The titluar Fu Manchu was described as follows;
Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present…Imagine that awful being and you have a mental picture of Dr Fu Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.
Rohmer had published his first novel 'Pause!' anonymously in 1910, to little acclaim. However, the first Fu Manchu story, The Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu, became a hugely popular serialisation in the period 1912-13.
With its fast paced story of Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie facing the worldwide conspiracy of the 'so-called "Yellow Peril", the tale was an immediate success!
The Fu Manchu stories, together with tales featuring sidekicks Gaston Max and Morris Klaw, made Rohmer one of the most successful and well-paid writers of the 1920s and 1930s.
He was a real Sax Symbol back in those days!
Rohmer’s Fu Manchu stories went on to inspire over thirty films and television series throughout the following decades.
Numerous films were made featuring Dr. Fu Manchu, with probably the most famous being 1932's The Mask of Fu Manchu starring Boris Karloff.
Warner Oland had earlier starred in three early talkies: 1929's The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, 1930's The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, and 1931's Daughter of the Dragon.
Later came a Republic Pictures serial, Drums of Fu Manchu in 1940 and a short-lived TV series, The Adventures of Fu Manchu in 1956.
The character was revived after his creator's death for a series of variable quality starring Christopher Lee: The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967), The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), and The Castle of Fu Manchu (1969).
Pulp film legend Harry Alan Towers produced two films based on the character in the 1960s!
Legendary comic actor Peter Sellers starred in the 1980 spoof, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu.
The Fu Manchu characters were featured in Marvel Comics' long-running series, Master of Kung-Fu and were revived for two novels by Rohmer's friend and biographer, Cay van Ash.
Actually Dr. Fu and pals are thankfully still alive! A new authorized novel - given the go ahead by Rohmer's Estate - called 'The Terror of Fu Manchu' - featuring the original characters - was published in April 2009 by William Patrick Maynard. We loook forward to getting our mitts on this!
Sax wrote some decent stuff too. I read a Rohmer novel called "Dope", years ago which was a very enjoyable tome. The novel was based upon a variety of true stories of opium, cocaine and sexual debauchery (as the ditty goes "these are a few of my favourite things"!) in the Limehouse area in the early 1900's.
"Dope" was inspired by the death of one Billie Carleton, a 22 year-old London actress and showgirl who performed in the Armistice Victory Celebration at Albert Hall on 28th November 1918. Billie though died in her hotel room later that same night of an overdose - thought to be opium and cocaine combo obtained in Limehouse.
The death of beautiful white girl - emphasising the adjective "white" - from drugs, combined with the involvement of a Chinese drug dealer, created what was to become the first big drug scandal of the 20th century.
The press whipped themselves into a frenzy about this thing! 'Pictorial News', for instance, ran a series of pieces about the East End of London and what they described as the encroaching ‘Yellow Peril’!
The incident led to an official five year long investigation of Chinatown's drug traffic. It also led to mass media hysteria and demonisation of the area - so much so that the area would, not long after, be razed to the ground and forgotten!
Anyway, in the novel "Dope" we find a great character called Mollie Gretna - a silly socialite - who envies the Scottish wife of a Chinese drug dealer (based on the real life character of Ada, the wife of the Chinaman Lau Ping You - the man alleged to have sold the fatal dope to Billie Carleton), who comes up with this great quote:
I have read that Chinamen tie their wives to beams in the roof and lash them with leather thongs. I could die for a man who lashed me with leather thongs. Englishmen are so ridiculously gentle to women!
Erm ... the effort involved in tying a chick to beams in the roof and lashing them with leather thongs is just way way too much for me! Also, this place doesn't have beams. And I've no idea what leather thongs are!!
However, I guess tying your wife to beams in the roof would really save on bed space though!
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