CHINA’S “HOLLYWOOD”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 July 1938, Page 9

CHINA’S “HOLLYWOOD”

FILM COLONY SCATTERED. China’s “Hollywood,” formerly situated in Shanghai, is now scattered, like the Chinese Government, in a number of key cities in the interior. A large majority of the actors, actresses, and extras hajve also gone into the inland provinces but not only for their personal comfort and safety. For all of these refugee-actors are now sharing part of the anti-Japanese campaign for the Government on improvised stages in hospitals and camps instead of on the battlefields.

The Chinese film colony was hard hit when fighting broke out in Shanghai last August. Most of the property belonging to the leading picture companies—the Yih Hwa Star Motion Picture and the United Photoplay Service —were either destroyed by gunfire or are now under Japanese military occupation.

The players organised small troupes and left for the interior where they are putting on entertainments for the wounded soldiers and civilian refugees. The troupes have been moving from one place to another as hostilities continued to spread but they are still carrying on their work under extreme difficulties.

One group is in Hong Kong where there is a small film colony. Some pictures, costing around 5,000 dollars Chinese currency, are being produced and shown in Hong Kong and the South Sea Islands. Practically all of the pictures produced now have a patriotic theme.