Toll of the Sea (1922)
(Chester M. Franklin, US 1922, 56 min., 35mm)
Anna May Wong’s first starring role was in this film, based on a character from Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly. A young Chinese woman, Lotus Flower (Wong) finds a white American man, Allen Carver (Kenneth Harlan), floating in the sea, rescues him, and falls in love with him. He promises to take her home with him, but he betrays her and leaves, only to return with his white wife, Barbara (Beatrice Bentley), to take away the son Lotus Flower had with him. Written by one of the most renowned and prolific scriptwriters of the time, Frances Marion, this was the first Hollywood film to use the two-strip Technicolor process.
35mm restored print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive