WARNING: SPOILERS

They never say why Louie Toy doesn’t just pay off the Bo Sing Tong, do they? He’s an opium smuggler, they’re the Chinese mafia, why not just pay the tribute? Doesn’t he know what will happen? It doesn’t seem like a power move, either. He’s not machinating. And he doesn’t cry poverty. So what is he doing? I guess furthering the plot? I guess creating the plot?

“The Tong Man” is basically Romeo and Juliet in Chinatown if Romeo were a hatchet man and Montague lusted after Juliet. It’s a 50-minute feature that mixes gangster elements with old-timey melodrama. Tropes I’ve only seen in cartoons or satires are displayed here straight-faced. My favorite: When the leader of the Bo Sing Tong, Ming Tai (Marc B. Robbins), first sees Sen Chee (Helen Jerome Eddy), the beautiful daughter of Louie Toy, he smiles villainously and literally rubs his hands together.

There’s yellowface, of course, but with a difference. The romantic lead, Luk Chan, is played by silent film icon Sessue Hayakawa, and the film is made by his production company, Haworth Pictures. So among the leads, the two Anglo actors I mentioned above are the only examples of true yellowface. For the other main characters: Toyo Fujita plays Louie Toy, and future director Yutaka Abe is Lucero—“a Lascar sailor” and helpmate to the romantic couple. Plus Hayakawa.

So is this a kind of yellowface? They’re all Japanese actors playing Chinese characters. I know it’s 1919, but, given Hayakawa, etc., you’d think a story about the Chinese in Chinatown would include some Chinese actors.

Slow boat
The plot: The Tong gang decides to kill Louie Toy for the aforementioned nonpayment, the joss is consulted, lots are chosen, and Luk Chan, a “highbinder” and the most feared hatchet-man in the Tong gang, gets the assignment. Unfortunately, he’s in love with Toy’s daughter. So even though he has ample opportunity, and even though he himself will be killed if he doesn’t go through with it, he can’t kill Toy.

At this point, I assumed we would get machinations from Ming Tai. I assumed he would go to Louie Toy and say, “Hey, Chan is going to kill you, watch out,” so Toy would kill Chan instead and go to prison for the crime, leaving the girl unguarded. Instead, Ming Tai is fairly upfront. He tells Toy that the Tong will let him live but he has to give up his daughter. Toy looks shocked (the actor often looks shocked) but agrees, then locks the distraught girl in her room. There, she decides to use the poison incense girls apparently kept lying around back then. Lucero overhears, gets Luk, and the two men save her; then they escape (from both the Tong and the cops) over the rooftops of Chinatown.

The next day, Louie Toy says he’s had a change of heart about giving his daughter away. Ming Tai isn’t exactly understanding: He kills Toy and blames it on Chan. Then he and his men kidnap the girl—bag over the head and everything. Back in his lair, he fans her awake so he can sexually assault her. Watching from above, Chan crashes through the skylight (a nice stunt), battles the Tong gang, and delivers a hatchet to the face of one assassin (a nice, early special-effect). Then they escape.

The couple winds up hiding in the (metaphoric and literal) belly of the beast. In the Bo Sing Tong headquarters, which—I think—is part of Ming Tai’s gambling and ‘hop’ joint, there’s one of those paper-mache dragons you see at Chinese festivals. That's where they go. But when Ming Tai shows up to pray to the joss, Chan thinks it’s Lucero returning with news and reveals himself. Ming Tai is taking aim when he himself is shot in the back by Lucero. (Seriously, Lucero does almost everything in this thing.)

After that, they get on a slow boat to China—with Lucero. We see the lovers in silhouette against the moon. They embrace. The End.

Tong in Hong Kong?
I know, but I like all the historical tidbits. Silent films were still in that phase, for example, when they would include the stars’ names on the intertitles.

Marc Robbins, who plays Ming Tai, gets this treatment, too, though he hardly seems like a star. But at least his yellowface make-up is better than Helen Jerome Eddy’s. She hardly looks Chinese. I kept thinking, I don’t know, dowdier sister of Olivia de Havilland.

The whole “Tong” thing is fascinating. It was written up a lot during the period—in newspapers and in fiction. Ditto hatchet men. Edgar G. Robinson would play one 13 years later. Did Hollywood ever attempt a more serious film on this topic—the Tong Wars from the turn of the century? Has Hong Kong ever tried it?

The director is William Worthington, an actor who took up directing (1915-25) before returning to acting for the last 15 years of his life. The movie is based on a 1912 novel, “The Dragon’s Daughter,” by Clyde Westover, which is still available on Kindle. A 1922 article describes Westover as a “short story writer, author of odes, dramatiser, script builder, playwright, jingler, novelizer, official greeter and secretary of the [San Francisco Press] Club." A survivor, in other words.