James B. Leong

James B. Leong
Born	Leong But-jung (1889-11-02)November 2, 1889 Shanghai, China
Died	December 16, 1967(1967-12-16) (aged 78) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Education	Indiana State University
Occupation(s)	Actor, director
Spouse	Agatha Tarwater (m. 1934)

James B. Leong (born Leong But-jung and sometimes credited as Jimmy Leong; November 2, 1889 — December 16, 1967) was a Chinese-American character actor and filmmaker who had a long career in Hollywood beginning during the silent era.

Leong was born in Shanghai, and he moved to the United States with his parents when he was young.^[1] He graduated from college in Muncie, Indiana, in 1915^[2] and briefly worked at a newspaper before moving to Hollywood, where he worked at first as a technical director for filmmakers like D. W. Griffith and Wesley Ruggles.^[1][3][4]

By 1919, he had started his own production company — James B. Leong Productions, later known as the Wah Ming Motion Picture Company — to show Chinese life as it really was.^[5] He had grown tired of seeing Chinese people portrayed as kidnappers and assassins on the screen.^[6] Under this banner, he wrote and directed the 1921 film Lotus Blossom.^[7] During that time, he had said he planned to write and direct four films a year, though it never to fruition, with a planned follow-up, The Unbroken Promise, never filmed.^[8][9]

He took work as an actor, playing smaller roles in Hollywood films, as well as continuing to work as a technical director and dialect coach.^[10] He made money by growing of silk crops in the 1940s.^[11][12]

He married Agatha Tarwater in 1934; the pair had a son together. Leong became a U.S. citizen in 1958.^[1]

Selected filmography

As writer-director

• Lotus Blossom (1921)

As producer

• China Speaks (1937)

As actor

References

External links

• James B. Leong at IMDb

This page was last edited on 11 December 2023, at 01:34