Lost Horizon

CLIV

By some serendipitous confluence of events and aspects, “Sweet Sixteen” became Pan Am. Not only was she the China Clipper of yore, but her two sisters, the Hawaii Clipper and the Philippine Clipper both became so closely identified with her that they were both called “China Clippers.” Eventually, every flying boat, past and future, operated by Pan Am, especially those on the Pacific run, would be called a China Clipper.

What was it about Glenn Martin’s “Ocean Transports” and Juan Trippe’s “Sunchasers” that gripped the public imagination so fiercely?

In part, it was that name, evoking images of slow smoke wafting from joss sticks, opium chests, Mandarins, tea in porcelain cups, and serenely smiling Buddhas. The very sound of the word Orient conjured images of dragons and lacquer boxes, incense and gongs.

But there was more to it. America was in the midst of a fascination with all things Chinese in the 1930s. Pearl S. Buck had written the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Good Earth in 1931. The Good Earth became and remained the best-selling novel in the United States well into 1933, and when the China Clipper first took to the skies, the novel’s story of long-suffering, tradition-revering displaced human beings still resonated deeply in the United States.* The coincident seizure of Manchuria by the Japanese, and the persistent rumors of the malign treatment of the Chinese in that occupied land kept China anchored firmly in the U.S. national consciousness. The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 redoubled America’s interest in things Chinese (and continued the demonization of the Japanese).

The Good Earth, a film starring Paul Muni and Luise Rainer (two Caucasian Jewish actors cosmetically made to look Oriental) was a massive popular hit and an Academy Award winner in 1937. In 1938, Pearl S. Buck won the Nobel Prize for Literature for the novel.    

Hollywood routinely cast whites in Far Eastern roles for decades. The practice was called “yellowface.” Myrna Loy was frequently tapped for such roles. Few Oriental actors were given roles. Notable exceptions included Anna Mae Wong, Sessue Hayakawa, Philip Ahn, Keye Luke, and later, James Shigeta, Bruce Lee, Noriyuki Pat Morita and George Takei.  However, it took a long time for Oriental actors to be considered as leads. As late as the 1970s, ABC Television cast David Carradine in Kung Fu, a show developed by Bruce Lee. Lee was denied the lead because he was Chinese. A popular actress of the 1940s, Merle Oberon, was cast due to her “exotic” appearance. She hid her Anglo-Indian ancestry so she could continue to work

Merle Oberon

Myrna Loy in The Crimson City, 1928

Universally considered the worst example of miscasting in Hollywood history, John Wayne was absurd as the Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan in The Conqueror. Wayne actually lobbied for the role. In a half-hearted attempt at yellowface, makeup shaped his eyebrows and left it at that   

Anna Mae Wong

The Korean-American actor Philip Ahn played Master Kan in Kung Fu. He was more famous as Hop Sing in Bonanza, and was the first East Asian actor to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hollywood had no awareness of the complexity of East Asia and its peoples; the actors were lumped together, playing whatever nationality the part called for. Early in his career, Ahn was often cast in war films as a brutal Japanese officer. Ahn disliked such roles and the Korean-American community, having suffered from Japanese oppression, was critical of Ahn for taking such roles. Ahn's father was a famed exponent of Korean independence. But it was, for a time, the only way Ahn could get work. As the African-American actress Hattie McDaniel once said, “I’d rather play a domestic than be one.”

Keye Luke as Master Po in Kung Fu. Earlier in his career he had played Kato, the Green Hornet’s sidekick, in movie serials; Bruce Lee later reprised the role for television. Lee cast Luke, intending to play the Chinese protagonist Caine in the show, which he had created. Lee, however, never appeared on the show

Bruce Lee in 1967, reprising the role Keye Luke invented. Today, decades after his untimely death, Lee is still considered the greatest martial artist to have lived

When Kung Fu debuted few people knew that Bruce Lee had had anything to do with the show; he was not even given creative credit. Convinced the viewing audience would not accept a Chinese man playing a Chinese man, the studio cast David Carradine as Caine. Carradine played the role in yellowface

George Takei became the first regular TV cast member of Far Eastern extraction when he played the Navigator Mr. Sulu on Star Trek in 1964. A popular internet celebrity today, Takei is outspoken both about being gay and being a Japanese-American who was interned as a child during World War II

Noriyuki Pat Morita played Arnold the diner owner on Happy Days, and played the beloved karate master Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid series of films. In many ways, Miyagi the sage Japanese handyman was a stereotyped role, but Morita played it with a deftness, depth, and humor that made the character an icon

The novel The Good Earth was joined on the best-seller list in 1933 by Lost Horizon, a novel by James Hilton. In Lost Horizon, a romantic, Richard Burton-esque adventure novel, the protagonists’ airplane makes a crash landing near a mysterious utopian valley in the remote Himalayas called Shangri-La. Chinese characters and Chinese spiritual culture (at least as Hilton understood it) permeate the book. And like The Good Earth, Lost Horizon became a hit film in 1937.

Lost Horizon was notable for introducing a generation of Americans to Buddhism (in a novelistic form) and for being the first mass-market paperback (Pocket Books # 1). The book was later made into a film starring the British actor Ronald Colman and Sam Jaffe as the High Lama

An early movie poster for Lost Horizon. Tension with the Japanese led the studio to remove the stylized rising sun in later re-releases  

The China Clippers flew at precisely that moment in history.

In part, it was the word “Clipper” all by itself, reminiscent of good, solid American (and particularly Yankee) values, personal toughness, stoicism, wise commerce, strength and perseverance.  The association rooted the most modern technology deep within American history, and revolutionary innovation with star-spangled tradition. And though Juan Trippe had called all of Pan Am’s aircraft “Clippers” starting with his boxy Fokker Trimotors, the China Clippers were the first Pan Am aircraft that could be described as streamlined, and even indubitably sexy.

Unlike the pontoon-laden old Commodores and the wire-and-strut sprouting Sikorskys, the Martins had clean lines. Except for a set of bracing wires on the aft stabilizer and two wishbone-shaped struts that projected neatly from the fuselage to the wings, the M-130 was neat. Its pear-shaped fuselage was all curves and no angles, and even the corrugations along the upper fuselage had the appearance of delicate fluting. She was, incontrovertibly, beautiful, a perfect joining of form and function.

The Fokker Trimotor, the first Pan American Clipper, was strictly a landplane

The Consolidated Commodore acquired from NYRBA, was Pan American’s first flying boat

The Sikorsky S-38 was Pan American’s first aircraft built to specification. It was, in most respects, a hull slung beneath a wing, and it was an ungainly if effective amphibian craft with a decidedly reptilian prow

The Sikorsky S-40 was called “The Flying Forest.” Like the S-38, it was a boat hull suspended beneath a wing. Overdesigned with too many spars, struts and wires, the S-40 was decidedly unaesthetic. At least Sikorsky had removed the elongated prow. To counterbalance its outer appearance the S-40 was lavishly appointed within  

The Sikorsky S-42 was the “Flying Forest” without the forest. Just as lavish within as the S-40, the S-42 had a fully-integrated hull. The shape of the bow was a touch too reminiscent of a canoe. These flying boats and the M-130s worked side by side, and the public called the S-42 a “China Clipper” after the name caught on

The deep hull of the Martin M-130 gave the true China Clipper a fuselage shape far closer to that of a modern aircraft than a flying boat. Glenn Martin dispensed with pontoons, electing to add sponsons or sea wings to the hull, which doubled as flotation devices and fuel tanks. Rather than the parasol wing favored by Sikorsky, the wings of the China Clipper were integrated with the hull

Despite the fact that the Martin flying boat became synonymous with Pan American, Juan Trippe turned to Boeing for his next-generation flying boat. The Boeing 314 owed much to the M-130, but its hull was deeper and broader, allowing for multiple decks. The Boeing flying boat was also casually called a “China Clipper”

Although most Americans would never see a China Clipper in person, much less fly in one, Pan Am was profligate with photographs of the plane, both inside and out, and especially shots taken in remote locales. A series of film shorts, shown in theaters of the time, described the plane in loving detail, dramatizing all its exploits. Every flight was announced in newspapers and on radio. The radio show You Are There was still two decades in the future, but Pan American Airways wanted you to be there.  

The China Clipper inaugural flight --- Part 1

 

The China Clipper inaugural flight --- Part 2 

 

The China Clipper inaugural flight --- Part 3 

*The literary influence of The Good Earth persisted into the 1970s and beyond. The novel became a standard of secondary school English class curricula, and was read widely --- sometimes too widely. This blogger can remember a teacher assigning book reports on "any author except Pearl S. Buck" because she did not “want to have to read thirty two book reports on The Good Earth.”