Independents Stake Hollywood Claim

Passing An Hour with Shadows Over Shanghai (1938)

This was a "B" out of Grand National Pictures, the industry's much heralded new arrival from 1936, now floundering and in midst of court-supervised reorganization when independent producer Franklyn Warner set to work on Shadows Over Shanghai for GN release. Warner's company was called Fine Arts Pictures, and like so many start-ups of the era, had grandiose plans. Warner pledged twenty-six features. He'd complete four, the first being Shadows Over Shanghai, warmly welcomed by a trade that could use all the support features it could get in a voracious 1938 market. Double-feature policy was ingrained by this time, so more the better was attitude among distribution and exhibitors. Fine Arts bit off perhaps more than it could digest, having announced a fantasy pic to top King Kong and The LostWorld called Wonder World. That wasn't made, but not for lack of good intention.

Shadows Over Shanghai had at least plenty of that, being cast nicely with known faces to support James Dunn, formerly a headliner at Fox whose party ways and grip by the grape had put a star career on tailspin. His was a line in Irish hoke that fitted Shanghai to sixty-five minute measure, "not long enough to keep the framework of the story from gawkily punching through the celluloid," said Variety. What said story amounted to was chase after an amulet that's key to collecting a cash fortune, varied villainy bent on getting same away from Dunn and femme interest Linda Gray. Background was the Sino-Japanese conflict in late-30's bloom, politics off the table in favor of simplest melodrama. Laughs are where you find them; Dunn's a wiseacre as ever, and one's own threshold for that will key enjoyment of Shadows Over Shanghai.

There is air raid stock footage to imply grandeur, some of it culled off newsreels. A good cast was thought worth repeating after the end title, and indeed it was, as players like Ralph Morgan and Robert Barrett, in addition to Dunn, were well known from big studio A's. Funny man of the silents Billy Bevan looks in from bartender's vantage, demonstrating again what a fine character player he'd become out of Sennett wardrobe. Grand National got Shadows Over Shanghai into release for December 1938. By then, Fine Arts and Franklyn Warner had fallen out with Grand National, made a takeover attempt, then buried hatchets toward hope of further teamwork. That wouldn't happen, unfortunately, as shortage of cash, that oldest of obstacles, put both on ice soon after. Fine Arts' feature output would cede after its initial quartet, and Grand National liquidated in 1940, noble effort having been made by both in cruel face of picture-making reality.