Wu's Wedding

Russia's Empress Catherine I ("Katinka"). not to be confused with Catherine II ("The Great"), got her start as a common soldier's wench who was handed up to a crack Swedish dragoon, to a marshal, to a prince and finally to Peter the Great, whose death left her on the Throne a reigning sovereign. From China last week arrived tidings almost as romantic. Years ago a cheap Chinese photographer had a certain young Chinese woman as handy girl around his studio. Buyers of obscene postcards were attracted by her looks. She was passed up to Mr. Henry Pu Yi and on to the Young Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang who then ruled Manchuria. Meanwhile she was fast becoming famed Miss Butterfly Wu of China's Hollywood. One night, after the Young Marshal had given orders that he was not to be disturbed in Miss Wu's theatre, his frantic Chinese officers discovered that Japanese troops were attempting to seize his capital, that the keys of the Chinese arsenal were, as usual, on the Young Marshal.

He was disturbed, but too late. Japanese drove the Young Marshal out and set up as Emperor of Manchukuo erstwhile Mr. Henry Pu Yi. His Majesty did not summon Butterfly Wu to his new Court. She, as a Chinese Cinema Queen, has continued onward & upward. The height of her ambition was to marry wealth. Came last week tidings of her wedding in Trinity Cathedral, Shanghai, to a wealthy Christian wine merchant named Eugene Penn.

The ceremony was to be performed by the Cathedral's British dean, the Very Rev. Dr. A. C. S. Trivett. Upon him crashed an avalanche of letters from crusty Shanghai Britons and their wives. Was the Church of England going to do "irreparable damage to British prestige" in China? Was a "bazaar girl," as the English ladies expressed it, to be wed in a Christian Cathedral pack-jammed with pagan guests and with Chinese floodlights and Chinese sound cameras perpetuating the scene to be flung before slant-eyed millions in Chinese newsreels?

That was exactly what the Very Rev. Dr. Trivett had in mind. The hubbub of Chinese in his Cathedral was so loud that the Dean had to shout the Anglican service at the top of his voice to get it on cinema sound tracks distinctly. With Chinese mothers suckling their babes in the sacred aisles, with nimble Chinese climbing the Cathedral's pillars for a better view, and with Miss Butterfly Wu triumphant, white friends of the bridegroom and members of the diplomatic corps stayed away and shuddered.

Unlike the lush cinema magazines of the U. S. and Europe, comment in Chinese prints upon cinema stars is earthy, realistic. One could read in Shanghai last week that Butterfly Wu had been chaffed by her public with such good-humored cries as "You're getting too fat! Marshal Chang wouldn't have you now!" Replying with spirit. Miss Wu chaffed back: "I'm not too fat. Have a look! I'll go on making pictures for at least two more years." In China such a job as Butterfly Wu's is not soft. If she is playing a distraught mother grieving when her child is killed, the Chinese director is apt to decide that a real mother in such circumstances would weep for 23 minutes. Hence Miss Wu must and does weep for 23 minutes in the Chinese film, which is probably at least 20 reels long.

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