Known for Directing
The film is perhaps the only remaining example of silent era cinema from a Chinese-American production company, and was co-written, co-directed (with Francis J. Grandon) and produced by James B. Leong, who changed his name from Leong But-jung after emigrating from Shanghai in 1913. Of the seven reels that originally comprised 'Lotus Blossom,' only one (the fifth, running for 12 minutes at 20fps) is known to survive. This remaining reel of film is now available on Disc 2 of the DVD Collection "More Treasures from the American Film Archives," and was preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
A white child is adopted and raised by a Chinese citizen and brought to San Francisco, where no one surmises that she is actually not Chinese.
After Ned Hamilton is rejected by his girlfriend, he travels to Japan where he hears an old legend about the Willow Tree Princess, who kills herself so that her lover will go off to battle. When he makes a purchase from Tomotada, an image maker, he meets his pretty daughter O-Riu, and they recreate the events of the legend.
An opium smuggler is marked for murder in this story of the Chinese Mafia.
Bruce Winthrop, disguised as a clerk in the American consulate near the Mongolian border, is actually a secret United States government operative sent to quell a Chinese rebellion led by Tai Chen.
Yano is a small delivery boy for his uncle, who keeps a curio shop in Chinatown. His loves are Tama, his sweetheart, and Bengi, his dog. Bengi is seized by dog catchers, but is rescued by Letty Stanford, for which Yano promises his fealty. Later Letty is kidnapped by Germans because of her war activities, and it is Yano who goes to her rescue and gets her free in spite of his diminutive size. The Little Japanese has paid his debt.
A venal, spoiled stockbroker's wife impulsively embezzles $10,000 from the charity she chairs and desperately turns to a Burmese ivory trader to replace the stolen money.
A three-reel silent drama about an ambitious young man leaving behind his beloved in Japan to study abroad at the University of California, Berkeley.
