Forbidden City (nightclub)

Background In 1913, Dai Wah Low's Shanghai Low (532 Grant) opened, later expanded, and in 1923, was surpassed by Low's purpose-built New Shanghai Café (453 Grant), an early Chinese restaurant-nightclub with hardwood floors and room for a dance orchestra. Low's Forbidden City was also preceded by, and competed with, Andy Wong's Chinese Sky Room, which opened almost a year earlier on December 31, 1937. The Chinese Sky Room featured a big band led by trumpeter Wong in what was previously the rooftop Chinese Tea Garden of the Grand View Hotel at 465 Grant (and Pine). opened the Forbidden City on December 22, 1938, The new club would eventually become the most famous of approximately 12 Chinese-themed cabaret clubs in the Chinatown area. It was located a few blocks from San Francisco's Chinatown, and catered to the curiosity of a mostly white audience who were unfamiliar with and possibly intimidated by, a community of only Chinese Americans. Thus, Low found it difficult to recruit performers from the local Chinese community, which looked down on entertainers, particularly women in sexually provocative performances. For this reason, Low recruited Asian American performers primarily from other areas like Arizona, Hawaii, and the Midwest, rather than directly from San Francisco's Chinatown. File:Beauty Parade Magazine 1943.png|Five dancers from Forbidden City, featured in Beauty Parade magazine (1943) Business was slow until 1940, when Low hired Noel Toy, a journalism student at University of California, Berkeley who had worked as a nude model at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939. She also performed a nude fan dance with ostrich feathers. Within three months, business revenues had tripled. Toy's performance also brought in a flow of male Caucasian audience who were seeking to fulfill their hypersexualization of race. According to the manager of Forbidden City, Frank Huie, during its busiest periods, the club recorded 2,200 patrons in a day. The club thrived through the 1950s. World War II brought many servicemen to San Francisco, which served as a primary port of departure for the Pacific Theater; the club was popular with both servicemen and tourists. The audience was primarily Caucasian, but Asian American locals and tourists also visited the club. had been hired to headline the Forbidden City for a six-week engagement starting in September 1957; by October, it was rumored he would be moving on to the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, but it was announced in November that he would star in the Broadway production of Flower Drum Song as Wang Ta, the Americanized son promised to Mei Li; he would go on to reprise the role in the Hollywood film version of the musical, released in 1961. Decline and legacy Despite the popularity of Flower Drum Song, business at the club declined, hurt by the increase in the cabaret tax in 1944. An hour-long documentary, Forbidden City, U.S.A., was filmed in the mid-1980s by Chinatown native Arthur Dong and released in 1989, featuring most of the original cast. A DVD was released in 2003. The documentary led indirectly to a second singing career for Larry Ching, the club's "Chinese Frank Sinatra." Excerpts from two 78 RPM acetate disks were played in the documentary, and included in Ching's debut album Till the End of Time (2003). ==Description==

The Forbidden City has been compared to an Asian-American version of the Cotton Club, in that it featured an all-ethnic cast of performers for a mostly white audience, performing to the popular tastes of the time rather than in stereotyped or authentic ethnic roles. However, some acts played up the supposed exoticism of ethnic Chinese, as well as sensuality of Chinese women. Although the cast included Filipino Americans, Japanese Americans (except during World War II, when the club's Japanese American performers were removed as part of the Japanese American internment), Korean Americans and other Asian Americans, they were presented to audiences as Chinese. The club itself seated 300, and also contained elaborate stage area and dressing rooms (accessed through the kitchen). Typical of the clubs of the time, in front, it displayed pictures of famous guests (greeted by Low). An evening's entertainment at Forbidden City typically started with a dinner that was ostensibly "Chinese" cuisine, but it was a fusion of Chinese and American cuisine, with steak on the menu. Dinner would be followed by dancing, then a floor show. The show included burlesque performers like Coby Yee, dancers such as Toy & Wing and Mai Tai Sing, and singers such as Larry Ching ("Chinese Sinatra"), who performed six nights per week with a band. Each show typically lasted 45 minutes. The club also formed a touring company that played across the United States and Canada, as well as USO shows worldwide. ==Notable performers==

A number of Asian American musicians, actors, and other celebrities either started their professions at the Forbidden City, or are famous for performing there. During the early years of the club the performers' salaries, modest as they were, provided rare employment opportunities for Asian-Americans suffering under the discriminatory laws of the time. Frances Quan Chun (1919-2008) Frances Quan Chun was a singer billed as the "Chinese Frances Langford" . According to her interview in the book Forbidden City, USA, she stated that it was a "novelty" at the time to work at the Forbidden City as a singer in the 30's regardless of its scandalous reputation. Born and raised in a musical family in Hawaii, her father loved playing instruments such as ukulele and guitar. She eventually landed in San Francisco during the Depression era. She participated in Cathayans (a band) in the early 1930s, where she was 16. Then, she joined Forbidden City in her 20's. She was born in Marysville but raised in Stockton, California; raised by a conservative father who was a cook, Wong recalled how dance was never something her family supported despite her mother's love of music. Wong would sneak out from the window of her house to watch shows hosted by traveling dance companies. She then moved to San Francisco after the death of her father. She eventually joined Forbidden City after meeting Charlie Low and his wife when she was taking dance classes at Michio Itō's School of Dance. She also taught choreography to Noel Toy after Toy's first bubble dance because of Toy's inexperience with dance. which started the golden age of Forbidden City. Yee was born to Chinese immigrants living in Columbus, Ohio on November 2, 1926; as a teenager, she performed in her uncle's supper club in Washington, D.C. When her parents came to San Francisco after World War II to return to China, she and her older sister, Fawn, refused to follow them and stayed in the Bay Area. After a drunken patron wandered into her dressing room at the Forbidden City, she quipped "I have never been so embarrassed. He caught me standing there completely clothed!") teaching ballroom dancing to seniors and was persuaded to join Cynthia's Grant Avenue Follies (members include Cynthia Yee, Pat Chin, Ivy Tam, Lillian Poon, Emily Chin, and Avis See-Tho). she died on August 14, 2020, the day before she was scheduled to receive the award in a virtual ceremony. • Dorothy Toy and Paul Wing, a married couple billed as the "Chinese Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire", respectively • Jack Soo was discovered working there as emcee, leading to his first big break when he was cast as the emcee and night club owner in the Broadway musical and film of Flower Drum Song; he later became one of the most prominent Asian American actors in film and television roles. • Jade Ling was Jackie Mei Ling's dancing partner for a time. Ling came from Boston and first danced at her fathers nightclub. She then ran away to San Francisco to dance at the Forbidden City. In the early 1960s, after she finished her dancing career, she started a hair salon and lived in San Francisco until the 2010s when she moved back to the Boston area to be near her sister's family. She died on September 28, 2020. • Stanley Toy, a solo "Chinese Fred Astaire". • Katy de la Cruz, the "Queen of Filipino Jazz", was a top-billed performer during the late 1940s to early 1950s. • Larry and Trudie Long, "The Leungs," nightclub act. • 22 August 1953 performers included: Taula Gladys Wong, Connie Tarks, Constance Lint, Jackie Wong, the Tal Sings and Toy Yat Mar. • Pat Chin, Dottie Sun, Mary Mammon, and Mai Tai Sing all learned to dance from the Forbidden City choreographer, Walton Biggerstaff. Low went on to open the first cocktail bar in Chinatown, the Chinese Village, on November 12, 1936, at 702 Grant Ave; == See also ==