The Bitter Tea of General Yen

 (1933)
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Edward Paramore, from a novel by Grace Zaring Stone
Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Nils Asher, Walter Connolly, Toshia Mori, Gavin Gordon
IMDB Entry

Controversy changes with time. What was controversial at one point may be considered innocuous decades later. The Bitter Tea of General Yen  was around long enough to be controversial again.

In the 1920s, during the Chinese Civil War, Megan Davis (Barbara Stanwyck) travels to China to marry Robert Strike (Gavin Gordon). She finds the missionary community has a very stereotyped view of the Chinese.  When a call comes for Strike to rescue some orphans, she comes along. Strike goes to the warlord General Yen (Nils Asher), asking for safe passage. Yen give hims a document calling Strike a fool and which gives the soldiers a good laugh. When they try to save the children, Megan is knocked unconscious and awakens in the General's palace.  

Yen is enamored of Megan, and she begins to develop feelings for him, which she works hard to resist. They discover Megan's maid Mah-Li (Toshia Mori) is a spy, but Megan begs for her life. Yen agrees, but makes her promise to forfeit her life if Meh-Li betrays him again. Of course,  things go badly,  leading to a tragic ending.

The movie opened Radio City Music Hall, but the engagement was cut short as the romance between Yen and Megan incensed racists. Nowadays, of course, it is criticized for casting a white actor as Yen, though is it notable that they did cast Torshi Mori as Meh-Li -- though Mori was Japanese, which in Hollywood at the time was no different from being Chinese. The idea of Megan falling in love with her captor is also problematic these days.

Stanwyck was a major star of pre-code movies and does a good job showing her feelings for Yen despite her major misgivings. Nils Asher was from  Sweden and was  a heartthrob in his time, but has been forgotten. Torshi Mori had a good career in the 30s playing Asian women; her work here was highly praised, though she was not cast in anything of note afterwards. Walter Connolly also stands out as an American merchant who is out to make money from the revolution.

Director Frank Capra went on to direct a long list of classic films, including It Happened One Night, American Madness, and, of course It's a Wonderful Life.