Forbidden City - Trina Robbins

The 1940s was a boom time. During the war years, people thronged to the Chinese nightclubs. They came to forget the war for just a few hours, for the beautiful showgirls, for dance teams like Toy and Wing or the Tai Sings, for romantic singers like Larry King, "The Chinese Frank Sinatra" and Frances Chun "The Chinese Frances Langford." Movie stars from Hollywood like Bing Crosbie, Boris Karloff, Ronald Reagan, and Jane Wyman rode the trains up from Hollywood to participate in war bond drives, visited the nightclubs, and mingled with the entertainers. GIs on their way overseas, attracted by promises of exotic entertainment, filled the clubs. Many were from small Southern towns and had never before seen an Asian. They didn't know where they were being sent, or if they would come back, and they spent their money as if there was no tomorrow.

Asian entertainers, too, thronged to the clubs--and like Filipino Tony Wing or Japanese Dorothy Toy, born Takahashi, they were not always Chinese. Teenage girls whose traditional parents forbade them to dance, ran away from home to perform on the stage. They came from Oregon and Hawaii, from as close as Stockton, California, and as far as Hong Kong, and they converged in San Francisco's Chinatown.

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This book documents the Golden Era of Chinese nightclubs in San Francisco which existed from the 1930s into the early 1960s. The pictures, which are abundant, are great. The text, other than a short introduction, is entirely direct quotes from persons involved in this unique setting. Many of the tales are very interesting, however, it would be a much better book if the author had taken time to weave the accounts into an historical account rather than depend solely on first-person recollections. I enjoyed the book with its fascinating glimpse into a uniquely American historical anomaly.