Hollywood’s Golden Gate Girl

Description

Esther Eng, an American-born woman of Chinese descent, maverick “directress”, transnational entrepreneur and open lesbian, broke into the business at 20 in 1935, when she set out to co-produce her first film. The daughter of a prominent businessman from Guangdong, she sought to carve out a niche for Chinese actors in Hollywood by investing in film production. Her first film, Heartaches, was released as a groundbreaking Hollywood picture in 1936 and later in Hong Kong, billed as the “first Cantonese Singing-Talking Picture made in Hollywood.”