James B. Leong

James B. Leong (born Leong But-jung and sometimes credited as Jimmy Leong; November 2, 1889 — December 16, 1967) was a Chinese-American character actor and filmmaker who had a long career in Hollywood beginning during the silent era. Leong was born in Shanghai, and he moved to the United States with his parents when he was young. He graduated from Marion Normal College in Muncie, Indiana, in 1915 and briefly worked at a newspaper before moving to Hollywood, where he worked at first as a technical director for filmmakers like D. W. Griffith and Wesley Ruggles. By 1919, he had started his own production company — James B. Leong Productions, later known as the Wah Ming Motion Picture Company — to show Chinese life as it really was. He had grown tired of seeing Chinese people portrayed as kidnappers and assassins on the screen. Under this banner, he wrote and directed the 1921 film Lotus Blossom. During that time, he had said he planned to write and direct four films a year, though it never came to fruition, with a planned follow-up, The Unbroken Promise, never filmed. He took work as an actor, playing smaller roles in Hollywood films, as well as continuing to work as a technical director and dialect coach. He made money by growing silk crops in the 1940s. He married Agatha Tarwater in 1934; the pair had a son together. Leong became a U.S. citizen in 1958.