Season 2, Ep. 7: The Dragon Painter

This week, we go way back in history, almost 100 years ago to 1919 and a silent film called The Dragon Painter, starring Sessue Hayakawa and his wife Tsuru Aoki. Hayakawa was a star rivaling Charlie Chaplin in the Silent Era, and after being tired of the villainous Japanese roles that were written for him in Hollywood, he created his own production company to make his own movies. The Dragon Painter was restored in 1988 and added to the National Film Registry in 2014. Ada and Brian talk about their quest to find an old school Asian American romance, which led them on a detour through an Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn crime film -- and how Sessue Hayakawa, the biggest Asian American star of all time, is kind of like Randall Park. Saturday School is a podcast where we teach your unwilling children about Asian American pop culture history. Season 2 explores Asian American romance in film.