Sacred Heart University DigitalCommons@SHU School of Communication and Media Arts Faculty School of Communication and Media Arts (SCMA) Publications 12-2005 The Americanization of Tsuru Aoki: Orientalism, Melodrama, Star Image, and the New Woman Sara Ross Sacred Heart University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/media_fac Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons, South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Ross, Sara. "The Americanization of Tsuru Aoki: Orientalism, Melodrama, Star Image, and the New Woman." Camera Obscura 20:3(60) (2005): 129-158. This Peer-Reviewed Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Communication and Media Arts (SCMA) at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has been accepted for inclusion in School of Communication and Media Arts Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@SHU. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. The Americanization of Tsuru Aoki: Orientalism, Melodrama, Star Image, and the New Woman Sara Ross The film career of Tsuru Aoki in the teens and twenties has largely been overshadowed by that of her husband, Sessue Hayakawa. Indeed, it would be impossible to extricate Aoki’s star persona from that of the more famous Hayakawa, who became not only a major screen star and critical favorite in films that Jesse Lasky pro- duced for Paramount but also a producer in his own right when he launched Haworth Pictures in 1918. The construction of Aoki as adoring wife was extremely important to the rather remarkable success of Hayakawa as a romantic lead in the late teens and twen- ties.1 If Hayakawa’s popularity rested on the suggestion that his exotic and inscrutable exterior hid a soft and romantic side, his “little wife” was held up time and again as the proof of his hidden tenderness.