The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a 1933 film directed by Frank Capra, telling a forbidden cross-cultural love story between an American missionary and a Chinese general. As an ambitious director, Capra saw this work as an important opportunity to compete for Academy Awards. He directly expressed his desire for Oscar nominations to Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures. Cohn told him that he needed “the sort of arty junk that wins Oscars” (Capra and Hurley 2004, 189). So, Capra began searching for novels that met this criterion, and ultimately chose Grace Zaring Stone’s The Bitter Tea of General Yen as adaptation material. However, screenwriter Edward Paramore abandoned the philosophical core of this bestselling novel, replacing it with a story about a protected white woman succumbing to the sensual charm of an exotic Asian man. (Wilson 2013, 312–313) Capra considered this work “Art with a capital A”, because “representatives of two cultures as far apart as the poles, clash and fall in love.” (Capra 1971, 140) However, after its release, the film performed poorly at the box office and failed to receive Oscar nominations due to its controversial content.

It’s been over 90 years since the movie I write about here were made. Looking back now, this film was a bold attempt in Capra’s career, even a risky venture—don’t forget that “it was also one of the first films to deal openly with interracial sexual attraction”. (O’Toole 1993) The reception history of this film is undoubtedly a long retrospective. To avoid getting lost in the vast historical materials, this article will focus on reviewing and exploring the reception history of Bitter Tea from aspects such as its premiere reception, censorship and racial controversy, and later academic evaluations.

Initial Reception in the 1930s

Let's quickly review the plot of this film that was neither “arty nor junk”: A conventional New England girl (Barbara Stanwyck) arrives in Shanghai during the outbreak of civil war, preparing to marry a rigid missionary. While attempting to rescue some children, she is knocked unconscious and wakes to find herself in the entourage of a notorious Chinese warlord (Nils Asther). She is taken to the warlord's summer retreat, where she is held captive by this fascinating heathen. She attempts to convert him to Christianity but simultaneously begins wearing Chinese robes and falls in love with this surprisingly wise and courteous man. Unfortunately, as the war situation turns against the warlord, he ultimately commits suicide by poison.

According to Joseph McBride’s biography of Capra, Bitter Tea was adapted from Grace Zaring Stone’s bestselling novel of the same name, “reportedly costing about $1 million”  (McBride 1992, 281)- the film was positioned as “the nucleus around which the whole Columbia program of 1933 will be sold”. (McBride 1992, 281)

Meanwhile, Bitter Tea was chosen to premiere at the opening festivities of New York’s Radio City Music Hall in January 1933, and was planned to run for at least two weeks at Radio City and other major surrounding theaters. However, it proved financially disastrous for Columbia, and despite a rental loss of $20,000 (out of a total rental of $100,000), Radio City Music Hall pulled it after just eight days, with total box office earnings of only $80,000.  (“Theatre Receipts” 1933)Just as Capra noted, this film making it him “only other Columbia film that lost money”. (Capra 1971, 150)

The film’s failure was a major setback for Capra. Although his other work that year, Lady for a Day, earned him his first Oscar nomination for Best Director, due to this film’s failure, “Capra had to turn to making lower-budget screwball comedies, through which he established his reputation.” (Lee 2005)

After the film’s release, reactions were polarized. The New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall said it was “a handsomely mounted affair with conspicuously good portrayals by Nils Asther and Walter Connolly...It is a story that is scarcely plausible but which has the saving grace of being fairly entertaining.” (Hall 1933) In The Hollywood Reporter’s 1933 summary of New York media reviews, Sun, World-Telegram, and News mainly criticized the narrative as “a bit slow”, while the media reviews largely praised “the production of the film is excellent”(World-Telegram), “The juxtaposition of Eastern civilization with Western is worked out better than the actual tale itself” (Sun), “Its beauty is fleetingly captured in photographic emphasis and in the charming authenticity of its atmosphere.”“There is a redolence of Chinese culture which puts the picture, far ahead of the numerous films in a similar vein” (Post) (“New York Reviews” 1933, 2)

Regarding the actors’ performances, Bitter Tea also received considerable praise. Nils Asther’s portrayal of General Yen displayed a unique charm, despite “his eyes taped and his brow line shaved”. (“Bitter Tea of Asther” 1933, 18) He still possessed “crude masculine virility” (“The Audience Talks Back” 1933, 8) and “it confirmed his possibilities in a manner that convinced even Hollywood”. (“Bitter Tea of Asther” 1933, 18) However, “Stanwyck fans may be disappointed to find her in a role which, while excellently handled, is secondary”. (“Have to Complain the Bad Ones” 1933, 57) Because the box office response was so brutally honest, Stanwyck blamed its poor box-office showing on racist backlash. (Sterritt 2010, 373–75) According to Stanwyck,

The women's clubs came out very strongly against it, because the white woman was in love with the yellow man and kissed his hand. So what! I was so shocked [by the reaction]. It never occurred to me, and I don't think it occurred to Mr. Capra when we were doing it.  (McBride 1992, 281)

Although the strict Hays Code was not fully implemented until 1934, it was evident that the public was not ready to accept such emotional expressions that crossed racial boundaries. David Palumbo-Liu suggests that the “failure” of the film “may be attributed in part to the fact that it is unable to establish a stable identificatory position”, and the film clearly could not negotiate complex racial, gender, and class thematic positions. Its attempt to “cleverly handle these subjectivity contradictions through returning to nationalist concepts” also made it unable to “satisfy the moviegoing public in the 1930’s”. (Palumbo-Liu 1992, 766–767)

In both script form and completed film, although Bitter Tea passed the industry’s self-regulatory production code, “but encountered serious censorship issues in Britain and the Commonwealth due to its interracial romance” (Smoodin 2004, 173). After the film’s release, the British Board of Film Censors demanded cuts before approving it. In 1950, when Columbia Pictures sought to re-release the film, the Production Code Administration insisted that the film’s portrayal of Americans and Chinese, as well as the scenes of the heroine’s sacrifice to the general, were “very questionable”, and thus the film was not re-released. (Sklar 1998, 293)

The censorship of Bitter Tea came not only from Western audiences who were averse to interracial romance, but evidently also from the Far East, though Chinese censorship was not focused on the interracial relationship, but rather that the film “contained situations and dialogues reflecting discredit on the Chinese race”. “The frequent aspersions towards Chinese culture, the exoticisation of China as an exciting, lawless wasteland where life is cheap, and morals are scarce.” (Lee 2005) From Smoodin Eric’s discussion about Bitter Tea and the struggle between Chinese censorship authorities, Columbia Pictures and the State Department, we learn that “American films in 1932 accounted for 75 percent of the footage shown in Chinese theaters.” Such massive market share led to “the American government became convinced of the centrality of Hollywood motion pictures in China and of the need to make sure that China remained open to American movies”. (Smoodin 2004, 173–183)

Therefore, the censorship that Bitter Tea faced significantly impacted its reception history among global audiences. In Havana, for instance, the Chinese consul general had managed to have about a thousand feet of film eliminated from Bitter Tea, while the consul general at Chicago lobbied to have “eliminated some sixty-three words of dialogue which . . .[he] considered insulting to China”. After the Los Angeles vice consul wrote to the censorship board expressing dissatisfaction, “the committee itself decided not to censor any further Columbia films, thereby keeping them from playing in China.” As a result, Columbia quickly proposed to cut offensive scenes, apologized to the Chinese vice consul in Los Angeles, and then requested censors to begin considering Columbia’s films again. (Smoodin 2004, 172–181)

The outcome of this censorship struggle was that the film “not only did the film apparently never play in China, it also faced Chinese lobbying efforts against it in several other countries, and it was removed from at least one other foreign market, Japan”. Even when Bitter Tea did play in these foreign territories, “it faced Chinese lobbying efforts designed to keep people away. In the Dutch East Indies, Batavia, Singapore, Manila, and Calcutta, Chinese consular officials advised Chinese citizens “not to patronize the film in question”. According to Willys Peck, the American consul general in Nanking, this was enough to have “resulted in loss to the American firm”. (Smoodin 2004, 172–185)

Smoodin, Eric also believed that this film may have alienated audiences outside of major cities, while films with Chinese themes had caused fatigue among American audiences.  We cannot ignore the American context when this film was released: during the depths of the Great Depression in winter (Bitter Tea premiered on January 11). And we can find evidence of this in several related reports from The Film Daily: for instance, one theater manager combined concerns about the Great Depression with issues facing small-town audiences, complaining that despite Bitter Tea's good quality, “the generally low wages and limited income in small towns meant that even good films couldn't achieve the box office numbers they would in normal times.” Another theater manager complained that the film contained too much “war, China, and horror that our audiences are already tired of”. (“Theatre Reports” 1933, 49)

From Neglect to Recognition