from Saturday Evening Post
East is West
by Ellis Parker Butler
This is the second of a series of six advertisements appearing weekly in THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, written by Ellis Parker Butler, world-famous humorist and author of "Pigs is Pigs", telling America about a new screen play, "East is West." Mr. Butler accepted this commission only on the condition that he be permitted to say exactly what he pleased on the subject.
What does "East is West" mean?
When it comes to a matter of love and hate, good and evil, West is East, and East is West. And that's true. To prove it the story takes an altogether delicious little China maid, who "don't feel China," and puts her in danger of the hideous things that can happen to a Chinese girl whose father sells her as a slave. In the picture this little Ming Toy, who later boasts she is "99% American-girl," is Constance Talmadge, and all through the picture she seemed to me just about the most charming thing I have ever seen on the screen.
The story begins in China with little Ming Toy flashing into a most un-Chinese and thoroughly American bit of temper in a shoe shop because the shoe merchant dares hint that her feet are too large for beauty: By the time she has said her say with her tongue and her paper umbrella the street before the shop looks as if China had just had a bad spell of riot and raw rebellion. This, naturally enough, attracts the attention of Billy Benson who happens to be "seeing China." Billy is an athletic young American, son of the American Minister, and as Ming Toy has about forty-seven parcels to manage, as well as sixteen little sisters and her temper, Billy sends them all home in "rickshaws" or whatever the things are called in China. That is how he meets Ming Toy and is all he sees of her just then, but we are in mysterious China and know some thrilling thing is about to happen. And it does.
I'll tell you what, next week.
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