ROHMER REFLECTIONS

 

At the end of my review of THE GOLDEN SCORPION, I idly wondered as to whether Sax Rohmer might have meant to do something else with Fu Manchu, given that character's guest-starring appearance in the novel. I said:

Even in those early days, had Rohmer received enough negative response about Fu Manchu to make him disassociate himself from the Yellow Peril? And did any such negativity play a role in Rohmer's decision to table Fu Manchu for the next decade, until Hollywood showed some interest in a revival? Only the foremost Rohmer experts may have a clue...

Though it was a fair question, I was aware that professional writers don't live in a hothouse; projects are initiated or dropped according to whether or not they put food on the table. So I consulted the only book-length biography of Rohmer, the 1972 MASTER OF VILLAINY, written by Rohmer's widow and by his secretary Cay Van Ash. (In all likelihood Mrs. Rohmer just provided the information and Van Ash did the writing,)

I haven't finished re-reading the biography, but I sought out the chapters relevant to my main question: why had Rohmer deserted the character of Fu Manchu for roughly fourteen years, the period between the serialization of HAND OF FU MANCHU in 1917 and that of DAUGHTER OF FU MANCHU in 1930?

VILLAINY is a chatty bio, filled with stories of Rohmer and his wife making their way in life and traveling from place to place, with only occasional anecdotes about when Rohmer worked on this or that novel or story. No one could use this bio to chart the development of Rohmer's works generally or of the Fu Manchu character specifically. However, the chapters I read suffice to clear up some of the mysteries of the fourteen-year delay.

Though Van Ash doesn't specifically address the question as to why Rohmer allowed Fu to go dormant in the late 1910s, he does comment that the author had other fish to fry, both joining the army during WWI and later becoming involved in theater (where Fu Manchu was considered for a play-adaptation that somehow didn't come off). Van Ash supplies no anecdotes as to why Rohmer didn't follow up the intimations of a Fu-return in 1918's GOLDEN SCORPION.

The biographer does, however, supply a convoluted clue about the process of the devil-doctor's recrudescence. In 1925, the American magazine Colliers apparently contacted Rohmer about a follow-up to HAND-- meaning that the true lacunae is more like eight years, not fourteen. Van Ash does not speculate as to why the magazine wanted some new Fu, though I would suggest that the editors' interest might have sparked by the two silent serial adaptations of the Chinese villain, respectively coming out in 1923 and 1924. 

Rohmer agreed, but he did so expecting that the magazine would pay him separately for each segment of the novel he delivered. To the writer's consternation, Colliers was determined not to pay until they had the whole novel. Rohmer was short of cash and could not work that far ahead without income, so after delivering his first installment of DAUGHTER, he started a new project and submitted that to Colliers. This was the novel that eventually became THE EMPEROR OF AMERICA, and though Colliers only accepted this work reluctantly, the first installment caught on with readers. Van Ash remarks that later, when Rohmer was more flush and was ready to continue with his work on DAUGHTER, Colliers then became much more bullish on further installments of EMPEROR!

Thus, my earlier speculation, though accurate based on what info I possessed at the time, is incorrect insofar as I hypothesized that Hollywood's first sound-era movie with Fu Manchu, 1929's MYSTERIOUS DR. FU-MANCHU, had encouraged Rohmer to return to his best-known character, not to mention the unnamed "daughter of Fu Manchu" who had just barely put in an appearance in 1917's HAND OF FU MANCHU. Not all the blanks are filled on this matter, but for the time being, "tis enough-- 'twill serve."