Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • June 27, 2012 at the end of “Across the Pacific,” Totsuiko was the first guy he knocked dead out with his fist. (Chin said Bogart killed his rival, but that is not certain. He definitely finished the fight on the floor.) Sen Yung spent most of his film career after that getting killed flying MIGs, until he was old enough to be harmless and cute again. Maybe Ducky Louie, the cute little kid, got to be too masculine for his own good. We will never know. Ducky Louie could be tough, but only in a pathetic, childlike way. In “Back to Bataan,” he helps the American and Filipino guerillas disrupt a Japanese attempt to give the Philippines its independence and gets caught by Philip Ahn, history’s first Korean-American, who loved playing Japanese villains as did the Chinese-American Richard Loo, who is in the same movie. When they march in side by side, you know big trouble is approaching. Ahn and his thugs beat poor Ducky Louie to a pulp, and Ducky Louie agrees to betray the Americans. As the Japanese truck approaches the Americans down a mountain road, Ducky Louie revives his patriotism, furtively grabs the wheel, and takes the truck over a cliff, spilling Koreans in Japanese uniforms all over the sound-stage landscape. The Americans rush in, finish off those “Japanese” who are not quite dead, and say a tearful goodbye to Ducky Louie, who dies clutching an American military emblem a tearful John Wayne gives him as a consolation prize for dying at the age of 10. I remember that scene especially because my son and I used to watch “Back to Bataan” together. One day, after he had been captured perpetrating some outrage that I must have forgotten, I was driving him home and told him, “We’ll talk about this inside the house.” Johnny furtively grabbed the steering wheel. “Take it off me or we go together!” he said bluntly. Thinking quickly, I said; “Okay. It’s off you.” I needed the car for work. “Back to Bataan” is memorable for another reason: Wayne, who had been a New Deal Democrat, said he first became an arch-conservative when Colonel George S. Clarke, who commanded the 57th Philippine Scouts and was serving as a technical advisor, came to him and reported that director Edward Dmytryk and screenwriter Ben Barzman, were making fun of him because he was a practicing Catholic, and were singing the “Internationale” to advertise what they were practicing. Wayne said he stepped in and defended the colonel, who had been fighting the Japanese for two years behind their own lines, from a couple of Hollywood commies. Filipino sources close to Clarke said the real story was a little different. Clarke loved the Filipinos and hated Franklin Delano Roosevelt and MacArthur for running out and leaving them and his abandoned but defiant American buddies to fight the Japanese in the jungle which, as Winston Churchill once said, is like jumping into the ocean to fight a shark. Clarke especially objected to the fact that Dymtryk wanted to dirty the Filipinos up, and did not much appreciate having a couple of draft dodgers play war heroes while his own men were still in the jungle. The set was not a happy one. As Bosley Crowther said in his New York Times review: “…a big slice of pathos and sentiment, involving a Philippine schoolboy, is cut in…unless you are easily susceptible to Hollywood make-believe, you will probably find it a juvenile dramatization of significant history.” Crowther, in fact, is a significant suspect in the disappearance of Ducky Louie. Crowther noted in 1947 that the idea of having a modern American Indian and a Chinese boy as the heroes of a Hollywood film was “honorable,” but that Quinn’s performance was sporadic and that “as for one Ducky Louie, who plays the Chinese boy…we would rather be silent than cruel.” Crowther was not silent, but he was cruel. He broke Ducky Louie’s rice bowl. The Kentucky Derby finish line in “Black Gold” in 1947 was the end of the trail except for a small part in a forgotten film about modern pirates. Crowther actually had the decency to denounce “Decision for Death,” a prior documentary produced by good ol’ Doctor Seuss to make the mass civilian bombing of Japan look like a boon to the Japanese -- but his scuttling of Ducky Louie was the last straw. The real downfall of Ducky Louie, however, was political. Guerilla warfare was a great thing for Hollywood when the Americans were fighting organized, uniformed armies. You could put a few draftees in German uniforms or a few Korean-Americans in Japanese uniforms and let the “good guys” kill them in droves while the audience applauded. Guerilla warfare became a bad thing when the United States began to encounter hostile civilians who did not want us in their countries and decided to do something about it. This happened to us in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Breaking all the rules and fighting out of uniform -- forbidden by military codes of all nations under penalty of death -- sounded like fun and games when our guys killed their guys that way. When their guys kill our guys that way, it sounds like war crimes -- which it is, except that we used to encourage that sort of thing. The United States has yet to win a decisive victory in a guerilla war backed by any foreign power, or even by most of the local population. Usually, we settle for s stalemate because the taxpayers get tired of the bloodshed on both sides. Ducky Louie backed the U.S.A. in his three 1945 movies, but he and his buddies broke a lot of the rules, just as the Viet Cong and the Taliban. Guerilla warfare is no long cute when your own guys are the targets, as they have been since they started going where nobody wanted them. As I was writing this column, word came in that Asians have surpassed Hispanics as the most numerous immigrants. There are now 14.5 million Asian-American immigrants living here, not counting the Chinese-Americans who have lived here since the 1840s and the Japanese-Americans who have lived here since the early 1900s. Non-whites will be the majority of working adults before the middle of the century. If they find out what we did to Ducky Louie along with Charley Eagle, we could all be in trouble. July 17 at 10:30 a.m. or 3:30 p.m. This program is for children in grades one through three. Author Alison Formento will entertain children in grades one through three. This program will be held July 24 at 3:30 p.m. Great Readers of Glen Rock, followed by Rita’s Ices on the front lawn, will be held on July 26 at 7 p.m. “The Night Owl Club” is for students in grades four, five, and six. On June 27, youngsters will meet a T-Rex at the library at 4 p.m. Described as a 15-foot breathing and roaring dinosaur, the T-Rex is not for the faint of heart. On June 28 at 7 p.m., students from grades four to six can meet a live bat face to face and learn why bats are important to the environment. Donations of paper towels, canned yams, California natural dry cat food or dog food, and 45-gallon trash/leaf bags may be dropped off to benefit the Wildlife Center in Ridgefield Park, which helps conserve bats. The Book Club will offer a chance to talk about “Isle of Blue Dolphins” by Scott O’Dell from 7:15 to 8:15 p.m. on July 17 and “No More Dead Dogs” by Gordon Korman on Monday, Aug. 6 from 7:15 to 8:15 p.m. “Science Fun: What Did Your Owl Eat Today?” will be held at 6 and 7:30 p.m. on July 24. Youngsters will have an opportunity to dissect sterilized owl pellets. Fifth graders will try “Legos at the Library” on Tuesday, July 31 at 6:30 or 7:30 p.m. Fourth graders will have (continued on page 27) Whatever happened to Ducky Louie? Ducky Louie, probably not his real name since “Ducky” is sometimes set off in quotes, was a Chinese-American child actor who made films with some of the biggest names in American movies: John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Jeff Chandler, and Anthony Quinn. Three of the films were regular Saturday morning kid fodder when I was a kid in the early 1950s. In “China’s Little Devils,” “China Sky,” and “Back to Bataan,” Ducky Louie played the child hero of guerilla warfare against the Japanese invaders of China or the Philippines. All these films were made in 1945, but they were around until about 1960. In 1947, Ducky Louie played the Chinese foster son of a rather confused by stoic American Indian named Charley Eagle (Quinn) and the two of them raised a racehorse, got swindled by a white guy, and finally triumphed. After Charley Eagle goes off to the Happy Hunting Ground, Ducky Louie dresses up in racing silks and wins the Kentucky Derby riding “Black Gold,” the name of the race horse and the movie. The last film, “Smuggler’s Island,” has to do with pirates in the South China Sea. I never saw that one, but it got bad reviews. Ducky Louie then fell off the radar forever. I wanted to get all my facts before I came up with a theory, so I sent my spies out into the Chinese community in search of Ducky Louie. They came up empty. Nobody remembered who he was, and nobody knew what happened to him after he left the movie industry as a young teen. White guys who played bit parts in Bogart movies are known to have opened hamburger joints. Sabu Dagastir, a teenaged Asian Indian film star around the same time, opened a furniture store after serving as a gunner in the U.S. Army Air Force. Many other Asian actors went on to extended careers: Sen Yung, who first played Charlie Chan’s Number 2 Son, later the annoying but brutal Japanese agent Joe Totsuiko, ultimately became Hop Sing in “Bonanza.” Ducky Louie fell off the map. Why? Ducky Louie played a pre-pubescent male in all his films, most notably in the three guerilla movies made in 1945. Frank Chin, the Chinese-American critic and author, noted that you could only put an Asian actor before a mainstream American audience if he was utterly harmless, such as Charlie Chan’s son, or if he was a sinister villain. Sen Yung, Chin noted, was a hit as Chan’s son because the audience could see that he was fascinated by white girls but too inept to get anywhere. As Joe Totsuiko, Chin said, Sen Yung played a plausible Japanese Lothario of the type most Asian women also dread. “You looked at this guy and knew he got it in spades, and every white guy in the theater wanted him dead,” Chin wrote. Sen Yung also flipped Bogart in judo, which was another no-no, and later knocked Bogart out again with a karate chop -- not just once, but twice. Bogart was the allAmerican urban tough guy with fist or gun, based on his film image. The audience got their wish. When Bogart broke loose What happened to Ducky Louie? Public library (continued from page 8) “Paws for Reading” will be offered in 10-minute reading sessions on July 9, 23, and 30, and on Aug. 6. Children five years old and up can make friends with certified therapy dogs and polish their reading and public speaking skills as they read to these animals. Sessions take place between 6:30 and 7:30 p.m. “Playdough Storytimes” will be offered on July 9, 16, 23, and 30 and Aug. 6 at 10 a.m. Jima Vagias, a professional magician, will perform a comical magic show on July 10 at 6 p.m. and again at 7:30 p.m. “Children & Dogs: Safe Together” will be presented July 11 at 4:30 p.m. to children in kindergarten and elementary school. Cindy Mauro, an experienced dog trainer and evaluator, will show children how to approach a new dog, play safely with a pet, and deal with dogs on the loose. She will be assisted by one of her own dogs. Children three to eight years old can pair up with older children for “Book Buddies.” Sessions are planned for July 12, 19, and 26 from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. On July 16 from 7 to 7:30 p.m., Porch Light Productions will present a family theater event about a fruit bat who is befriended by baby birds. Youngsters get to guess who the bat is. “Science Fun: Water Jelly Crystals” will be offered on