Josef von Sternberg Week #1 – Amy Jolly’s Chinese Doll

Regular readers will know that many China Rhyming posts are slightly obscure. Here’s one of those – by way of explanation I’ve just visited Essaouira in Morocco, which used to be called Mogador, which is the town that Marlene Dietrich’s character, wandering showgirl Amy Jolly, arrives in at the start of her movie Morocco (1930), directed by Josef von Sternberg (two years before they did Shanghai Express) and from the 1927 Benno Vigny novel Amy Jolly, die Frau aus Marrakesch (which became Mogador in the movie). So visiting Mogador I re-watched the movies and remembered that Amy is, in her apartments in the town, alone with few of her belongings except a Chinese and African doll…what can these mean?

Hard to say but a few theories – the academics appear to have none except that perhaps the African doll presages Dietrich’s Hot Voodoo number in Blonde Venus – but I’m not convinced by that. More likely is that Von Sternberg, a great fan of China (Shanghai Express came later as did 1941’s The Shanghai Gesture and 1952’s Macao, while his autobiography was called Fun in a Chinese Laundry and dwells on his Shanghai and Chinese experiences closely) dropped the doll in the shots to show Amy’s previously wandering proclivities. of course showgirls wander and never return as the script goes with La Bessiere (a rich Frenchman played by Adolphe Menjou) talking to the ship’s deck officer:

Amy (Marlene) with her Chinese doll in Morocco