''The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong'' is an American television series which aired on the now defunct

DuMont Television Network The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being ...

. It starred

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...

silent film and talkie star Anna May Wong (birth name Wong Liu-tsong) who played a

detective A detective is an investigator, usually a member of a law enforcement agency. They often collect information to solve crimes by talking to witnesses and informants, collecting physical evidence, or searching records in databases. This leads th ...

in a role written specifically for her. ''The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong'' was the first U.S. television series starring an

Asian-American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous people ...

series lead."Film reveals real-life struggles of an onscreen 'Dragon Lady'
." January 3, 2008. Retrieved: January 27, 2010.

Broadcast history

Wong's character was a dealer in Chinese art whose career involved her in detective work and international intrigue.Camhi, Leslie. "FILM; A Dragon Lady and a Quiet Cultural Warrior". '' The New York Times'', January 11, 2004. The ten half-hour episodes aired during

prime time Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...

, on Wednesdays at 9:00p.m. ET.Chan, Anthony B. ''Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905–1961)'', p 80. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2003. . Though there were plans for a second season, DuMont canceled the show in 1952. No copies of the show or its scripts are known to exist.Hodges, Graham Russell. ''Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend'', pp. 216–217. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. .

Preservation status

Like most DuMont programs, no known episodes of ''The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong'' exist today, the majority of the network's footage having been dumped into the Hudson River upon closure. Although a few kinescope episodes of various DuMont series survive at Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications, New York's Paley Center for Media, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive, there are no copies of ''Madame Liu-Tsong'' in these archives.Ingram, C. (2002)
"The DuMont Television Network Historical Web Site"
. Retrieved June 7, 2008. In 1996, early television actress Edie Adams testified at a hearing in front of a panel of the Library of Congress on the preservation of American television and video. Adams stated that, by the 1970s, little value was given to the DuMont film archive, and that all the remaining kinescopes of DuMont series were loaded into three trucks and dumped into Upper New York Bay.

Episode list

References

Bibliography

*David Weinstein, ''The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television'' (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004) *Alex McNeil, ''Total Television'', Fourth edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1980) *Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, ''The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows'', Third edition (New York:

Ballantine Books Ballantine Books is a major book publisher located in the United States, founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. It was acquired by Random House in 1973, which in turn was acquired by Bertelsmann in 1998 and remains ...

, 1964)

External links