SAXTONS RIVER — A singing quartet dubbed “the Chinese Andrews Sisters” will visit the screen at Main Street Arts on Saturday, April 15, when Leslie Li offers a showing of her documentary, Portrait in Four-Part Harmony.
Li, a former resident of Saxtons River, is the daughter of one of the Kim Loo Sisters, who grew up in Minneapolis as the children of a Chinese father and a Polish refugee mother, overcoming poverty and prejudice to perform, first in kiddie revues and then on vaudeville circuits around the country and, finally, on the Broadway stage and Hollywood screen.
Through videotaped interviews with the biracial sisters Alice, Maggie, Jenee, and Patricia, (nicknamed “Bubbles”), conducted individually and collectively, Li has created an homage to love and loyalty among siblings whose roots are Chinese but whose reality is American - while shedding light on issues such as cultural identity, immigration, discrimination, race, and gender, according to a news release.
“At first I thought maybe it was only interesting to me because it's my family, but people kept saying this is a really important story because it's an American story,” Li said during an interview on a Minneapolis radio station.
The Kim Loo Sisters, or the Kimmies, as they were known, shared top billing with such stars as Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and Ann Miller, and their jazzy singing style took them on tour around the country.
During World War II, three of them joined the USO and shipped out with the fleet to entertain GIs stationed in Europe. The fourth married the son of the vice-president of China and headed to her father's homeland - a divided China in the throes of revolution.
Li will be on hand for the screening at 7 p.m. A donation of $10 is suggested as a contribution to Main Street Arts. Li is also accepting donations towards the postproduction costs of finishing the documentary, whose fiscal sponsor is the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Li is the author of three books: Daughter of Heaven: A Memoir with Earthly Recipes (Arcade); Bittersweet: A Novel (Tuttle) and Enter the Dragon, a book of children's plays based on Chinese folktales (Main Street Arts Press).
She has written feature articles and personal essays for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Gourmet, Saveur, Travel & Leisure, and Garden Design. Her books have been translated into German, Dutch, Thai, and Chinese and, in early 2011, her culinary memoir will be translated into Portuguese.