Arise Africa, Roar China by Yunxiang Gao;

Author:Yunxiang Gao;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Leydas survived the turbulent post–Pearl Harbor and postwar years in Hollywood. With the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act on December 17, 1943, the significance of Si-lan’s race faded. However, her past and present radical politics continued to pose a formidable obstacle as the Cold War intensified.

The Leydas appeared on the radar of the FBI, whose New York office first forwarded a file on Jay Leyda titled “The New Lander, espionage” to its Washington, D.C., headquarters on July 3, 1940. Mysteriously, he lost his job at the MoMA around the same time, and the imminent prospect of his being drafted added to uncertainty for the couple. Fortunately, studio work in Hollywood opened up to Soviet and China themes following U.S. involvement in the war. After Leyda was hired by Warner Brothers for the film Mission to Moscow, the couple settled into a cramped apartment at 62271/4 De Longpre Avenue in Hollywood, where they would live from August 1941 to April 1947. Since Si-lan’s return from the West Indies to New York City aboard the S. S. Evangeline on August 14, 1941, her six-month “visit” was extended a few times (fig. 4.10). Fearing that she would not be allowed to continue to “visit” once he joined the military and the marriage would be torn apart permanently, Leyda desperately petitioned to defer his draft. The FBI alleged that Si-lan had declared that Leyda would risk jail to resist the draft and that she would divorce him if he ended up in the military. Still, he joined the U.S. Army Tank Corps at Fort Knox in late 1943 and was honorably discharged in 1944 after contracting pneumonia.80

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