When I read Katie Gee Salisbury’s recent interview with Susan Blumberg-Kason over at Half-Caste Woman, their conversation rang a lost bell for me. Susan’s new biography, Bernardine’s Shanghai Salon, tells the story of Bernardine Fritz, who was like a cross between Gertrude Stein and the famous DC hostess Perle Mesta, except Bernardine was holding court in Shanghai from 1929 to 1937—the same era when my father and his siblings were coming of age there.
Bernardine Fritz is not a name you easily forget, and I knew I’d heard it during my parents’ discussions of Shanghai and maybe also of Hollywood in the 30s, when Dad briefly appeared in movies featuring Asian actors like Anna May Wong, who was a good friend of Bernardine’s. But I could not pinpoint Bernardine’s identity or find a direct connection between her and my family, so I reached out to Katie, hoping for an introduction to Susan.
As an aside, this reach felt a little verboten, since Susan had given my last novel Glorious Boy an absolutely gorgeous review in the Asian Rev…
