director: Esther Eng
year: 1941
country: USA

It tells of a widower (Moon Kwan) who is concerned that his daughter, Chain-ying (Tso Yee-man), spends too much time at the theater. When she falls in love with Wong, one of the company's leading actors, the enraged widower forces the theater to close its contract with Wong, resulting in the actor's deportation to China. But Chain-ying is already pregnant and dies after giving birth to a baby girl (played by Bruce Lee -THE Bruce Lee, then aged three months). The widower's former employees look after the baby, who, like her mother, grows up (Tso Yee-man again) with a passion for the theater. After a series of complications, tears, and comic moments, she is eventually reunited with her father,
Wong, when he visits the United States to perform in a national defense play (to aid China then at war), and they are finally reconciled with her aging, remorseful maternal grandfather.

Feature of 110 minutes. Production company: Golden Gate Production Co. Cinematographer:Joseph Sunn. Writer: Moon Kwan (Kwan Man-ching). Actors: Tso Yee-man in the title role. Other actors include Moon Kwan (Kwan Man-ching) as the bitter father (later, remorseful grandfather), Luk Won-fee and others (check the Variety review for full details).
But who really directed this film? Paul Speagle, in his interview story on the film in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 8, 1941, talked to the "producer, director, and star of the film" - namely Charlie Lowe [presumably "D.W. Low," elsewhere credited as coproducer with Louis A. Quan], Moon Kwan, and Tso Yee-man ["the Mary Pickford of China"] - with the strong inference that Golden Gate Girl was "written and directed" by Moon Kwan. There is no mention of Esther Eng, and Kwan would also claim the entire credit in his memoirs. Variety, however, clearly credits Esther Eng as the sole or principal director of this film.

Source notes
Frank Bren, 23.02.2010

GGG has gained cult status for Bruce Lee's first film appearance as a 3 month old baby. (His father, a Cantonese opera star, was touring the US at that time).This film only exists in fragments on VHS so far as I know. "Wern" of Variety (May 20 or 28?, 1941) provides the only known contemporary trade review of this film.
Esther Eng (1914-1970) was one of Chinese cinema's greatest female directors - oddly, an American too. This is one of her ten lost films (nine of them as director). For a long time, I've been developing a project on Esther Eng's life and would love to hear of anything new on her films via frankmondial@yahoo.com . See also www.estherengstory.com on this only known American woman directing commercial movies between the Hollywood careers of Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino. Also a famous New York restaurateur, hers is one of the strangest disappearing acts in film history. Central/South America offers reasonable hope for rediscovering movies that she distributed there (maybe her own too) in the 1940s, including to Havana, Cuba. Detailed portraits of her appear in "China Daily" (HK English edition) of 23/24 January 2010 and "Women of China" (Beijing, June 2006, English edition). See http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkedition/2010-01/23/content_9365379.htm