page_title: The Vermilion Pencil
section_title: Plot
hierarchical_section_title: The Vermilion Pencil / Plot
caption_attribution_description: English: actors Omar Whitehead and Sessue Hayakawa in the silent film The Vermilion Pencil (1922)
context_page_description: The Vermilion Pencil is a 1922 American silent drama film directed by Norman Dawn, and produced and distributed by Robertson–Cole. It is based on the eponymous 1908 novel by Homer Lea. The film stars Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa in multiple roles, and white actors Ann May, Bessie Love, and Sidney Franklin, all in Asian roles. It is now a lost film.
  After completing this film, Hayakawa learned that members of the studio who made the film were active in the anti-Japanese movement, and he left Hollywood for over a decade.
context_section_description: In China, Tse Chan (Hayakawa) flees to the mountains after his wife (May) is executed under the command of the unscrupulous Ling Chee.
  His son Li Chan (also Hayakawa), who has grown up in America, returns to China many years later as a successful civil engineer. Li falls in love with the beautiful Hyacinth (Love), who is betrothed to the viceroy Fu Wong (Franklin). Li takes a position as Hyacinth's private tutor, and the pair escape to the mountains.
  They hide in the crater of a volcano and are captured when they nearly suffocate from the fumes. The viceroy is about to have them executed when The Unknown (also Hayakawa) helps them escape by sacrificing himself in the volcano, causing it to erupt.
caption: Omar Whitehead (seated) as Ma Shue, with Sessue Hayakawa as Li Chan
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