S01E33: LADY WINDBELL’S FAN

A hunchback deaf-mute vagabond known as Silent Sy, who makes a living peddling pencils on the street, enters Wong’s curios shop in Chinatown (a shop selling artistic artifacts and souvenirs). Wong motions with fingers to Sy to give him something (there is no dialogue at all in the episode’s opener; wouldn’t need to be anyway, as Sy can’t hear or speak). Sy removes a small slip (or ticket) from his pocket and hands it to Wong, who doesn’t even look at it; he just puts it in his pocket. (This first appears as if Silent Sy had hocked something with Wong, like at a pawn shop, and is claiming his property.) Wong pulls down a folding handheld fan on display on a shelf and shows it to Sy, pointing at its designs and motioning excellent craftsmanship. (This is all very confusing. Firstly, if it’s a hocked item, why is it on display? Secondly, why is Wong going over details of an item that Sy should already be familiar with? At this point it appears Wong is trying to sell the fan. Then what was the claim ticket about?)  Sy holds up a ten-dollar bill to Wong, but Wong smiles and shakes his head; an indication that it is not enough. Sy hands a writing pad and a pencil to Wong, who writes that $10 is not enough; that the fan was a “hard job”. (Did Sy order the fan to be made there? Maybe that’s what the claim ticket was for. Without having agreed to a price when the order was placed?) Sy scribbles “How much?” on another sheet. Wong, who seems to be mocking Sy, responds on the same sheet, “$10,000.” (For a paper fan?!) Wong must immediately assume that Sy can’t afford that amount as he promptly returns the fan to the display shelf. Sy grabs a knife from a holster on the counter and stabs Wong in the back. Wong turns around and his upper body drops on the counter on top of three of Sy’s scribbled sheets of paper. (Only two from the pad were used.) Silent Sy grabs the fan from the shelf, as well as his writing pad still on the counter, and he pulls just one of the sheets they had written on from under Wong’s body. He then dashes out the front door.

Peter Gunn and Edie are seated at a table in the Green Dragon club in Chinatown where an exotic Chinese performance is taking place on a stage featuring a beautiful young Asian woman, Lillian Quon, dancing with a folding fan as typical Chinese string music is heard playing. (It’s the same fan Silent Sy stole from the shopkeeper after killing him!) Her fiancé, Johnny Chang, who owns the club, is narrating a fabled story during the performance from a microphone. Moments later, Johnny walks over to Gunn and Edie’s table to say hello (he is a close acquaintance of Gunn). Gunn introduces him to Edie. Johnny tells Gunn that he'd asked him to come by because he needs a favor; the fan Lillian is holding has caused a slew of problems since its mysterious arrival. (Then why not get rid of it?) Gunn looks over at the performance with Lillian still dancing with the fan. The show ends and Johnny calls Lillian over to the table. She walks past Silent Sy, standing beside the stage and clapping. (It appears he is infatuated with Lillian. He must have given her the fan as a gift anonymously.) Edie tells Lillian that she enjoyed her dance and then tells Gunn that she has to get back to Mother’s. Gunn gives Edie his car keys and tells her to take the car, that he shouldn’t be long. He then goes back to the table and congratulates Lillian on her engagement to Johnny. Lillian explains that a huge obstacle in their getting married is Johnny’s father, Mr. Chang. Gunn recognizes the name as a very powerful and influential person who is known as “the unofficial mayor of Chinatown”. Lillian explains that Mr. Chang believes strongly in tradition and thinks of her as a wicked dancing girl that wouldn’t fit in with his beliefs. Johnny begins talking about the fan again. He explains that Lillian found it in her dressing room “last Monday night” after completing a performance. The fan had a note that read, “You will receive a phone call.” Lillian says she did get a call from someone who had only said, “Guard the fan. It will pave the way to your happiness.” Johnny says that a man broke into the club to get the fan from her, but he had the fan in his possession at the time. 

Two Chinese thugs walk into the club. Johnny tells Gunn that one of them is the man who broke in. (It is not clear if Johnny ever reported the break-in to police.) Gunn tells Lillian to take the fan back to the dressing room and come back with anything wrapped in a package, making it look like she had wrapped the fan, and to give him the note that came with the fan. Lillian leaves, but she is followed to the dressing room by one of the thugs. Gunn follows.

Gunn walks through a door and hears a loud scream from Lillian at the bottom of the stairs. Gunn rushes down just as a man holding the fan is racing back up. Gunn kicks him back down the stairs and a brutal fight ensues, with the thug grabbing stuff from all around the room and throwing it at Gunn. Furniture, a mirror, and props from the club’s stage get smashed during the struggle. The thug then flees up the stairs without the fan (apparently dropping it during the fight). Gunn goes after him, but the thug pushes a bunch of crates into Gunn and his body goes rolling back down the stairs. (Nice stunt-double action!) Gunn gets back up, gathers himself, and looks around the room that is now totally trashed. He finds the fan on the floor and picks it up. Lillian comes out of a room (what was she doing all that time?) and asks Gunn if he’s okay. Gunn tells her to give him the fake-fan package he’d asked for. In a humorous moment, Gunn grabs a piece of the smashed mirror and stands it up to look at himself so that he can straighten his tie.

(Amazing how after this brutal battle between the two men, the Chinese thug's hat never fell off his head!)

Gunn and Lillian are back in the dining area of the club. He tells her it’s not necessary to worry Johnny and to not mention the fight. (And how does the trashed area outside the dressing room on the lower floor get explained when he sees it?) The other thug is still seated at a table, possibly wondering what happened to his partner. Gunn approaches Johnny to say goodnight and holds up the package (so that the thug can see it) and loudly says that he’ll take good care of it (so that the thug can hear it). 

Johnny walks Gunn out of the club. Outside, Silent Sy is standing by the door selling pencils. Johnny introduces him. Gunn says hi to him, but Johnny explains that Sy can’t hear or speak. (Can’t lip read either?) Johnny says that Sy is there a lot and he’s very devoted to Lillian after she once helped him by thwarting off some juvenile bullies that were bothering him. Gunn looks at a car parked outside and must assume that it belongs to the thugs that entered (one that fled and another still seated at a table waiting for him). Gunn gets inside the car to inspect it. He flicks his cigarette lighter on an area of the dash behind the steering wheel. (In old cars, this spot is where registrations with name and personal information were attached. Too bad this show's producers were unaware that a lot of people watching this show 60+ years later wouldn't know that and would have no idea what Gunn is trying to see.) Sy taps Gunn on the shoulder. Sy scribbles a note on a pad sheet and hands it over. He lets Gunn know that the car belongs to Johnny’s father. Gunn gives Sy a coin and leaves. (This seemed a bit stingy from the wealthy P.I. who usually hands out high-denomination bills like it was running tap water.) Gunn lights a cigarette and starts walking along the sidewalk just as the thug (Mr. Chang’s henchman) comes out of the club. The thug jumps in his car and follows, moving slowly along the curb. Gunn knows he’s being followed and continues. Gunn turns the corner and hides. The thug turns and doesn’t see him. He gets out of his car and enters a phone booth on the sidewalk. Gunn pushes the phone booth, knocking it down as the thug lets out a yell. (Those booths weren’t very well attached to the ground back then?) The thug comes out through the side of the booth all beat-up and looking like he'd fallen from a cliff. (A bit dramatic and exagerrated for someone who was only toppled in a phone booth a few feet to the ground.) Gunn points his revolver at him and asks who sent him. The thug tells him it was Mr. Chang. Gunn asks why he wants the fan. The thug replies that he doesn’t know; he was just sent to get it. Gunn forces the thug to take him to Mr. Chang. 

Gunn arrives at the home of Mr. Chang, a house decorated with Chinese statuettes and a bonsai plants garden inside. A loud gong clangs as the big double door entry opens. (What caused the clang? Just episode background sound effect?) Gunn, still holding onto the package made to look like the fan was wrapped in it, is walked over to Mr. Chang in a room. Mr. Chang is a very creepy-looking and very elderly man (appearing well over 100 years old) wearing ancient-style Chinese apparel, has long fingernails, and speaks English that appears to be how Chinese may have spoken about 400 years ago. He greets Gunn by saying, “If the terror of evildoers will honor one of my deplorable chairs by resting his divine body in it, I can assure him the chair shall afterward be burned so no lesser being may use it.” (In other words, have a seat. How does this man know that Gunn is a terror of evildoers?) Gunn takes a seat and Chang motions to his henchman to leave the room. Chang continues by referring to Gunn as a thief catcher and “the king of finders-out”. (Translation: the best at solving mysteries. Then apparently this old man is well informed about Peter Gunn.) Gunn asks Mr. Chang why he wants the Tai-Soon fan. (This is the first time in the episode that we hear a name for the fan. At what point did Gunn learn it?) Mr. Chang states that he wants to “avoid further bloodshed over object of inconsiderable worth.” Chang explains that the fan solely has sentimental value “for House of Chang”. Gunn asks if there’s been bloodshed because of the fan and Chang tells him that one night “last week” he’d received a message from “dealer in fans” wanting to blackmail him. (He is referring to Mr. Wong, who ran the curios shop; he sold many things beside fans.) The letter states that Mr. Wong is in possession of “an instrument of your downfall” and asks what is the price that will be paid for Wong’s silence concerning an incident that occurred in the Year of the Serpent. Chang tells Gunn that the following night after receiving the letter, Wong was murdered. Chang had sent one of his henchmen to the curios shop (Chang calls it a disreputable shop) and was discovered dead on the counter with some scribbled notes on small sheets. The henchman picked up the notes and quickly left before police get there and blame Mr. Chang for the murder. Chang hands Gunn the notes. Gunn says this is evidence and it must be turned over to police. Chang tells him to do so and asks Gunn to share tea with him, and he will then disclose details about the fan. Chang pours some tea into a cup and hands it to Gunn. Chang pretends to drink from his own cup as Gunn drinks from his and says it is delicious. Chang asks Gunn what his “disobedient son” has told him about the fan, but Gunn says that’s confidential. (The only thing young Chang had said is that the fan has brought trouble; nothing else.) Chang says his son is infatuated with a “sing-song dance girl” and that the Tai-Soon fan has been a treasure for many centuries in House of Chang. (We soon learn that is false, as the fan was recently made.) As Chang continues speaking, Gunn begins to get extremely dizzy from the tea he drank. Chang says the sing-song dance girl performs a “vulgar display before lascivious audience”. Gunn tells Chang that Lillian is a very nice girl. As Chang speaks about how Emperor Tai-Soon had provided the fan of “remarkable workmanship” to a “queen of rival warlord” (what does that mean?), Gunn faints and his body drops belly down onto the tea table beside him. Mr. Chang gets up from his chair and rings a bell for his henchman, who quickly appears. He motions for the henchman to hand him the package Gunn was carrying. After opening it and discovering what looks like a bent up metallic clothes hanger, he says, “Again we are outwitted.” He instructs the henchman to not harm Gunn and “take him back safely”. 

Outside Mother’s, Edie and Barney the bartender walk out of the club with Edie complaining that she’s tired of waiting for Gunn. Edie tells Barney that if Gunn shows up, to let him know she took the car, which is parked by the curb outside the club’s front door, and that "Pete" can get a taxi. Barney jokes that he’ll lend Gunn money for the cab fare. (Silly remark, since Gunn is already independently wealthy.) Barney goes back inside and Edie gets in the car only to find Gunn sprawled unconscious across the front seat. (Most cars back then had a single long seat in front instead of individual seats as we mostly see today.) Edie manages to wake Gunn, who is trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head from the concoction Mr. Chang had given him to drink. (So Mr. Chang’s henchman drove Gunn’s unconscious body back to Mother’s and placed him in the front seat of Gunn’s own car? How did he know to go to Mother’s? And that the car belonged to Gunn?) Gunn asks Edie what time is it and she tells him it’s a quarter past two in the morning. Edie complains that his hair is a mess and pulls a comb from his pocket to do his hair. She ends up pulling some scrap sheets of paper with notes from his pocket along with the comb. As Edie is combing Gunn’s hair, he takes one of the notes (found with the dead man, Mr. Wong) and looks at it. He then compares the handwriting from the note that Silent Sy had given him letting him know that the thug’s car Gunn was looking at belongs to Johnny Chang’s father and the handwriting is the same! Gunn tells Edie he’s got to hurry back to the Green Dragon club. He tells Edie to go back inside Mother’s and call there to let them know he’s on his way. And to have Silent Sy wait there too. He then tells Edie to take a taxi home. 

At the Green Dragon, Lillian hands Gunn the fan and he asks Johnny Chang if he’d ever heard of a man named Wong, “dealer in fans”. (Again with this about Wong as just a dealer in fans? He sold a lot of stuff.) Lillian is standing on the other side of Gunn and Silent Sy is seated at a table drinking tea with his back to them. (Gun, Lillian, and Johnny are standing beside a table with many small table lamps with bare light bulbs at the top. These lamps were not seen on any table or on stage at start of episode. Where are they used?) Johnny says he is aware that Wong was killed last week. Gunn then asks Lillian, who says she’s never heard of him. Gunn then speaks into Silent Sy’s back and asks him. Johnny reminds Gunn that Sy can’t hear. Gunn replies, “Oh, yeah, that’s right.” Gunn says Sy was in Wong’s shop the night Wong was murdered. Gunn puts the scribbled notes on the table Sy is sitting at and says he had left some of his conversation with the dead body. Gunn says two innocent people might be blamed for that murder, Johnny’s father and Lillian. Gunn removes a light bulb from a small dining table lamp and yells out, “Lillian don’t! Don’t shoot!” giving the impression that she was about to shoot Silent Sy. He then throws the light bulb on the floor making a loud popping sound as if a gunshot had gone off and a startled Silent Sy yells, “Lillian, don’t!” The ruse worked. Sy is not deaf or mute. Johnny is surprised to learn the truth about Sy. Gunn walks over to Sy and tells him to explain why Wong wanted $10,000 for the fan. Sy doesn’t want to speak in front of Johnny and Lillian; Gunn asks them to step out for a few minutes. Sy says he wanted to help Lillian because the old man, Chang, doesn’t want them to get married. Sy says he found out something very bad Chang had done back in 1905. That Chang is an escaped convict. (And still wanted?) Sy said he found some old newspapers proving it. He had the newspapers made into a fan. Sy says he then sent threats to Chang that his criminal past would be revealed if he doesn’t agree to Johnny and Lillian getting married. Gunn tells Sy that he’s made things worse by killing a man and that Chang would think the threats were coming from Lillian. Gunn calls out to Johnny and asks him to call police headquarters and let them know he wants to speak to Lieutenant Jacoby. (It must be almost three in the morning now; this question has been asked in previous blogs: does Jacoby ever go home?) 

Peter Gunn, Johnny, Lillian, and Sy enter the home of Johnny’s father, Mr. Chang. (Gunn has no reservations about returning there so quickly after what happened to him in that house about an hour before?) Gunn still has the fan in his hand. The four of them, escorted by Chang’s henchman, walk over to Mr. Chang, still in his seat in the den. There is a man in a suit standing beside Mr. Chang appearing to be a doctor. (He is wearing a stethoscope clinging from his neck; this episode never makes clear the purpose of his being there.) Mr. Chang says his house is once again honored by Gunn’s presence. Gunn tells Chang that he knows the truth about his past and that the girl, Lillian, had absolutely nothing to do with “this whole affair”; that she only wants to be happy with his son. Mr. Chang asks both his son and Lillian to take his hands so that he may give them his blessing. Gunn then walks over to the fireplace and Sy follows him. Gunn hands Sy the fan, who then tosses it into the fire. (There is a clear zoomed-in shot of the fan; it does not appear to have been made from newspapers at all, unless it is well hidden in the dark bottom section where fan is held while in use.) 

QUOTES:

After old man Chang tells his henchman to leave the room…

Mr. Chang: “If this foul one has offended the prince of thief catchers…if it is your Excellency’s wish that he be cut to pieces, inch by inch.”

Gunn: “I don’t think I’m that much offended, Mr. Chang.”

After Mr. Chang hands Gunn a letter of blackmail he’d received from Mr. Wong and Gunn stares at it curiously…

Mr. Chang: “Oh? You do not read Chinese?”

Gunn: “One of my many failings.” 

NOTES:

The ending of this episode leaves questions. By allowing the fan to burn, did Gunn want to leave Mr. Chang’s criminal past forgotten? Is he also willing to let Sy get away with murder after killing the blackmailer, Mr. Wong? Then why did Gunn want to speak to Lt. Jacoby? 

Mr. Chang was being blackmailed by two persons; shop owner, Mr. Wong, who wanted money, and Silent Sy, who wanted Chang to agree to Johnny and Lillian getting married.

Viewers of this episode should not conclude that Silent Sy was in love with Lillian, but simply highly devoted to her, as he thought of her as a “queen” and “empress” and wanted to see her happily married to Johnny Chang. 

It appears we are to conclude that Silent Sy placed an order with Mr. Wong to have newspapers proving Chang as a wanted criminal made into a fan. Did they not agree on a price? When Sy returned to pick up his order, Mr. Wong said he wanted $10,000. And why go through all the trouble of having newspapers made into a fan? Those old newspapers can surely be found again in archives. 

Emperor Tai-Soon, mentioned by Mr. Chang, did not exist in real life. There did, however, exist an Emperor Taizong, who lived from the year 598 to 649. 

Kudos to producers of this episode for accuracy: The Year of the Serpent (Year of the Snake or Year of the Wood Snake) was stated by Silent Sy as the year 1905, and that is historically correct.

The beautiful Asian girl, Lillian, was played by actress Frances Fong. She was born in 1927 in Hawaii and was 31 years old when this episode first aired on May 11, 1959. Frances Fong died in 2012 at age 85. According to IMDB, she appeared in numerous brief roles on television, one having been an episode of “Kung Fu” in 1972 starring David Carradine. She’d also appeared on shows such as Bewitched, Perry Mason, The Mod Squad, All in the Family, and M*A*S*H over the years. 

It seems producers of this episode were so satisfied with the brutal fistfight that occurred in the previous episode (“The Family Affair”) in which almost everything in a room was destroyed during an altercation between Gunn and his combatant that they decided to do it again in this episode. 

DECEASED: Curios shop owner Mr. Wong, stabbed by Silent Sy.

Peter Gunn Kills: 0 – Series Total: 8 

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NEXT BLOG: S01/E34: “BULLET FOR A BADGE”

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