When Were You Born. A film from 1938 (full film) . A rare expression of Sun Sign astrology promotion at the cinema. Introduced by the esotericist Manly Palmer Hall. The film features the Chinese American film star Anna Mae Wong as the astrologer character called Mei Lei Ming.

Sheila Roher mentioned on my Facebook page that '''it's based on a story suggested by Manly P. Hall, with the script written by Anthony Coldeway. I don't think the cheesy jokes about the sargent are Manly Hall's style!''

Manly. P. Hall introduces the film with a description of the 12 zodiac signs. The characters in the film are all representative of a zodiac sign. Funny to see Anna Mae Wong as the astrologer (called Mei Lei Ming) getting frustrated that people dont have their birth times. Some things never change! I will let you guess which sign the bad person is....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYB9Qy4Mn7A

I love old style movies like this.
1938 It's quite something.
Thanks for sharing Mark.

Oh wow - and on YouTube too - I am going to enjoy watching this.
Thanks Mark

Intriguingly, I found the following reference in a website discussing the film which suggests the start of the film production was astrologically elected:

''They timed production of "When Were You Born?" the astrological who-dunnit prepared by Manley Hall and the Warners, to start precisely at 10:45 one Hollywood morning, a propitious moment when the sun, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter were conjunct in the tenth house''.

https://www.nytimes.com/1938/06/09/arch ... e-new.html

I am not a New York Times subscriber so couldn't go further to check the whole article out. So unfortunately, I dont know the date, year or even location when/where the film production commenced. However, I would assume Los Angeles is highly likely. It should be easy enough to work out the date for that 4 planet conjunction. I lack the time just now but will post it up later.

If any of you are able to get access to the NY Times article do please let us know what you discover!

Mark

Thank you for this tip!

Even other planets occur in the dialogs!