"What would Confucius say?" mused the stentorian voice of the Metrotone newsreel about the "modern Chinese girls" featured at Charlie Low's San Francisco cabaret, Forbidden City. In the late 1930s and 1940s-a century after P.T. Barnum offered a "Genuine Chinese Family" as a sideshow-Asian American entertainment was still an intriguing anomaly, and the ironic and provocatively named Forbidden City became a landmark hot-spot for locals and tourists alike. Its all-Chinese American revue recreated all-American productions from "Some of These Days" to "Alexander's Ragtime Band" so perhaps its stars were destined to be labeled "The Chinese Frank Sinatra" (Larry Ching), Sophie Tucker (Toy Yat Mar) or Fred Astaire (Paul Wing). In Arthur Dong's documentary Forbidden City U.S.A., these and other one-time luminaries recall with engaging humor and not a little melancholy the kind of chutzpah that took them from their traditional Chinese homes to a glitzy, sexy San Francisco stage-and the cultural barriers (both from within the Chinese community and without) that kept them there. When the novelty wore off and Forbidden City shut its doors in the 1950s, there were no record contracts, no Hollywood films in its wake, just hoofers and crooners trapped in a cultural vacuum. Dong unearthed and preserved rare recordings and performance footage which he then edited into a marvelously entertaining package. But he also resurrected some pain amid these reflections on rebellious lives.