Hello ... I recently came across this article when reading old newspapers that were given to me. Thought it might be of interest to someone out there. I don't know which Leonard Strong that they are talking about. Article printed in the Winnipeg Free Press Newspaper dated Monday Jan. 29, 1945 OCCIDENTAL LEONARD STRONG IS TYPED AS AN ORIENTAL When Leonard Strong first went on the stage in his native Salt Lake City, he looked so oriental that they made an English butler into a Japanese valet - and gave the part to Strong. That was quite a while ago-but Strong is still having his eyebrows slanted when the occasion demands - and making like an oriental. Since Pearl Harbour, he's made 14 movies that way. In 13 of them he was a Japanese - but in the just released Keys to the Kingdom he's a Chinese-the venerable old mandarin. Strong's ancestors were all good, staunch Welshman or Englishmen. There's not a drop of oriental blood in him. But he doesn't mind taking the Far Eastern roles. "They're all good characters" he says. "In Keys to Kingdom, I was the only occidental playing a Chinese role. All of the rest of the Chinese were the genuine article or Koreans. That put the makeup department to a real test. They had to make me as Chinesey as the Chinese. They tried 15 different makeups before they got one that suited them". To get the Japanese slant to Strong's eyebrows, an ingenious contraption is fitted on his eyelids and his eyebrows are shaved a bit so they tip up-instead of following their normal path. Strong took that first Japanese valet role in Salt Lake City when he was just a youngster. But that was enough to put him on the stage - and keep him there. >From Salt Lake City, he went into stock companies that played up and down the Pacific coast. From stock he went into productions, highlighted by playing the communist in Counsellor at Law with Otto Kruger. From productions, Strong dipped into radio work. He was in radio dramatics when the war came. "I was at one audition with a couple thousand other citizens when a friend of mine happened to mention that his agent was tearing his hair out, hunting for someone to do a Jap part," Strong recalls. "I wandered over-and got the role. That was just after Pearl Harbour. There were no Japanese left on the coast. Chinese refused to play Japanese parts. But the part was a villainous one, the Jap was definately a heel so it was okay with me." In the 12 pictures that followed, Strong had done just about everything in the Jap army and navy. He's been a general, an admiral, a captain, a lieutenant and a sargeant. I hope this is of interest to someone Robyn Z. icqsignature