Their marriage ended, but their partnership endured. They kept performing together. In the 1940s and ‘50s, that meant Chinatown nightclubs like Charlie Low’s Forbidden City in San Francisco that catered to a white audience, “including midwestern kids who had never seen a live Chinese person,” wrote Harley Spiller in “Late Night in the Lion’s Den” for Gastronomica magazine in 2004. He further described the scene at Charlie’s:
“Plush and roomy, the nightclub accommodated an eight-to-ten piece orchestra, performance space for a troupe of entertainers, and a large dance floor. Every night was a dazzling three-ring circus with singers, chorus lines, dance teams, and acrobats. There were no wild animals, but there was plenty of wildness documented by the photographers who snapped and sold pictures to the patrons. Revelers often included celebrities such as Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. One of the best surviving photos, snapped in 1942, is of then-actor Ronald Reagan with a stunning Jane Wyman at his side.”
It was Charlie Low who brought Dorothy and Paul back to California. He offered them a job at the Forbidden City. (Helen, too, found work in San Francisco’s Chinatown, so both sisters returned with their mother to the West Coast.) After years on a circuit where she and Paul were often the only Asian act, Dorothy enjoyed these performances at the Forbidden City. “It was a nice atmosphere,” she told Rick. “I liked it. ... Forbidden City is all Asian people. It’s very good.”
Through a woman in the chorus, Dorothy met Leslie Fong, a businessman in the area. The couple would marry in 1952 and have two children, Dorlie and son Peter. In Rick Quan’s documentary, Dorlie recounted how she’d often join her mother and Paul Wing in their act. She said, “I had a little Japanese kimono and at the end of their routine they would do an encore, so they would bring me on and we would do this little cha-cha. My grandmother had made my kimono for me. I think I really looked forward to those moments. It was really quite special for a child.”
By 1962, Forbidden City and the nightclub scene had seen its heyday. Dorothy and Paul founded Toy and Wing’s Oriental Playgirl Revue. Just as they had transformed their act to look more mature when Chicago stages demanded it, now what the stages wanted was sensuality. With keen marketing savvy, Dorothy promoted the troupe with a photo of five naked dancers, save for carefully placed Asian-style umbrellas. It worked incredibly well.
While sexuality may have been troupe’s skin, dance was its heart. Dorothy choreographed the numbers herself and demanded professionalism and excellence from her dancers. An opening number featured the women emerging in Chinese-style opera robes with heavy, decorated layers and tall, metal headdresses. Then, the dancers would drop the gilded layers to reveal skimpy bras and panties underneath. In these costumes, they’d break into a jazz number.
“As time changes, we went along with it. …Whatever the people are crazy about. But when it came to being nude and all that, we said, ‘no, no, this is where we stop,’” Dorothy told Rick with a laugh.
“I’d say it was suggestive, in those days, but it’s nothing compared to what they do on stage these days,” recalled performer Cynthia Yee. “When you talk about Chinese folk dance...or Japanese kabuki dancing, it was very, very refined. But we were very, very commercial. That’s what Dorothy believed in, in keeping the show very commercialized. She said that’s what the audience wanted, and she was right all the way.”
When Paul retired in 1965, Dorothy rebranded the troupe as Toy’s Oriental Playgirl Revue. They toured throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, and Japan with performers like Patti LaBelle while she was still the frontwoman for Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles and “Hawaii’s Frank Sinatra” Jimmy Borges.
Dorothy is often called the “Asian Ginger Rogers.” In her talk with Rick, Dorothy acknowledged both the praise and the inaccuracy. “It’s a nice compliment,” she said. “She’s a beautiful woman. I thought it was too nice of a compliment. See, I dance, but I dance more stronger. She was a soft, beautiful dancer.” (Watch a single video of Dorothy dance and you’ll immediately understand her point.)
“At the height of her career Toy was deemed a ‘novelty act’ because white audiences rarely saw Japanese American dancers perfecting American dance forms,” the writers at Densho Encyclopedia noted. “As such Toy was never fully credited for her incredible versatility and performance caliber. To be legible by a public steeped in Orientalist stereotypes, she could not distinguish herself as Japanese American and instead passed as Chinese. She had to embrace reductive titles such as the ‘Chinese Ginger Rogers,’ that, although complimentary, standardized white performers thereby never allowing Toy to be valued for her own unique abilities.”
The Oriental Playgirl Revue disbanded as the 1970s began. Demand for that style of dance show had dwindled. Now in her 50s, Dorothy faced a completely different type of transformation: Creating a life away from the stage. Always on her toes, she handled this change well, too.
“She never said, ‘I can’t do’ something,” Dorlie said. “And this is something she told me, she said, Dorlie, never say ‘can’t.’ Just say, ‘I can do everything,’ and learn it on the job.” This daring approach took Dorothy into careers as a salesperson and a hotel host, as well as a long-term job in a pharmacy. “She really put 100 percent into everything she did.”
Of course, she also taught dance lessons. Hundreds of students learned from her expertise in the bright dance studio she created in the basement of her Oakland, Calif. home. Paul passed away in 1997. Dorothy celebrated her 100th birthday in 2017 with family, friends, and her many decades of dancing students. She died on July 10, 2019, at 102 years old.
“She had a vision for herself and she followed through with it,” her daughter Dorlie said. “She just loved what she did, and that was the most important thing. She loved the applause, and she was happiest on stage.”
Dorothy herself said as much. “I loved it... When you’re dancing, it’s like you’re in another world.”
Much is rightfully written about Dorothy’s trailblazing. Yet, most of the obstacles she faced had nothing to do with the talent she undeniably had. She was the first in many fields, stages, places, and skills. She broke down walls and pushed open doors built by prejudice and stereotypes—because the stage was on the other side. Dorothy herself? She just wanted to dance.
Sources:
Dancing through Life: The Dorothy Toy story, documentary by Rick Quan
Deviled Ham musical short
Happiness Ahead: Scene featuring Dorothy and Helen Toy and Paul Wing
Densho Encyclopedia: Dorothy Toy
JSTOR: Late Night in the Lion's Den: Chinese Restaurant-Nightclubs in 1940s San Francisco by Harley Spiller
Evening Standard: June 27, 1939
The Bergen Evening Record: Dec. 9, 1941
The Wilkes-Barre Times Leader: Jan. 12, 1942
Wikipedia: Toy and Wing