Desc: Oil for the Lamps of China: Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. With Pat O'Brien, Josephine Hutchinson, Jean Muir, Lyle Talbot. An American, working for his oil company in China, disregards all but the company's interests. " The characters and the institution portrayed in the story are not actual but the product of fiction. The oil business was chosen because light has ever been symbolic of progress."