Anna May Wong is the most important
Asian American actress, performer,
style icon that we have ever had.
1919, Los Angeles, California.
14-year-old Anna May Wong would skip
school to go to the movies - and to watch
them being made.
Legend has it that Anna May Wong would
hang around Hollywood film sets and that
producers and directors would notice
this curious Chinese child there.
"I would worm my way through the
crowd and get close to the cameras.
I'd stare at these glamorous
individuals... and then I
would rush home and do the
scenes I had witnessed, before a mirror."
Anna May Wong was born in
1905 near LA's Chinatown,
where her father ran a laundry shop.
Wong attended a typical elementary school.
She and her older sister
Lulu received racial taunts.
"The great game was to gather around
my sister and myself and torment us."
Anna May Wong lived during
a racially segregated time.
There was real,
nativist sentiment
around Chinese migration.
And this resulted in the
1882 Chinese Exclusion Act,
which is the only immigration
act to target a group by name.
Despite her family's strong disapproval,
Wong dropped out of high school to
pursue a full-time acting career.
"I was determined to give
myself ten years to succeed.
I felt the greatest happiness - like
a rare flower in fields of sun."
The leading Chinese roles in Hollywood
films were played by white actors made up
in yellow face. They
would be wearing makeup,
very exaggerated costumes,
and they would have their
eyes taped to look more Asian.
It's completely ghastly and horrifying.
That is the Hollywood Wong confronted
when she starred, at age 17,
in one of the first technicolor films.
It's a silent film, but in
it she's amazingly eloquent.
Her facial expressions.
Her ability to weep.
Her feistiness.
Despite this being a demure role
in which she dies at the end,
pretty much anybody who saw
this was very impressed.
"I drained my emotions
trying to live the part out.
I hoped to represent my people worthily."
Wong's talents attracted director and
actor Douglas Fairbanks who cast her in
his blockbuster movie,
the "Thief Of Baghdad."
She had a crucial role,
however - father disapproval moment
- she wore a very scanty costume.
She was at the cutting edge of what
you might reveal in a Hollywood film,
and it got her notice all over the world.
Wong began dating white
actors and cultivated a public
image as a sophisticated
1920s "flapper."
Fashions are changing, skirts are
getting shorter, more form fitting.
Anna May Wong's body fit
beautifully into those aesthetics.
She's known for her haircut,
the Anna May Wong bangs.
Despite her growing fame,
Wong continued to be cast in supporting
roles as either 'Madame Butterflies' or
'Dragon Ladies.'
It was a time of anti-miscegenation laws.
So it was next to impossible to have
Anna May Wong kiss on screen or marry a
white man.
She really paved the way for me.
As an Asian American woman in
the entertainment industry,
there've been times where there are
roles that I would like to go out for and
they say they're looking for some
other ethnicity or a white girl. I'm
Jenna Ushkowitz and I pursued a
career in acting when I was three.
I'm known best for my role
as Tina Cohen Chang on Glee.
I've been pigeonholed into these roles
where you have to be the sidekick or the
tech nerd.
There are this many roles in film
and TV and this many roles for
Asian-Americans, women.
In 1928, Wong reached a breaking point
with Hollywood casting practices.
Wong was passed over for the lead role
in the movie 'Crimson City' and to add
insult to injury,
was even told to teach the white
lead how to use chopsticks.
"There seems little for me in Hollywood,
because, rather than real Chinese,
producers prefer Hungarians
for Chinese roles.
Pathetic dying seemed to
be the best thing I did."
Wong left for Europe.
She starred in a number
of movies made in Paris,
Berlin, and London.
She starred in her first
play, The Circle of Chalk,
with a young Lawrence Olivier.
So she's getting opportunities
in Europe that she didn't before.
When sound films arrived,
Wong became fluent in
both German and French,
to perform her roles in three languages.
"Anyone who can speak Chinese
can learn any other language."
In Berlin, Wong met rising movie star
Marlene Dietrich, and they became friends.
Both women dressed in
top hats and tuxedos.
They're both associated
with dangerous sexuality,
sexuality,
not necessarily contained by
marriage or respectability.
"I was hoping you would
take us in to dinner."
After Wong returned to the U.S. in 1931,
they starred together
in 'Shanghai Express.'
They play contrasting images
of women of ill repute.
"It will be a great day for
China when that price is paid."
Wong lives at the end,
so it's a real highlight of her career.
"Don't do anything foolish."
But Hollywood discriminated against Wong
again in 1935 when she tried out for
the lead role in the biggest
film about China to date,
an adaptation of Pearl Buck's
novel, 'The Good Earth.'
Luise Rainer and Paul
Muni, both white actors,
ended up as the leads,
and Wong was asked to try out
for the only evil character.
She's like, no, I won't do this.
"You are asking me to play the only
unsympathetic role in the picture,
featuring an all-American cast portraying
Chinese characters...I had to refuse."
She does not sit around
and sulk. She says,
'To hell with Hollywood.' She hires her
own cinematographer and makes her own
film.
Wong spent 1936 filming a
documentary of her travels in China.
"Although I've been to many,
many places in the world.
This first and only trip I made
to China was the most meaningful."
Returning from China, Wong signed
a contract with Paramount Pictures,
and finally got to play
some more nuanced roles.
"I can get information
that Mr. Lee can't get"
"This picture gives Chinese a break -
we have sympathetic parts for a change!
To me that means a great deal."
I was working with Hunter Arnold as
a producer of Once On This Island,
which was coming back to Broadway,
with a really diverse cast.
It won us a Tony,
which never in my wildest dreams that
I ever think I'd have a Tony award.
And I thought about all the younger
generations that feel like they have these
skills but can't get a foot in the door.
So Hunter created the Uplift Initiative,
which is for underrepresented producers
and has mentored us along the way.
I want to see a show that says,
"we can have four Asian actresses on the
show." With inclusivity comes equality
and that to me is where
I hope we're headed.
Wong contributed to the war effort
before and during World War II,
by auctioning off her movie costumes.
Film work was hard to come by,
and she suffered from depression and
alcoholism. Having never married,
she lived with her brother
in her Santa Monica home.
"Professional life is quiet on all fronts.
One wonders if one is
going to work again."
In the 1950s and 60s, Wong
appeared in several TV shows.
"That's the last you'll
see of Captain Connors."
She picked herself up. She kept going.
She worked in any way she could.
Wong was awarded a star on the
Hollywood walk of fame in 1960.
She was to act in the 'Flower Drum Song'
- the first major Hollywood film with a
mainly Asian-American cast.
But she died at age 56 of a heart attack
after battling cirrhosis of the liver.
She left a legacy of some 60 films.
Anna May Wong had a huge artistic range.
Her ability to survive in a racially
segregated and sexist world speaks to how
audiences could see beyond
what Hollywood could see.
In Hollywood things are
better than they used to be,
but they are nowhere near
where they should be.
Yellow face has evolved from
the time of Anna May Wong.
But I don't think it's fully gone
away yet, and that needs to change.
"Success is not a jewel that you can
purchase and keep for your entire life.
On the contrary,
the brightest star can fall down at
any time and fade away into dust."
