June 28, 2022
From the time she was a young girl growing up in Los Angeles, Anna May Wong knew that she wanted to become an actress. To do so, she would have to work around the racism that plagued America, and to remain an actress, she would have to manage the transition from silent films to talkies.
As the second-generation daughter of Taishanese Chinese immigrants, she lived a block away from Chinatown for the first five years of her life, while her father, Wong Sam Sing, ran the Sam Kee Laundry in Chinatown. When Wong attended Chinese-language school in Chinatown, she often skipped school to attend the movie shoots in Chinatown, and she spent the tip money she earned delivering laundry for her father on trips to the movies. By the time she was 11, she came up with her stage name, and by 1919, when she was 14, she was in her first film as an uncredited extra in The Red Lantern, although she did not have a credited role for the next two years.
She Struggled To Find Roles In Spite Of Her Talent
Undeterred, she continued to pursue her dream, even though her father was not happy about it. He insisted she have an adult guardian, and in between scenes she had to be locked in her dressing room if there were no other Asians in the cast. She ended up dropping out of high school to work on her career, and in 1920, she was cast in Dinty, which was followed the next year by her first credited role as Lotus Flower in The Toll of the Sea, an adaptation of Madame Butterfly. She had top billing in the film, which meant that she was the first native-born Chinese actress to star in a major film.
However, this did not launch her career, as parts for Asian women were limited, and Caucasian women were frequently cast for the roles, despite Wong’s talent. She took a shot at a career in vaudeville in 1925, but when that was unsuccessful, she returned to film. Unfortunately, once she returned to film, she was typecast as a villain in supporting roles and she decided to leave Hollywood in 1928. She started to make films in the UK and Germany, where she was welcomed as a star. She made her stage debut in The Circle of Chalk with Laurence Olivier. She also learned to speak both French and German, and, after hiring a Cambridge University student as a tutor, she began to speak with an upper-class British accent. Although she was welcomed in Europe, it was not so in China. In the mid-1930s, she took a tour of China, where they considered her a disgrace; in China, being an actress was akin to being a prostitute.
MGM Thought She Was Too Chinese To Play A Chinese Role
Unlike other some of the other actresses of her time, she successfully transitioned to the talkies, with her first appearance being in The Road to Dishonour (1930). She returned to America after that, first appearing on Broadway in On the Spot. Unfortunately, when she went back to Hollywood, they continued to refuse to cast her; ironically, after one screen test, MGM said she was “too Chinese to play a Chinese.” The assistant casting for The Good Earth (1937) denied her the role because she didn’t look the way he imagined Chinese women should look, instead casting a white woman. They offered her the role of Lotus, the seductress, but she refused the role.
Her Career Was On Hold During World War II
She put her film career on hold during World War II, when she was focused on helping the Chinese cause against Japan. With the end of the war, she had several television appearances, including in 1951 on The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong. This was the first show with an Asian American lead. She also found her way back to film, playing Lana Turner’s maid in Portrait in Black (1960) and was cast as Madame Liang in the film adaptation of Flower Drum Song (1961), but before filming began, she died of a heart attack at the age of 56.
Racism Affected Her Personal Life As Well
The racism she endured in her professional life also tinged her personal life. Her relationships were mainly with older white men, who she could not marry because of the laws at the time. Because of the Chinese perception of actresses, had she married one, it is likely she would have had to quit her career.