Anna May Wong: The Chinese American Star From Silent Films To TV

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.

Source: (IMDb/colorized).

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

Source: (IMDb).

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.