” I felt sure that I’d see my name in electric lights before long.”
– Anna May Wong –

It’s been my mission on my blog to bring to light amazing women from the past to my readers that may have been overlooked. I have done posts on “Women of the Big Band Era Everyone Needs to Know-Part 1 & 2“, “The Women of the Canadian Heritage Minutes“, “Halifax, Nova Scotia Women Volunteers of WW2” and so many more.

Today as I open my Google landing page, I was taken by the sight of a beautiful Asian Woman in Black & White on my screen.

Her name…ANNA MAY WONG and the the slideshow images (above & below) of artwork depicting Anna comes on the 97th anniversary of the general release of “The Toll of the Sea,” in which she claimed her first starring role.

Gosh such stunning Google Doodles!

The First Asian-American Movie Star

Anna May Wong

ABOUT ANNA MAY WONG:

Born Wong Liu Tsong; January 3, 1905 in Los Angeles to laundryman Wong Sam Sing and his wife, Lee Gon Toy.

Anna May Wong knew she wanted to be a movie star from the time she was a young girl seeing movies being shot constantly in and around Wong’s neighborhood. She began going to Nickelodeon movie theaters and quickly became obsessed with the “flickers”, missing school and using lunch money to attend the cinema. Her father was not happy with her interest in films, feeling that it interfered with her studies, but Wong decided to pursue a film career regardless. At the age of nine, she constantly begged filmmakers to give her roles, earning herself the nickname “C.C.C.” or “Curious Chinese Child”. By the age of 11, Wong had come up with her stage name of Anna May Wong, formed by joining both her English and family names. By the age of 17 she had become a movie star (Source).

A third-generation American, she managed to have a substantial acting career during a deeply racist time when the taboo against miscegenation meant that Caucasian actresses were cast as “Oriental” women in lead parts opposite Caucasian leading men.

She was also one of the few actors to successfully transition from silent to sound cinema, co-starring with Marlene Dietrich, Anthony Quinn and Douglas Fairbanks along the way. She was glamorous, talented and cosmopolitan—yet she spent most of her career typecast either as a painted doll or a scheming dragon lady (as seen below in the Look Magazine cover).

She died of a massive heart attack on February 3, 1961, in Santa Monica, CA, after a long struggle against Laennec’s cirrhosis, a disease of the liver. She was 56 years old. Her fame lives on, four decades after her death. She is a part of American popular consciousness, chosen as one of the first movie stars to be featured on a postage stamp (Source).

For a more detailed BIO please read this article HERE.

Her Movie & TV Career

Anna May Wong appeared in over 50 American, English and German films in her career, making her the first global Chinese-American movie star.

Marlene Dietrich & Anna May Wong, cheeky scene from ‘The Shanghai Express‘ (1932). (video clip)

Anna May Wong in King of Chinatown (1939).

Source: IMDB

Daughter of the Dragon is a 1931 American pre-Code crime mystery film.

TV: The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951).

An American television series which aired on the now defunct DuMont Television Network. It starred Anna May Wong, who played a detective in a role written specifically for her. The Gallery of Madame Liu Tsong was the first U.S. television series starring an Asian-American series lead (Source).

Complete List of her movie & TV shows, HERE.

Photos of Anna May Wong during her Career

Why is Anna important?

The artist who depicted her for Google, Sophie Diao, said that she wished she knew of Wong when she was a child looking for Chinese American role models in Hollywood.”Asian American actors are underrepresented even now, so amazingly Anna May Wong was so active right at the beginning of film history, bridging the gap between silent films and talkies,” Diao said.That conversation about under representation has continued into modern Hollywood.

In 2017, the social media campaign #ExpressiveAsians was launched from sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen’s book “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism,” which quotes an unnamed casting director said it was a challenge to cast Asian actors because they are seen as not very “expressive.”The following year “Crazy Rich Asians” saw great critical acclaim. Leading actress Constance Wu was only the fourth woman of Asian descent to be nominated for best performance by an actress in a musical or comedy motion picture for the Golden Globes (Source).

For years, older generations of Chinese-Americans frowned upon the types of roles she played; but today a younger generation of Asian Americans sees her as a pioneering artist, who succeeded in a hostile environment that hasn’t altogether changed.

Check out this short video on Anna May Wong-In Her Own Words.

I hope readers that you enjoyed learning a bit more about this incredible woman, I know I did!

Question time: Have you heard of Anna May Wong before? Or was this your first time? Share in the comments section below.

FURTHER READING: Women’s History 1920s-1960s (Archived blog posts)

Liz