Anna May Wong

[wingsfan19Participant 6 topics 222 replies]

Thanks for the post, very interesting. She’s beautiful, of course, and I love her legs. I’ll have to watch some of her movies.

[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

“The Toll of the Sea” made Anna May Wong a known, and thus a marketable, commodity in Hollywood. This 1922 movie broke new ground to a degree showing a Chinese woman and Caucasian man falling in love. “The Toll of The Sea,” gave Anna May a starting point for being cast with non-Asian men and she became the #1 actress when a young Asian female part had to be cast, but unfortunately lead roles for Asians were few and far between.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Anna May was described as a woman with a complexion of a “rose blushing through old ivory,” but she usually stuck in supporting roles, as in Tod Browning’s melodrama Drifting (1923) and the western Thundering Dawn (1923). She even played an Eskimo in The Alaskan (1924). She appeared as Tiger Lily, “Chieftainess of the Indians,” in Paramount’s prestigious production of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1924), but the role was very small. Despite some initial success, she struggled to find meaningful roles.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Although she was 170-cm-tall (5’7″) many sources cited her height as 5’4½, believing Chinese women couldn’t be considered tall. Strange, but that’s how many people thought at that time. However, Anna May did become known as one of the world’s best-dressed women and widely considered to have the loveliest hands in the cinema.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Her big breakthrough after “The Toll of the Sea” finally came when Douglas Fairbanks cast her in a supporting role as a treacherous Mongol slave in his Middle Eastern/Arabian Nights extravaganza The Thief of Bagdad (1924). The $2-million blockbuster production made her known to critics and the movie-going public. For better or worse, a star, albeit of the stereotypical “Dragon Lady” type, was born. Yes, Anna May brought the Dragon Lady to American cinema and continues to this day.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Despite her beauty and proven acting talent, she was limited to supporting roles, as Caucasian actresses, including most improbably Myrna Loy, continued to be cast as Asian women in lead roles from the 1920s through the 1940s. This “whitewashing,” issue is still seen in movies even now.

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[Woody-AlienParticipant 61 topics 258 replies]

A very fascinating story, thanks for sharing.

[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

In and around 1928, Anna May journeyed to and finally moved to Europe to escape the typecasting of Hollywood. Journalist Doris Mackie once asked her why(?)… “I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain? And so crude a villain–murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass.” Pictures #3 and #4 are of Anna May with Marlene Dietrich. They became very close friends.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Los Angeles based movie magazine “Pictures” published a story about Anna May in 1926 in which she complained, “A lot of people, when they first meet me, are surprised that I speak and write English without difficulty. But why shouldn’t I? I was born right here in Los Angeles and went to the public schools here. I speak English without any accent at all. But my parents complain that the same cannot be said of my Chinese. Although I have gone to Chinese schools, and always talk to my father and mother in our native tongue, it is said that I speak Chinese with an English accent!”. Later in her memoir, Anna May referred to herself as “Chinese” or “Americanized Chinese,” but not as an “American” or “Chinese-American.” Whenever I speak of her myself, knowing this, I try to never refer to her as Chinese-American, out of respect. I refer to her as Chinese.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

After Anna May moved to Europe in 1928, she made movies in the UK and Germany. She made her debut on the London stage with the young up-and-coming Laurence Olivier in the play “The Circle of Chalk.” After she was critiqued her voice and singing from London critics, she hired a Cambridge University tutor to improve her speech, with the result that she acquired an upper-crust English accent, which she could turn on and off at will.

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