Anna May Wong

[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

The Goddess… Anna May Wong.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

The Goddess… Anna May Wong.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Her best role in Hollywood in the early 1930s was in support of Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s Oscar-winning classic Shanghai Express (1932). However, Hollywood in the 1930s was as racist as it had been in the Roaring Twenties, and MGM refused to cast her in its 1932 production of The Son-Daughter (1932), for which she did a screen-test, as she was “too Chinese to play a Chinese.” Stupidity is at the root of racism.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Anna May was later kept out of both a lead and supporting role in MGM’s prestige production of The Good Earth (1937), the much touted filming of Pearl S. Buck’s popular novel. Again, supposedly, Anna May failed to live up to a white people’s idea of what “looked” Chinese. Personally from all I’ve read about her, this loss of a part she wanted so so badly, haunted her until her final day.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

For The Good Earth, MGM screen-tested her for the lead role of O-Lan, the sympathetic wife of Chinese farmer Wang Lung (to be played by Paul Muni, personally cast in the part by Irving Thalberg). She also was considered for the supporting role of Lotus, Wang Lung’s concubine. Anna May, an ethnic Chinese, lost out on both roles to two Austrian women, Luise Rainer and Tilly Losch, as Albert Lewin, the Thalberg assistant who was casting the film, vetoed her and other ethnic Chinese because their looks didn’t fit his conception of what Chinese people should look like. Yes, he was as dumb as dirt while casting a movie titled, The Good Earth. Ironic to say the least.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Again, ironically, the year “The Good Earth” came out, Wong appeared on the cover of Look Magazine’s second issue, which labeled her “The World’s Most Beautiful Chinese Girl.” Stereotyped in America as a dragon lady, the cover photo had her holding a dagger. Luise Rainer would win the Best Actress Oscar for her performance of O-Lan in Chinese drag. Anna May lost the role which would have probably won her a Oscar because she was, “too Chinese.”

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

However, I should point out that there were some practical considerations for MGM’s refusal to cast Wong opposite Muni. It was illegal in many States, including California of all places, for Asians to marry Caucasians, including featuring an interracial couple in movies, even if they were playing the same race, would have meant the movie would be rejected by many theater chains in regions in which anti-Asian prejudice was particularly strong, such as the Bible-Belt Deep South.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

The new Motion Picture Production Code of 1934, pandering to segregationists white racist, forbade filmmakers from portraying miscegenation in a positive light. Casting a Chinese-American opposite a Caucasian might be construed as promoting miscegenation.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Anna May returned to England, distraught at the injustice perpetrated by MGM and her home country, as I stated earlier a distress which haunted her rest of her life. In England she alternated between films and the stage, but she was obliged to return to the US to fulfill her Paramount contract. She appeared in two Robert Florey-directed pictures, Daughter of Shanghai (1937) as a non-stereotypical Asian-American female lead, and Dangerous to Know (1938). She also appeared in major roles in King of Chinatown (1939) and Island of Lost Men (1939).

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Anna May Wong did not appear in films from 1939-41, when she was cast as a supporting player in Ellery Queen’s Penthouse Mystery (1941), an entry in the B-movie series. Her last two starring roles in films were in a pair of anti-Japanese propaganda films, Bombs Over Burma (1942) and Lady from Chungking (1942), both of which were made by Producers Releasing Corp., the lowest of the Poverty Row studios. The major studios, when shooting propaganda films requiring a sympathetic Asian lead, reverted to the old practice of casting Caucasians in yellow-face, no matter how absurd the result. Look at picture #3, one can almost see her distress in her eyes.

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