Anna May Wong

[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Anna May was a Democrat who strongly supported Franklin D. Roosevelt. She gave untold amounts of time and money to charities and various causes mainly tied to Chinese related organizations. She was active in this regard right up until her untimely death.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

After Madame Chiang’s 1942-43 propaganda tour of the US, according to various biographers, was the beginning of a period in time where Chinese and Chinese-Americans touted Anna May as an embarrassment. Chinese and Chinese-Americans blamed her rather than Hollywood for the demeaning stereotypes she had to play in order to work. There was an earnest attempt by many Chinese and Chinese-Americans to wash away her memory. I cannot imagine how this tortured her.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

This concerted effort by Chinese and Chinese-Americans to erase her memory virtually ruined Anna May’s career in motion pictures after WWII. However, she was one tough young lady behind her beautiful face. She launched her own TV series, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951), on the Dumont Network, playing a Chinese detective in a role written expressly for her, a character who was even given her real Chinese name. The half-hour program, which ran weekly from August 27 to November 21, 1951, was the first TV show to star an Asian-American.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

It breaks our hearts as dedicated Anna May Wong fans that there are no known films of her TV series, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, not even any copies of its scripts.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

In The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, Anna May’s character was a dealer in Chinese art whose career involved her in detective work and international intrigue. The ten half-hour episodes aired during prime time, on Wednesdays at 9:00pm ET. Though there were plans for a second season, DuMont canceled the show in 1952.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Like most DuMont programs, no known episodes of The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong exist today, the majority of the network’s footage having been dumped into the Hudson River upon closure. Although a few kinescope episodes of various DuMont series survive at Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications, New York’s Paley Center for Media, and the UCLA Film and Television Archive, there are no copies of The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong in these archives. In 1996, early television actress Edie Adams testified at a hearing in front of a panel of the Library of Congress on the preservation of American television and video. Adams stated that, by the 1970s, little value was given to the DuMont film archive, and that all the remaining kinescopes of DuMont series were loaded into three trucks and dumped into Upper New York Bay.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Goddess, Anna May Wong.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Goddess, Anna May Wong. #3 is one of my favorite photos of Anna May. Many years ago an autographed print was on E Bay but I wasn’t paying enough attention and got out bid. If it ever re-appears, I’ll pay more attention. #4 is Anna May on her mother’s lap with her sister. They are buried together in downtown Los Angeles. #1 and #2 also rank up there pretty high for me, too.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Goddess, Anna May Wong.

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[OldiesloverParticipant 15 topics 1648 replies]

Goddess, Anna May Wong.

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