ETERNAL DIVA: ANNA MAY WONG,

BROTHER RICHARD WONG

2008-01-29T20:40:00.000-08:00

Anna May Wong's Family

with Tony Chan

Daughter Amy, Mrs. Wong, Prof. Tony Chan, Richard Wong at the UCLA Anna May Wong Retrospective, January 10, 2004.

PERPETUALLY COOL

2008-01-29T20:37:00.000-08:00

NEW IN PAPERBACK

Perpetually Cool
The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905-1961)
Series: The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series #103
Anthony B. Chan

List Price: $24.95
Discounted Price: $21.21 (15% off)
ISBN: 0-8108-5909-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5909-8
Pub Date: Feb 2007
320 pages
Binding: Paper
Availability: In Stock

European customers click here

THE ONE AND THE ONLY

2008-01-29T20:36:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Scarecrow Press.

The One, The Only and The Perpetually Cool Anna May Wong

By Shirley Hsu

Author/professor Anthony Chan poignantly explains why there'll never be another Anna May Wong and what he means by 'European Americans.'

"Lucy Liu is not Anna May Wong. No one is Anna May Wong."

Interview by Shirley Hsu

Anthony B. Chan, author of "Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong" is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author of "Li Ka-shing: Hong Kong Elusive Billionaire" (1996), "Gold Mountain: The Chinese in the New World" (1983) and "Arming the Chinese: The Western Armaments Trade in Warlord China, 1920-1928" (1982).

Chan has also worked as a journalist in Hong Kong and Canada, and an independent filmmaker. He has produced The Panama (1996), Another Day in America (1989) and Chinese Cafes in Rural Saskatchewan (1985). He is currently completing a four-part series on Asian Americans in Vietnam.

Shirley: What motivated you to write a book about Anna May Wong?

Anthony Chan: I wanted to write this book for Asian Americans. It wasn't for European America. I wanted to write it for Asian Americans; I wanted to tell them what I thought as a Chinese American, what I thought about Anna May Wong as a Chinese American woman. And the things she went through, I went through. When I was young, growing up, people would call me 'chink,' and she was called 'chink.' And I wanted to go to China to find out what the hell's going on, and I went to China, and I found out I'm not Canadian - but I'm not Chinese either - so am I suspended between two worlds, as she says? Then I realized, after writing the chapter on Daoism, that you can go on two paths. Or three paths, because that's the Chinese way.

Shirley: Are there any contemporary Asian (or Asian American) actresses or actors that are currently "following in the footsteps" of Anna May Wong?

Anthony Chan: No one. I can't think of anyone.

Shirley: In terms of name recognition, what about stars such as Lucy Liu?

Anthony Chan: Did you read Scarlet Cheng's article in the LA Times? She talks about Anna May Wong being "the right person at the right time." Somehow, the situation in the 1920s, '30s and '40s allowed Anna May Wong to star in the first Technicolor film. It's quite amazing; why her? There were other people like Eda Lee, Winter Blossom, and there were some Japanese American actresses - why Anna May Wong? Why Eichberg saying, "I'm going to give you a five-picture contract?"

This would never happen today to Lucy Liu. Why? Because the situation is so different today - television has a huge impact. At that time, British films and German films were really independent industries. American films were certainly pervasive, but they weren't as pervasive as they are today where they really control maybe 95 % of the market. So somebody like Richard Eichberg from Germany, with Germans having their own cinema, could say to Anna May Wong, "Hey, why don't you come do this." I can't think of any German filmmaker that could do this to Lucy Liu.

Lucy Liu is not Anna May Wong. No one is Anna May Wong. The quality of the acting…and first of all, she's five feet seven. Anna May Wong was stunning. She wasn't beautiful - she was stunning. She had great legs - and you never see that! I mean, Chinese women with great legs, because they're usually short. Here's a tall, statuesque woman of empowerment, who knew who she was, and this confidence was shown right away in all the films she did.

Look at how she stole all the scenes in Shanghai Express. When she's there standing with the bag and she has a dagger, and Marlene Dietrich comes behind her and pulls her up, and [Wong] flips the dagger, and see how she flips the dagger - you're looking at Anna May Wong, you're not looking at Marlene Dietrich. And in the end, she's the heroine. She goes out with 20,000 bucks. Where's Marlene Dietrich? She becomes a housewife. She marries this guy, and he takes her away. It's the old European American idea of saving a woman by marrying her. So how does Hui Fei save herself? She becomes a heroine. I love that [scene in which Wong says], "I don't know what your standard of respectability is." I just love it. It was a great line, and the way she delivered it! The writers just aren't there any more. They're not there for Lucy Liu, or whatever Asian American actress is around.

Shirley: In Daughter of Shanghai, AMW costars with Philip Ahn as the two heroes of the movie, and at the end, they actually become romantically involved. How is it possible for a film like this to be made in the 1930s, with two Asian American leads who are the heroes and who become romantically involved?

Anthony Chan: It's amazing, isn't it? I mean, I think about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but that's not really a Hollywood movie, that's like an Asian movie. There's no movie like that today. When I saw that movie, I mean, Philip Ahn, he's this skinny little guy, right? He's jumping around, he's doing this Captain Kato stuff, and he's beating up the big European American guys. At the end, [Ahn and Wong are] sitting in the car next to each other, and he says to her, I'm being transferred to Washington D.C. She says-and this is so Asian, so Chinese - "Does that mean you're proposing to me?" He says, "yes," and she says, "I'll go." That's it! No kissing, no nothing, but here you have two Asian Americans actually being romantically involved, which was remarkable stuff.

Shirley: So, I guess the obvious question is, at this time, when there was so much racism against AA with the Exclusion laws, how was it possible for a movie like this to be made?

Anthony Chan: I think the times were right. She was such a big star in 1937. She had been playing since 1922, so you're looking at 15 years, and they tried to link Philip Ahn with Anna May Wong romantically outside of Hollywood, too. She was such a big star after Shanghai Express. It was just... different; there was no television, there was no real theater, so films were really one of the major vehicles of entertainment. So, why was it possible then, even when you have the Exclusion Act until 1943 and there was a lot of racism…I think the answer is, she was such a star. And remember, Hollywood was still there to make money. And she was such a star, that she was bankable. They used her. And after 1936, she wanted more positive roles.

The Daughter of Shanghai is really a wonderful movie; it's really kind of a campy movie, but there are two Asians, hitting it off! And this is a major [studio], it's Paramount - today, if you have an Asian male and Asian female hitting it off, romantically involved, what happens? It's an independent. It's not a Paramount or any other kind of film.

Shirley: Do you think that the paranoia of the time period was actually helpful in promoting Anna May Wong's fame, as it sparked interest and curiosity in Asia?

Anthony Chan: It's kind of ironic isn't it? That there's this paranoia, and yet in a lot of films this paranoia is illustrated. I can't really give you a reason why it happened, except that it happened. Why did it happen? Well, Hollywood figured it could make some money. And she was a star. I mean, look at the turnout today! [At the retrospective.]

Can [actresses] learn anything from Anna May Wong? Sure. I mean, look at the way she stands, the way she enunciates. She took political stands against a lot of things; she wrote an article called "Manchuria," which I mentioned in the book, in which she really castigates the Japanese for invading Manchuria. She was a very complex person, very rich in her personality. Lucy Liu is not rich. I mean, who is Lucy Liu? She wants to be a debutante, she wants to be a starlet. If she would say things…but she's probably got an agent who controls her. Anna May Wong had an agent but she basically controlled her own career.

There's only one Anna May Wong, and there will always be only one Anna May Wong, because she was complex, she was always learning, always willing to take risks, and after a while, she didn't really care about her career, she gave away the money - she did Bombs Over Burma, and the Lady from Chungking - she gave the money away! To the China Aid foundation. You think Lucy Liu would do that? I don't know, I have no idea, I don't even know Lucy Liu.

Shirley: In your book, you call the US "European America." Are you referring to the America of the 1920s, or of today?

Anthony Chan: It still is [European America]. The media is European American. I mean, its not Asian American, its not African American, its not Hispanic American, its European American. It's white. And, in the introduction, I talk about the using the word "white," and I decided not to use the word white, because when you think about it, the whites will call themselves whites, but they call everyone else blacks, black Americans, or Asian Americans - we're not called yellows. So I decided that since you're giving us a label, I'm gonna give you a label. And the label is this - it's not based on race or color, it's based on culture. And geography.

Therefore, instead of calling people Caucasians or whites, I call them European Americans. And in Asian American studies, there is a huge emphasis on "Chinese America." So I started thinking, Chinese America? There's got to be a European America. And if you classify European America as regions based on culture, what happens is you destroy the whole idea of superiority of whites over everyone else. You destroy the idea of dominance, you destroy the idea of hegemony. So, I don't call people Caucasian anymore, or whites. I call them European Americans. And they get pissed off.

I ask, where you from? 'Well, I'm Jewish.' Well, where you from? 'Well, I'm from Germany.' Well, is that in Europe? What about Chinese people who are born in the Netherlands, are they called Chinese? Yes! So, it's not specifically where you are born, but the regions that you come from that illustrates some cultural thing. So, those people that have ancestors in Europe, they are European Americans. Those people that have ancestors in Asia are Asian Americans. Simple as that. Geography and culture instead of race. That way, you eliminate the whole concept of dominance

So what I wanted to do was to level the playing field. So when you look at the media it's European American media - to illustrate that there's Asian American media. There's African American media.

That's where it starts, the terminology. And unless we start to do it, nobody's going to do it. We want our own media. We want our own film. We got to start referring to others as we would like to refer ourselves. So, we're called Asian Americans. Where's the Asian American media? Well, we know where the European American media is. But where do we stand? Maybe we have to do it ourselves

Shirley: What are people's reactions to your calling them "European Americans?"

Anthony Chan: They hate it. The first reviewer, Phil Hall said he really hated that term, "European American." "I'm white, I'm not European American." Well, that's what you say as a white person. I'm saying that you're European American, from my perspective, from an Asian American perspective. In other words, I'm telling you what you've always told me for many years. I'm telling you now, that you shouldn't think this way, that we're going to call you that, whether you like it or not.

I hope it really takes hold, because words really mean stuff.

APA: You've been criticized for the chapter in which you say that Anna May Wong was a Daoist. What's your reaction?

Anthony Chan: Somebody wrote a review of my book on Amazon, and one of the things he said was that Anna May Wong was a member of the Christian Scientist church - so how could she be a Daoist? See, European Americans don't understand that as a Chinese, there's no separation. You can be a Daoist, because it's a philosophy, right? And you can be a Buddhist, which could be a religion and could be a philosophy, and then you could be a Christian. It's not either/or. See, this is the problem. You're either American or you're Chinese - no, no no. Anna May Wong proves it to me. You can follow two paths. You can be Chinese American. You can be a US citizen or neither. And I surmise that she was neither.

After she left China, and she became more Daoist, and all the things she said were very Daoist. She really became Anna May Wong. There was no race, no ethnicity, no color, no nothing - there was no citizenship attached to her. And once you do that, you know what happens? You adopt your own persona. I know a lot of people are going to criticize me for the Daoist chapter, because they don't get it.

Shirley: Do you think the timing is right today for another Anna May Wong?

Anthony Chan: No. In the '20s and '30s, the world was more…forgiving. Although it was racist, and it still is racist now, but [now] its more mild; it's there, but it's more subtle. The racism was not so subtle in the '20s and '30s. European Americans are afraid of Asians. They're afraid of China.

China's a real threat to the United States, so maybe that's the reason they're kind of pushing down Asian Americans. Margaret Cho, why was her show canceled? It was canceled because the ethos of the show was white - they tried to put European American values on this Asian American sitcom. You can't do that. You see, it's easy to have shows with European American values. The values that Asian Americans have are different.

Shirley: So you actually think that the situation now is worse?

Anthony Chan: Yes. In the '20s, China was weak. I mean, there were warlords and all this business, and the Chinese Communist party was developing, and the Japanese were coming in, so they were weak. So, we can have some stars, and there's no threat to us. So, if your gonna depict the Chinese in movies, its got to be bad images. The Soviet Union used to be the bad guys; now the Chinese are the bad guys. Would there ever be a Chinese American Bill Cosby? I don't think its very promising.

You know what I think it is? You've got to have really good writers. Before this takes off, before there's an Asian American presence in cinema, there has to be really good writers, writers that don't ape after European Americans stories. It's a big question of storytelling. These guys have got to not do the stuff that people do in Hollywood; they have to do something different, varied, complex enough that people say wow, what's this? When Anna May Wong went to Europe, all these people went, "Wow, what is this?" Like an apparition, right? They were just enamored; they fell in love with her.

So, if there's gonna be an Asian American film industry, it's got to be written by Asian American writers.

What are the lessons of AMW? She's such a star. Why aren't there any [Asian American] stars today? In those days, Hollywood and Europe were willing to give her a chance.

For more information, visit:
www.scarecrowpress.com

Date Posted: 1/23/2004

ASIAN AFFAIRS REVIEW

2008-01-29T20:28:00.001-08:00

Title:Chan, Anthony B.: Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905-1961).(Book Review).

Author(s):May-Lee Chai.

Source:Asian Affairs: An American Review 31.2 (Summer 2004): p123(2). (689 words)

Document Type:Magazine/Journal

Bookmark:Bookmark this Document

Library Links:

Chan, Anthony B. Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905-1961) Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 320 pp., $45.00 ISBN: 0-8108-4789-2 Publication Date: November 2003

In Anthony B. Chan's timely book, Hollywood screen icon Anna May Wong is resurrected and reinterpreted for a new generation that may be unfamiliar with American's first genuine Chinese American movie star. Wong was a household name around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, first as a silent film star in such classics as Toll of the Sea (1922) and the British production Picadilly (1929). In 1932, she would win rave reviews as Marlene Dietrich's co-star in Shanghai Express, directed by the great Josef von Stemberg. An icon of glamour and "exotic" beauty, her image was used to sell everything from cigarettes to fashion, yet Hollywood never quite knew what to do with Wong and her later career in film never matched the quality or promise of Shanghai Express. In China and America, Wong was denounced for portraying stereotypical "exotic" images of Chinese women, from a sexy seductress in Douglas Fairbanks's The Thief of Baghdad (1924) to "dragon lady" types--for example, in the Fu Manchu film Daughter of the Dragon (1930). Such negative and simplistic readings of Wong's career unfortunately have persisted into the present.

Chan's excellent book rescues Wong from both of these stereotypes and shows what a resourceful and talented actress she really was and how she fought the stereotypes imposed on her by a racist society. He notes that when Wong tired of playing secondary roles to white women who were done up in "yellow face," makeup meant to make them look Chinese but which actually succeeded in making them look inhuman, Wong went to Europe and filmed a number of successful films for British and German studios, who were anxious to compete with Hollywood. She learned to speak a multitude of European languages so that she could perform in plays and cabaret routines in which she sang, danced, and recited Chinese poetry and folksongs in her parents' native Taishanese dialect. Toward the end of her career, after returning to the United States, she turned down demeaning secondary roles and went to China where she filmed a documentary to show America what China was really like. She was also very active in providing funds for the Chinese victims of the Japanese invasion throughout World War II, donating the proceeds of two of her films to this effort. She also briefly starred in a television series and was set to make a Hollywood comeback in Flower Drum Song when she died in 1961 at the age of fifty-six.

Some academic essays have portrayed Wong as a perpetual victim. Certainly she did face her share of racism--she was notably denied the starring role in the film version of Pearl Buck's bestseller The Good Earth (1937), which European actress Luise Rainer played instead. But as Chan points out in his excellent research into her multifaceted career, Wong created a career for herself that was unattainable to most other Asian Americans at that time. She was tireless in thinking of ways to work as an actress, whether Hollywood recognized the depth of her talent or not. She managed to earn enough money to support her many siblings and to send them to college--even though she herself dropped out of high school in order to pursue an acting career. She was also brilliant in promoting her ventures--no small feat!--and creating a sophisticated image for herself (and Chinese women as well) at a time when most images in America portrayed Chinese as buck-toothed, slit-eyed, and decidedly unglamorous.

Unlike other current books on Anna May Wong, Chan quotes Wong extensively, allowing her to speak for herself in describing her motivations and desires. Wong, known for her wit, comes across as intelligent and sophisticated, certainly not as anybody's victim.

Chan's book Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong would be a welcome edition to any library's Asian American and film collections and would be appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Chan is an associate professor of communications at the University of Washington, Seattle.

ASIA PACIFIC ARTS

2008-01-29T20:17:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of cinema.ucla.edu

Nobody's Lotus Flower: "Rediscovering Anna May Wong" Film Retrospective

By Shirley Hsu

Even during a period of intense anti-Chinese racism, Anna May Wong commanded the screen. Today, no other Asian American actress matches her success. Where are the Anna May Wongs of today?

Legendary Chinese American actress Anna May Wong (1905-1961) once said she left cinema because she died too often. The first Asian American woman to become a Hollywood star, Wong seemed doomed to die tragically in nearly every role she played, whether shot by a jealous lover, accidentally impaled on a sword, or drowned in the ocean by her own hand. It seemed harmony could not be restored unless she, the foreign interloper, was killed - a potent message about the place of Chinese Americans in America during the 1920s and '30s.

And yet, onscreen, the stunning Wong commanded the camera. At 5'7", she stood several inches taller than Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (1932), and her charismatic manner and large, arresting eyes stole every scene from Gilda Gray in Piccadilly (1929). Again and again, she was typecast as the exotic and dangerous "dragon lady" or the innocent "lotus flower," but she brought subtlety and grace to her stereotypical roles, and attracted adoring fans from Hollywood and London to Berlin, Paris, and even Shanghai.

Now, the woman who "died a thousand deaths," as she joked, is being reborn. UCLA's twelve-feature film retrospective, titled "Rediscovering Anna May Wong," opened January 9 with the newly restored silent gem Piccadilly, and is part of a spurt of recent interest in Wong's life and works. Piccadilly, restored by the British Film Institute, played to a sold out crowd at the New York Film Festival, and will be screened in New York this weekend along with an accompanying five-film retrospective put together by the Museum of Modern Art. Three new books have been written about her life, and several documentaries on her life are in the works.

UCLA is an ideal location for the retrospective because of its extensive collection of Anna May Wong films (the largest in the country) and its large collection of films from Paramount, says Mimi Brody, UCLA film archivist who coordinated the event. "So many of Anna May Wong's films are so difficult to find on video, except for maybe Shanghai Express and Thief of Baghdad," says Brody. "Her films are very hard to see. You would have had to travel to Europe to see some of them."

The packed audience on opening night, which included a sprinkling of young people amidst the expected older crowd, shows that Wong's allure remains strong forty years after her death. "I was delighted to see so many young people [in the audience]," says Brody. "UCLA has a huge Asian population, and so I hope that students were able to rediscover her and appreciate her, and obviously they took an interest." The retrospective will end this Sunday with screenings of Java Head and Tiger Bay.

No other Asian American actress has come close to matching Anna May Wong's success. Over the span of her forty-year career, she appeared in over 60 films and starred in at least a dozen. She became the darling of Europe during her travels there in 1928; rumor had it that she was even invited to be presented to the British court (at the time, no Chinese woman had ever been introduced there). Writes Anthony Chan, author of "Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong" and a lecturer at the retrospective, "She was one of the few shining stars in a European America that subordinated or dismissed the lives, labor, talents, and thoughts of Asian Americans as simply irrelevant."

Most importantly, she was able to surmount the stereotypical roles often handed to her to some degree, especially in the later years of her career. In 1937, she costarred with Philip Ann in Daughter of Shanghai, a groundbreaking film for Asian American cinema. In an unusual break from the exotic and dangerous Chinese villain, Wong and Ahn co-starred as the heroes of the day who defeat the criminals, and even end up being romantically involved - a remarkable breakthrough, considering the social taboos of the time.

Her achievement in the Paramount produced Daughter of Shanghai is even more staggering when you consider that even today, a movie starring two Asian American actors in positive roles who become romantically involved is conspicuously absent from mainstream Hollywood. Says Chan, "Today, if you have an Asian male and an Asian female hitting it off, romantically involved, what happens? It's an independent. It's not a Paramount."

The renewed interest in Wong comes at a time when Asian American cinema is jostling for its identity - sandwiched between Asian imports and mainstream Hollywood studios not quite ready to sign on APA stars. Asian American cinema remains largely in the realm of independent film. A star like Anna May Wong could be just what is needed to put APA cinema on the map.

But where are the Anna May Wongs of today?

Stars such as Nancy Kwan, Maggie Cheung, and Lucy Liu have seen some measure of her success, but no single Asian American woman has achieved Wong's prolific success and name recognition.

Most amazingly, Wong's stardom fell under one of the worst periods in history for Chinese Americans. In a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment, Congress passed the Immigration Exclusion Act of 1924, effectively barring all classes of Chinese immigrants from entering the country. Chinese Americans faced special taxes levied especially for them, and they were prohibited from testifying in court against whites. The ethos of the time seemed decidedly anti-Chinese, and yet audiences couldn't get enough of Wong.

Perhaps this very paranoia and fear of the "yellow peril" helped propel Wong to stardom. Americans, both threatened and intrigued by the Chinese could satiate their curiosity in the safety of a theater seat. Brody surmises, "At this time, there was definitely a preponderance in Hollywood of this sort of naïve, exotic depictions of 'the Orient,' and these Orientalist fantasy films were in vogue in the 1920s and '30s. Certainly, there were more roles available for someone like Anna May Wong."

The screen seemed to provide a way to explore and release the anxieties of the day. Fear of miscegenation was a common theme in Wong's films, and stories that involved Wong's character becoming sexually involved with Caucasian men always ended in Wong's murder or suicide. In real life, Wong could never marry - she explained that a Chinese man would not support her film career, while law forbade marriage to a Caucasian man.

Other films more blatantly explored the fear that the "yellow peril" could be right at your doorstep, literally. In Daughter of the Dragon, Wong plays the daughter of the evil Dr. Fu Manchu, who plots to fulfill her father's vendetta against the Petrie family by killing John Petrie, who happens to live conveniently next door to her.

Discrimination against Chinese Americans comes more discreetly today, and one of its subtle forms is the lack of diverse, thoughtful roles for Asian American actors and actresses. Even today, the "dragon lady" and "lotus blossom" molds are hard to break, and yet, in the 1930s, Wong did break out of these molds. In Shanghai Express, Wong plays the cool, detached Hui Fei who kills the communist rebel Henry Chang to become the heroine and makes off with twenty-thousand dollars in reward money. Wong's biographers insist that she tried to bring authenticity to her acting by studying Chinese culture. Offscreen, she used her influence to denounce the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and to raise funds for the China Aid Foundation.

Perhaps this, then, is the lesson that Wong holds for us today: that if she could succeed in the 1930s, than certainly Asian American actors and actresses can accomplish the same today. Next year marks Wong's centennial, underscoring the disturbing reality that nearly a century after the star's birth, no Asian American actress has taken her place.

In 1936, Wong was passed over for the prized role of O-lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, a role which she coveted. When the role went to German-born Luise Rainer, who performed with a cast of other Caucasian actors in "yellowface" makeup, a disillusioned Wong left Hollywood again, this time bound for China. Her journey was recorded on film and years later, narrated by Wong on the television program "Bold Journey: Native Land" (1957). During her visit, Wong was berated by the Chinese government for portraying the Chinese in a negative light, but also treated to a hero's welcome in many locales. Wong later recalled the elaborate, forty-course meals she was treated to, and the gazes of wonderment from many locals who had previously believed she wasn't real - that she existed only on film.

The cameras follow as Wong tours her ancestral lands. She is radiant, smiling at the camera as she explores the open-air markets and climbs the steps to a Buddhist temple. She rides in a rickshaw and is dressed in a traditional chi pao she ordered upon arrival, tailor-made with fabric she chose. Finally, it is time for the long awaited reunion with her father, who had moved back to China many years ago. As she joyfully reunites with him, she is, for a moment, neither Chinese, nor American; she is no longer the exotic temptress, the submissive lotus flower, the femme fatale or the freewheeling flapper. She is only Anna May Wong - and that was the secret to her success.

Date Posted: 1/23/2004

NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY REVIEW

2008-01-29T20:04:00.001-08:00

February 14, 2004 [Photo] During her career, Anna May Wong was criticized by Chinese for her scanty outfits and for perpetuating stereotypes. But she was also revered for demanding parity with white.

During her career, Anna May Wong was criticized by Chinese for her scanty outfits and for perpetuating stereotypes. But she was also revered for demanding parity with white.

[Photo] ‘Perpetually Cool" Late actress Anna May Wong defied expectations By Yayoi Lena Winfrey
For the Northwest Asian Weekly

Growing up in Victoria, B.C., Anthony B. Chan often heard his parents rave about a favorite film. Released in 1932, the same year that Chan’s parents were married, “Shanghai Express” (about lovers reunited onboard a train during the Chinese civil war) unbelievably featured a Chinese American actress alongside Marlene Dietrich.

“(My parents) would talk about how great and lovely Anna May Wong was on screen,” says Chan of the film’s co-star.

Later, while visiting Shanghai, Chan met his wife’s uncle and learned that “Shanghai Express” had moved him, too, even though he was all the way across the sea. Chan vowed then to write about Wong someday.

After publishing four books on other subjects, he finally penned a manuscript about the legendary thespian, “mostly to satisfy my curiosity about this movie star that kept cropping up at my parents’ dinner table,” he explains.

Now an associate professor in the Department of Communications at the University of Washington, Chan recently published Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905-1961).

Winsome and willowy, Wong made an unforgettable impact on Hollywood with her portrayals of dragon ladies and lotus blossoms during a time when racism raged and Asians were rarely seen in American movies. Criticized by Chinese for her scanty outfits and for perpetuating stereotypes, Wong was also revered for daring to demand parity with her white counterparts. During her illustrious career, she appeared in more than 60 features, making the transition from silent films to talkies to, later, television. She also performed in stage plays and vaudeville, and acted in three languages. No other Asian American actor before or since has matched her accomplishments.

Wong was born in Los Angeles in 1905. Despite being given the birth name Wong Liu Tsong, meaning Frosted Yellow Willow, she was a typical Californian kid. She loved hanging around movie sets whenever productions shot on-location in Chinatown. At 14, she began working as a film extra, but soon garnered supporting roles. She landed her first leading role at age 17 in the breakthrough Technicolor feature “The Toll of the Sea.”

Forced to play tragic women, the witty Wong bemoaned “dying a thousand deaths.” She lamented about leaving Hollywood for Europe in 1928 because her characters were always killed off or else committed suicide. Yet Wong always managed to perform with dignity, insisting on authentic costumes and customs in every film.

Citing Wong’s humor, intelligence and talent, Chan says he wrote the biography “from an Asian American sensibility (telling) the Asian American story.”

He chose the title Perpetually Cool because scenes in both “Shanghai Express” and “Piccadilly” feature Wong as “coolness personified” and “the consummate detached hipster.”

“Here was this Chinese American woman who was able to banter confidently with white ladies,” Chan marvels of Wong’s composed characters.

That such conduct was tolerated at a time when both Canada (1923-1947) and the United States (1882-1943) enforced Chinese Exclusionary laws is shocking.

“(Wong’s) most quoted line — life is too serious to take serious — exuded ultimate coolness,” adds Chan.

Because of her smoldering sexuality barely concealed behind Wong’s icy stare and perfect poise, Chan likens the 5-foot-7-inch beauty to Marlon Brando’s onscreen character in “The Wild Ones.”

Rejected for the role of O-lan in “The Good Earth” (Austrian Luise Rainer was chosen because miscegenation laws forbade Wong to be kissed onscreen by Caucasian star Paul Muni), Wong traveled to China in 1936. Returning to Hollywood with a reaffirmation of her Daoist beliefs, she was offered more positive roles as a physician, a diplomat, a general’s daughter, a detective and, in “Daughter of Shanghai,” a heroic figure opposite Korean American actor Philip Ahn.

A feminist before it was considered chic, Wong never married, explaining that a Chinese husband would not likely support her career, and that marriage to a Caucasian was illegal.

“Her credibility was accomplished without some male defining her,” says Chan. “She succeeded in spite of the rampant racism, sexism and the patriarchal arena in which she lived.”

Turning to alcohol for solace, Wong eventually drank herself to death. She succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver in 1961.

A former television journalist, producer and anchor, Chan is now an independent filmmaker with several projects that have aired on television and screened at film festivals. He’ll give a pre-screening talk at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 13 at The Grand Illusion, where “Piccadilly” runs through Feb. 19. Chan will sign copies of Perpetually Cool at the University Bookstore at 7 p.m. on March 1.

Yayoi Lena Winfrey can be reached at scpnwan@nwlink.com. [Photo] Send correspondence to:
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SCARECROW PRESS REVIEWS

2008-01-29T19:53:00.000-08:00

Family Trio, L-R Liu Ying Wong (Lulu), mother Gin Tony Lee, Liu Tsong Wong (Anna May Wong, 1908. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

"Anthony B. Chan...[divides] his book into three sections. One is a bio spanning childhood in L.A.'s Chinese community to her stardom in silent and sound films in Hollywood and Europe. Another addresses everything from Wong's attitudes toward Asian cultures to her Taoist religious beliefs. The third dissects Wong's work in her most celebrated roles, including Toll of the Sea and Shanghai Express."—VARIETY

"Winsome and willowy, Wong made an unforgettable impact on Hollywood with her portrayals of dragon ladies and lotus blossoms during a time when racism raged and Asians were rarely seen in American movies. Criticized by Chinese for her scanty outfits and for perpetuating stereotypes, Wong was also revered for daring to demand parity with her white counterparts. During her illustrious career, she appeared in more than 60 features, making the transition from silent films to talkies to, later, television. She also performed in stage plays and vaudeville, and acted in three languages. No other Asian American actor before or since has matched her accomplishments."—NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

"...suitable in collections extending to the culture of film."—CHOICE

"...passionately explores...themes from a distinctively Asian American perspective...sets [Wong's] story in the context of the history of Chinese-Americans."—Richard James Havis, CINEASTE

"It [is] most interesting when instructing us on how early Chinese-American immigrants made their way and on the legal and social restraints under which they lived."—Robert Gottlieb, THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

"A welcome edition to any library's Asian American and film collections and would be appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate students."—ASIAN AFFAIRS

"[A] detailed analyses of some of Wong's most famous films. Each chapter could stand alone as a scholarly discussion of film and cultural theory as well as a biographical account of the actress's life....sheds new light on this remarkable woman."—FOREWORD MAGAZINE

"...tantalizingly intriguing..."—SEATTLE WEEKLY

"Perpetually Cool is more analytical and more concerned with placing Wong in the context of Chinese and Chinese American history. As the title suggests (Chan) sees her as an innate hipster and compares her performance in Piccadilly to Marlon Brando's turn in The Wild One."—J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

"Chan's take on Anna May Wong is a breath of fresh air! Perpetually Cool shines the spotlight on the woman behind the myth. Chan's portrayal of Anna May Wong as an ancestral forerunner of overseas Chinese feminism is a real tour de force. This book is spicy, intoxicating and journalistically sound, a welcome addition to our growing canon of East-West stories."—Christina M. Wong, regular contributor to CBC Radio

"Chan's book details the life and career of an important Chinese-American actress whose work has been neglected. Like Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge, Anna May Wong was a talented, beautiful woman of color limited by the restrictions of the Hollywood film industry. Her personal and professional story is an engrossing read for anyone interested in our social and cultural history"—Al Sampson, SIMA Institute of Media Arts

"Anthony B. Chan helps a new generation discover the phenomenon of Anna May Wong. With a historian's flair for social context, Professor Chan not only conveys the complexity of this singular Asian American actress, but he also shows how she was both constrained and emboldened by the times into which she was born. This book is a fitting tribute to a woman whose perpetually cool style was at least matched, if not exceeded, by her shrewd ability to beat the odds."—Kevin Kawamoto, Media Scholar

"Perpetually Cool celebrates the determination and style of Anna May Wong, whose strength of character has inspired me in my passion as a designer. Through Ms. Wong's universally understood story, this book provides an astounding portrayal of the Chinese American experience. With clarity, passion, and integrity, Professor Chan helps us to understand the enigma that is Ms. Wong"—Maggie Norris, Designer

"Born Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles in 1905, Anna May Wong became Hollywood's first Chinese-American movie star. In this biography, independent filmmaker Chan (communication, U. of Washington) tells the story of Wong's life and examines the effects of racist ideologies on her career. The volume concludes with textual analyses of Wong's signature films, including The Thief of Bagdad(1924) and Shanghai Express(1932). This is the first paperback edition of a volume first published in 2003."—May 2007, REFERENCE & RESEARCH BOOK NEWS

LOS ANGELES TIMES REVIEW

2008-01-29T19:41:00.000-08:00

Rediscovering Anna May Wong

LEGENDS OF HOLLYWOOD
An uneasy success
Anna May Wong hit the screen when Asian American stars didn't exist. Her mystique, and the stereotypes, endure.

By Scarlet Cheng, Special to The Times

She was the first Asian movie star in the West, and her career spanned four decades, bridging the silent films to talkies, and even venturing onto stage and into early television. Anna May Wong was a woman in the right place at the right time.

Born in Los Angeles to traditional Chinese parents in 1905, her star-struck ambition and her svelte good looks coincided with a taste for Oriental exotica on stage and screen in the U.S. and in Europe in the '20s and the '30s. Her career rose meteorically, yet she would find it hard to escape the crater of stereotyping into which she too easily tripped. "Rediscovering Anna May Wong," presented by the UCLA Film and Television Archive from Friday through Jan. 25, includes 12 features from the apex of her stardom. They range from the silent film "Toll of the Sea" (1922), her first starring role, to "Shanghai Express" (1932), her most famous, to rarely seen B pictures like "Daughter of the Dragon" (1931) and "Daughter of Shanghai" (1937) that were her staple.

In the last decade several of these have been beautifully restored — most recently "Piccadilly" (1929), which was Wong's last silent film and one in which she plays a cheeky scullery maid who becomes the glittering headliner at a swank London nightclub. In this and countless other films, she does her obligatory Oriental-style shimmy, here a concoction with Thai and Balinese flavors, in a scanty Oriental-style costume while desire-filled white men look on.

"For a good 10 years she received top billing, she was a huge international star," says Mimi Brody, who programmed the UCLA series. "For an Asian American actress there's no comparison for the scope of her career."

During World War ll, Wong announced her retirement and did fundraising for the United China Relief Fund. But she couldn't stay away from show business and in the 1950s she made several television and movie appearances. She was gearing up for a movie comeback and was slated for a key role in the movie version of "Flower Drum Song" when she died of a heart attack in 1961.

Lotus Flower key role

Anna MAY WONG started out in the business taking on bit parts while still a teenager and living at home helping out in the family laundry business. Then she landed the starring role in "Toll of the Sea." Set in some Hollywood-lot China and borrowing heavily from "Madame Butterfly," the film had the young actress playing willowy Lotus Flower, who falls in love with a white merchant.

After impregnating her, the merchant abandons her, then later returns with his white wife. Naturally, Lotus Flower has to fling herself into the sea in disgrace, the first of many films in which Wong was obliged to die — by her hand or at the hand of others — by the close of the film. (Poisoning and stabbing were particularly popular denouements for her characters.) Sometimes she takes this drastic measure because of thwarted love, especially when she realizes she is no match for the white female interest of the white male hero ("Toll of the Sea," "Java Head," "Dangerous to Know"). For even though she entices the man, she rarely gets him, consistent with the contemporary bias that while miscegenation was titillating, it wasn't really acceptable.

The actress' next big break came from silent superstar Douglas Fairbanks, who cast her as the slave girl/Mongol spy in "The Thief of Bagdad" (not in the UCLA series). But while the film made her famous, she was slotted into a series of small roles in Hollywood until she decided to jump-start her career in Europe.

German director Richard Eichberg had offered her a five-picture film contract, and in 1928 she moved to Europe, chaperoned by her sister. Two years later she had learned enough German and French to make three versions of Eichberg's "The Flame of Love" — in English, German and French, with three different leading men.

When she finally returned to Los Angeles, she was in demand, eventually tallying some 60 features, most of which have been lost. Nearly all played heavily on racial and cultural stereotypes. During the Depression there was a huge appetite for foreign accents, foreign people and foreign locations, preferably with scenes of high living and untold luxury thrown in, but in the end the morality of the time would have to reassert itself.

Centennial approaches

The fascination for Anna May Wong continues, perhaps in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of her birth.

There are three new books about Wong: Anthony Chan's "Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905-1961)" was published last October, and soon to come are another biography, Graham Hodges' "Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend," and a well-researched reference book, Philip Leibfried and Chei Mi Lane's "Anna May Wong: A Complete Guide to Her Film, Stage, Radio and Television Work."

Chan, a former journalist who teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle, will give an illustrated talk about Wong at UCLA on Saturday. Speaking by phone, he acknowledges that Wong fell into highly stereotyped roles but admires what she achieved. "Through racism and patriarchy she was [still] able to succeed," he says.

In fact, she succeeded partly because she played into racism and patriarchy, Chan believes. Typically, she was made up to look like a China doll, with straight-cut bangs, pencil eyebrows and heavy eyeliner, often dressed in some exotic get-up, high-neck tunics and embroidered robes. She had two main roles, each delivered in a highly mannered way: the Dragon Lady whose evil machinations cause death and destruction and the Lotus Blossom who's all too eager to please her man.

Wong was aware of her uneasy position. As early as 1925 she said in a newspaper interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, "It is hard to get into the pictures, but it is harder to keep in them. Of course, it is nice enough if one gets a five-year contract as some of the actors do, but freelancing which I do is not easy. You see, there are not many Chinese parts."

Now and then we get glimpses of what Wong was capable of and could have become had she had better material and better directors. Take her role as Hui Fei, the Chinese woman sharing a train compartment with the notorious Shanghai Lily (Marlene Dietrich), in "Shanghai Express." While Wong had her usual sullen demeanor and few speaking lines, director Josef von Sternberg brought out the spark of her inner life. In one brief scene an elderly passenger barges in on them, announcing that she is running a "respectable" boarding house in Shanghai.

Wong, who has been calmly and resolutely playing solitaire, hands back the woman's calling card with acid dripping in her voice: "I must confess I don't quite know the standard of respectability that you demand in your boarding house, Mrs. Haggerty." Toward the end of the film, she is playing solitaire again, this time after having exacted her revenge upon a rebel officer (Warner Oland, playing yellowface again) who has assaulted her. She throws down a card with emphasis. "Death has canceled his debt to me."

Apparently, Dietrich thought she'd been upstaged by Wong. There are those who see this luminous film who might very well agree with her.

'Rediscovering Anna May Wong'

When: Friday, Jan. 9, through Jan. 25

Where: James Bridges Theater, 1409 Melnitz Hall, UCLA, Westwood

Price: $7-$8

Contact: (310) 206-FILM or www.cinema.ucla.edu

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2008-01-29T19:37:00.000-08:00

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Reel Sotries: A Tribute to Anna May Wong, an Asian Pacific American Screen Icon

By Phil Chung, Jul 02, 2004

Much has already been written about the pioneering Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong in these pages, so please indulge me as I add another voice to the already crowded chorus.

The current interest in Wong seems to be as strong as it was during the height of her reign as a Hollywood star, with the recent release of several books about her life and career, retrospectives of her work in San Francisco and Los Angeles earlier this year, and the 100th anniversary of her birth to be celebrated in January next year.

Add to this another event that will honor Wong's legacy: On July 7, the Los Angeles Conservancy will provide a screening of the classic Shanghai Express at the renovated Orpheum Theatre downtown as part of the 18th annual Last Remaining Seats series of classic films.

"I had been proposing showing an Anna May Wong film for the last four years to [our] Historic Theatre Committee and it was finally approved last December," explains Alan Barasorda of the Conservancy.

The centerpiece of the program will be the screening of a recently restored print of the 1932 Shanghai Express which is considered by many to be Wong's best. The film is one of the best-known of the seven collaborations between director Josef von Sternberg and star Marlene Dietrich. In what is arguably her most famous role as Shanghai Lily, Dietrich spouts the unforgettable line: "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily."

Wong played the mysterious Hui Fei who seeks revenge against the evil Chinese warlord Chang (played by Warner Oland in "yellow face") in a performance that many critics have remarked equals or surpasses that of the legendary Dietrich.

In addition to the movie, the evening will also include a rare screening of newsreel footage of Wong's 1936 trip to Shanghai accompanied live by veteran organist Bob Mitchell and a performance by the Chinese American Dancing Group of two traditional Chinese dances, "ribbon dance" and "holiday festival dance."

The evening will be hosted by veteran actor James Hong of Blade Runner and Chinatown, and members of Wong's family are scheduled to attend.

The event is an effort to reintroduce her legacy to a generation that may not be aware of the pioneering efforts of Asian Pacific America's first movie star. Her career spanned five decades from her unbilled appearance in the 1919 silent film The Red Lantern to a role she was to play in the 1961 film version of the stage musical Flower Drum Song (she passed away before she could do the part). Wong is also best-known for her roles in the first Technicolor film The Toll of the Sea where she played a character based on Madame Butterfly and the 1925 Douglas Fairbanks classic The Thief of Baghdad, which cemented her stardom when she slinked onscreen as a sexy slave girl. All in all, she appeared in over 50 films.

"Anna May Wong personified the essence of Asian [Pacific] America," says Anthony B. Chan, author of the book Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong. "In spite of the rampant racism in Hollywood, she was able to persevere with her superior intelligence, cinematic and theatrical talents, high ambitions, ability to adapt, good looks, and her legendary sense of humor."

In addition to her artistry, Wong is also remembered for her humanitarian efforts. During World War II, she worked tirelessly to fundraise for various Chinese relief agencies that supported Chinese people suffering under the occupation of the Japanese Imperial Army. A number of her films from this era (such as Daughter of Shanghai) also directly embrace this pro-Chinese agenda.

The Wong tribute will take place on the 68th anniversary of China's declaration of war against Japan — July 7, 1936 — and the consul general of the People's Republic of China will be presenting a proclamation that night praising the cinematic and humanitarian achievements of the APA screen icon.

"There is only one Anna May Wong," Chan adds. "She understood the world and by using it for her own purposes, she was able to achieve agency and empowerment."

For more information or to purchase tickets to the Last Remaining Seats screening of Shanghai Express July 7 at 8 p.m., go to www.laconservancy.org or call 213-430-4219.

Philip W. Chung is a writer and co-artistic director of Lodestone Theatre Ensemble which will next present the world premiere of Claim to Fame in L.A. from July 24-Aug. 29. For more information go to www.lodestonetheatre.org.

Philip W. Chung is a writer and a co-artistic director of Lodestone Theatre Ensemble in Los Angeles.

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LECTURE BY ANTHONY B. CHAN, UCLA, 2004

2008-01-29T19:34:00.000-08:00

Film Retrospective: Rediscovering Anna May Wong

Screenings & Lectures from January 9 to 25

Friday, January 30, 2004
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
James Bridges Theater
Melnitz Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Friday, January 9 – Sunday, January 25

Anna May Wong was born Wong Liu Tsong in 1905 in Los Angeles, where her family operated a laundry. Wong began her career as an extra at the age of 14 and had several supporting roles before being cast as the lead in the first two-color Technicolor feature, THE TOLL OF THE SEA (1922). A stunning beauty, Wong was the first Chinese American actress to become an international celebrity and appeared in over 50 films, making the transition from silents to talkies and even to television. However, despite her star power, Wong lost some coveted roles to white actors in “yellowface.”

Diabolical Dragon Lady or fragile Lotus Blossom, villainess or victim, Wong’s Hollywood screen persona seemed to oscillate between these two poles. In a wry and telling quote she later reflected, “I think I left Hollywood because I died so often. I was killed in virtually every picture in which I appeared.” Like many of her African American colleagues, she sought greater opportunities in Europe, where she made three remarkable silent pictures, including the glorious and newly restored PICCADILLY, which opens our program, and two German films, SONG and PAVEMENT BUTTERFLY, with director Richard Eichberg.

Wong holds a unique place in Hollywood history as the first Asian American screen goddess. The unique career and talent of this Los Angeles native is long overdue for rediscovery and celebration.

NOTE: There will be a free lecture and program on Saturday, January 10

preceding the film screening. Please see January 10 details.

Friday, January 9

7:30 p.m.

Newly Restored Print from the British Film Institute

PICCADILLY

(UK, 1929) Directed by E.A. Dupont

In 1929, after several starring roles in Germany, the young Anna May Wong made her way to London to star in her final silent film and her only feature with German-born director E.A. Dupont. In this melodrama of jealousy and murder, Wong plays a scullery maid named Shosho who, while dancing in the kitchen, attracts the attention of her boss and becomes the star attraction at a trendy London nightclub. Dupont lavished Wong with close-ups and glorious costumes, allowing her to easily upstage co-star Gilda Gray. The film also features one of the very first onscreen performances by Charles Laughton, playing a boisterous nightclub patron. The newly restored PICCADILLY played to an enthusiastic sold-out crowd at the most recent New York Film Festival.

Producer: E.A. Dupont. Scenarist: Arnold Bennett. Cinematographer: Werner Brandes. Editor: J.W. McConaughty. With: Gilda Gray, Anna May Wong, Jameson Thomas, King Ho Chang, Cyril Ritchard. 35mm, silent, 108 min. (24 fps).

Rare Archival Print from the British Film Institute

SONG (aka SHOW LIFE and WASTED LOVE)

(Schmutziges Geld)

(Germany, 1928) Directed by Richard Eichberg

In the late 1920s, Wong sailed for Europe, hoping to escape the stereotyped roles being offered her in Hollywood. In her first film with German director Richard Eichberg, Wong plays Song, a down-on-her-luck Malayan dancer who becomes involved with a mysterious knife-thrower after he saves her from two thugs. They form a successful act on their own, and Song soon falls for her partner until the return of his former lover sets off a fatal series of events. Wong enchanted film audiences across Europe with her masterfully subtle performance and electrifying screen presence.

Producer: R. Eichberg. Scenarists: Helen Gosewish, Adolf Lantz. Based on the novel Dirty Money by Karl Vollmöller. Cinematographers: Heinrich Gärtner, Bruno Mondi. Editor: Alfred Booth. With: Anna May Wong, Heinrich George, Mary Kid, Paul Hörbiger, Julius E. Herrmann. 35mm, silent with English intertitles, 94 min. (24 fps).

*Live musical accompaniment by Michael Mortilla

Saturday, January 10

5:00 p.m.

Lecture by Anthony Chan

Author of the new biography Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna

May Wong (Scarecrow Press, 2003), Anthony Chan will present an illustrated lecture on Wong’s life and work. The lecture will be preceded by a screening of BOLD JOURNEY: NATIVE LAND (1957), a half-hour television program about Wong's 1936 trip to China. Complimentary refreshments will be served after the presentation.

*Admission is free

7:30 p.m.

DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON

(US, 1931) Directed by Lloyd Corrigan

Orientalist archvillain Fu Manchu resurfaces in London, with an undying lust for vengeance directed at the Petrie family, whom he mistakenly blames for the death of his wife and son. Not only is Sir John Petrie shot in his own home, but his son Ronald is at risk of succumbing to the seductive charms of the villain’s equally malevolent daughter Ling Moy (Wong). “Yellow Peril” tropes abound in this fantasy of Eastern threat: wafting incense, ominous shadows, knife clutched under ample Chinese sleeve. DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON is racist, but ironically, the film is best remembered today for its Asian actors, Wong and Sessue Hayakawa, who bring grace, subtlety and gravity to their stereotyped roles.

Paramount. Screenwriters: L. Corrigan, Monte M. Katterjohn. Based on the novel Daughter of Fu Manchu by Sax Rohmer. Cinematographer: Victor Milner. With: Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Sessue Hayakawa, Bramwell Fletcher. 35mm, 79 min.

*Restored by UCLA Film and Television Archive

SHANGHAI EXPRESS

(US, 1932) Directed by Josef von Sternberg

The combined star power of Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong propels this melodrama in which two former lovers are reunited on a train during the Chinese civil war. Von Sternberg was arguably one of cinema’s greatest directors of women, and in SHANGHAI EXPRESS he had two illustrious actresses to work with: Dietrich, as the notorious “coaster,” Shanghai Lily, and Wong as her traveling companion, the reformed prostitute Hui Fei. Wong’s outstanding performance was so powerful yet so restrained, that Dietrich felt she had been upstaged. The steam and smoke, the stylized performances, the minimalist but crackling dialogue and the stunning cinematography of Lee Garmes all make for a most enjoyable ride.

Paramount. Producer: Adolph Zukor. Screenwriters: Jules Furthman. Based on a story by Harry Hervey. Cinematographers: Lee Garmes, James Wong Howe (uncredited). With: Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette. 35mm, 80 min.

*Restored by UCLA Film and Television Archive

Sunday, January 11

7:00 p.m.

DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI

(US, 1937) Directed by Robert Florey

After a wealthy importer is murdered by a gang smuggling immigrant workers into San Francisco, an Asian federal agent is sent to crack the case. Meanwhile, the importer’s daughter (Wong) strikes out on her own, determined to avenge her father’s death. Directed by Robert Florey, an avant-garde auteur cum B-movie director, DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI is a rarity among Hollywood productions of the day—an Asian-themed film with Asian-American actors in the lead roles. Committed to appearing only in films with positive portrayals of Chinese characters, Wong moves beyond the Dragon Lady role, instead adopting the persona of a classic Hollywood heroine: she’s courageous, determined, and even gets the guy—played by her long-time friend, Philip Ahn.

Paramount. Producer: Edward T. Lowe. Screenwriters: Gladys Unger, Garnett Weston. Based on a story by G. Weston. Cinematographer: Charles Schoenbaum. Editor: Ellsworth Hoagland. With: Anna May Wong, Philip Ahn, Charles Bickford, Larry “Buster” Crabbe. 35mm, nitrate, 61 min.

Preceded by:

HOLLYWOOD PARTY

(US, 1937) Directed by Roy Rowland

This two-reel short with an “oriental” theme offers a rare glimpse of Wong in gorgeous color; she is featured in one scene modeling fashions acquired during a trip to China. Also appearing are Clark Gable, Joan Bennett, Elissa Landi and Charlie Chase.

MGM. 35mm, Technicolor, 21 min.

DANGEROUS TO KNOW

(US, 1938) Directed by Robert Florey

In her second film with Florey, Wong plays Lan Ying, the “hostess” (read: mistress) of the notorious Stephen Recka (Akim Tamiroff), a powerful Los Angeles gangster who aims to control City Hall by using corrupt politicians. Recka longs to be accepted by high society and eventually discards Lan Ying in favor of a pretty young socialite. In an emotionally wrenching scene, Lan Ying enacts the perfect revenge. The film was based on the play On the Spot, in which Wong made her American stage debut in 1930.

Paramount. Producer: Edward T. Lowe. Screenwriters: William Lipman, Horace McCoy. Based on the play On the Spot by Edgar Wallace. Cinematographers: Karl Struss, Charles Schoenbaum. Editor: Arthur Schmidt. With: Anna May Wong, Akim Tamiroff, Gail Patrick, Anthony Quinn. 35mm, nitrate, 70 min.

Wednesday, January 14

7:30 p.m.

Rare Archival Print from the British Film Institute

THE FLAME OF LOVE (aka THE ROAD TO DISHONOUR)

(UK, 1930) Directed by Richard Eichberg and Walter Summers

Wong made her speaking debut in this melodrama set in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Wong plays Hai-Tang, a young Chinese dancer who falls for a Russian military officer, but their affair is complicated when the officer’s superior sets his sights on her. The chance to see and hear Wong in a talkie made the film a great attraction to contemporary audiences. By 1930 Wong had toned down the American accent that had previously moved one of her producers to comment, “But oh! that California accent! As thick as the smog that now covers their cities.” Wong also mastered enough German and French to play the role of Hai-Tang in two foreign-language versions shot at the same time, with different male leads.

Producer: R. Eichberg. Screenwriters: Monckton Hoffee, Ludwig Wolff. Cinematographers: Heinrich Gärtner, Bruno Mondi. Editor: Emile de Ruelle. With: Anna May Wong, John Longden, George H. Schnell, Mona Goya, Percy Standing. 35mm, 81 min.

New print from MGM!

CHU CHIN CHOW

(UK, 1934) Directed by Walter Forde

With production values luxuriant enough to rival those in Hollywood, this British musical presents orientalist fantasy at its most glamorous and grotesque. Inspired by The Arabian Nights, the plot revolves around the bandit Abu Hassan, who plans to impersonate Asian merchant Chu Chin Chow in order to sack Baghdad. Although she doesn’t have a lot of screen time, Wong was top-billed as Hassan’s lover, Zahrat—testimony to her box-office appeal. Though her singing was dubbed, Wong’s talent shone in her skillful acting and sensuous dance sequences, no doubt aided by her scintillating costumes.

Producer: Michael Balcon. Screenwriters: Sidney Gilliat, L. DuGarde Peach, Edward Knoblock. Based on the musical by Oscar Asche and Frederic Norton. Cinematographer: Mutz Greenbaum. Editor: Derek N. Twist. With: Anna May Wong, George Robey, Fritz Kortner, John Garrick. 35mm, 93 min.

Preceded by:

THE LIMEJUICE MYSTERY OR, WHO SPAT IN GRANDFATHER’S PORRIDGE?

(UK, 1930) Directed by Jack Harrison

An amusing oddity, this Sherlock Holmes spoof features dancing marionettes “Herlock Shomes” and “Anna Went Wrong.”

16mm, 8 min.

7:00 p.m.

THE TOLL OF THE SEA

(US, 1922) Directed by Chester M. Franklin

Clearly inspired by Madame Butterfly, THE TOLL OF THE SEA provided Wong with her first starring role. Lotus Flower, a beautiful Chinese maiden, rescues a young American when he washes ashore. The two begin a doomed affair that results in the birth of their son. For Wong, Lotus Flower was the first of many tragic heroines she would eventually play—Asian women who would pay the ultimate price for their love affairs with white men. Wong’s luminous beauty, expressive face and masterful acting abilities were already evident here, at the young age of 17. THE TOLL OF THE SEA was the first feature film produced in the two-color Technicolor process. The UCLA Film and Television Archive preserved the film from the original 35mm nitrate camera negative, restoring its stunningly brilliant colors.

Producer: Herbert Kalmus. Scenarist: Frances Marion. Camera: J.A. Ball. Editor: Hal C. Kern. With: Anna May Wong, Kenneth Harlan, Beatrice Bentley, Baby Moran. 35mm, silent, approx. 45 min. (22 fps).

*Restored by UCLA Film and Television Archive

Rare Archival Print from the National Film Archive

PAVEMENT BUTTERFLY (aka CITY BUTTERFLY)

(Grossstadt-Schmetterling)

(Germany, 1928) Directed by Richard Eichberg

Love, lust, greed and art don’t mix well in this silent melodrama that moves from the circus to bohemian artists’ studios to the French Riviera. In her second film with Richard Eichberg, Wong plays Mah, the star performer in a circus acrobatic act. When fellow performer Koko murders Mah’s partner, she is blamed for his death and forced to flee. Mah finds work modeling for a handsome artist and soon falls in love with him. But the lascivious Koko follows her, worsening her predicament as she tries to clear her name. Though she was praised for her part, some critics claimed that Wong, shown stylishly dressed in contemporary fashions, wasn’t portrayed as “exotic” enough.

Screenwriter: Hans Kyser. Based on the novel by Adolf Lantz. Cinematographers: Heinrich Gärtner, Otto Baecker. With: Anna May Wong, Louis Lerch, Alexander Grananch, E. F. Bostwick, 35mm, silent with English intertitles, 90 min. (24 fps).

*Live musical accompaniment by Michael Mortilla

Sunday, January 25

2:00 p.m.

Rare Archival Print from the National Film Archive

JAVA HEAD

(UK, 1934) Directed by J. Walter Ruben

In her final British star vehicle, Wong plays a Chinese princess who follows her new husband Gerrit, a young Englishman from a wealthy shipping family, back to 19th century Bristol. The husband’s conservative family is scandalized by the arrival of his bride, whose sensational clothing and make-up stands in stark contrast to the restrained Victorian setting. They refuse to accept the stranger, preferring that Gerrit rekindle his courtship of Nettie, a local girl. Cultural differences come between the young couple when the husband rejects his wife’s religious faith and confesses his love for Nettie. JAVA HEAD is notable for its frank depiction and implicit critique of the fetishizing of Asian women.

Producer: Basil Dean. Screenwriters: Martin Brown, Gordon Wellesley. Based on the novel by Joseph Hergesheimer. Cinematographer: Robert G. Martin. Editor: Thorold Dickinson. With: Anna May Wong, John Loder, Elizabeth Allen, Edmund Gwenn, Ralph Richardson. 35mm, 68 min.

Rare Archival Print from the National Film Archive

TIGER BAY

(UK, 1934) Directed by J. Elder Wills

In TIGER BAY, one of three British productions starring Wong released in 1934, she plays the beautiful and heroic Liu Chang, dancer and proprietor of a rowdy cafe who fights to save a young woman from a gang of thuggish sailors. British censors insisted that the setting be relocated from London to the fictional South American town of “Tiger Bay,” a port city filled with gangsters, petty thieves, prostitutes and “all the riff-raff of the seven seas.” Legendary British director David Lean earned one of his first screen credits as an editor for the film.

Producer: Bray Wyndham. Screenwriter: Jon Quin. Based on a story by J. E. Wills and Eric Ansell. Cinematographer: Robert G. Martin, Alan Lawson. Editors: David Lean, Ian Thomson. With: Anna May Wong, Henry Victor, Rene Ray, Lawrence Grossmith. 35mm, 68 min.

---------------

All films screen at the James Bridges Theater in Melnitz Hall, located on the northeast corner of the UCLA Westwood campus, near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hilgard Avenue.

2008-01-29T19:31:00.000-08:00

BOOK REVIEW

Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905?1961)
by: Anthony B. Chan

Issue Month: May/June 2004
Category: Biography
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
296 pages
ISBN: 0810847892

Before there was Lucy Liu there was Anna May Wong, a pioneering Asian American who defied cultural prejudices to become one of the most famous women in the world. In a time when Asian film roles generally went to European Americans in ?yellowface,? Wong outshone such costars as Douglas Fairbanks and Marlene Dietrich and provided a role model to Asian Americans everywhere who had never before seen one of their own in the spotlight.
As a child growing up in the world of Chinese laundries in Los Angeles, Anna May Wong (born Wong Liu Tsong) cut classes to watch films being shot on location in the movie capital of the world. When she was just fourteen, she made her film debut as an extra in The Red Lantern (1919), which was at that time the most extravagant Chinese-themed film ever produced. Just five years later, Wong played opposite Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Baghdad. Her acclaimed performance as the Mongol spy in this blockbuster made Wong an international star. She went on to play numerous roles in the United States and Europe.
Wong?s career was particularly impressive in that she was able to transition from silent to talking films without losing her audience. Over the course of her stardom, she also worked in the theater, vaudeville, radio, and television; however, despite her scene-stealing acting skills and celestial beauty, Anna May Wong suffered from the typecasting and prejudice that was endemic to the film industry in the early part of the twentieth century. She played rape victims, ?dragon ladies,? and other stereotyped images of Chinese women, and lost the role she most desired-O-lan from the film version of The Good Earth-to the Venetian Luise Rainer.
Part Asian American chronicle and part film history, this book displays the author?s expansive knowledge of the history of Chinese American immigration and the cultural milieu that Wong encountered. The book?s first section covers Wong?s growing up and her experiences in the United States and Europe; the second describes her travels in Asia and her emotional and philosophical growth as a mature actress; the third part contains detailed analyses of some of Wong?s most famous films. Each chapter could stand alone as a scholarly discussion of film and cultural theory as well as a biographical account of the actress?s life.
Though in 1934 the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York proclaimed Anna May Wong to be the ?world?s best-dressed woman,? today Wong?s career is little more than a footnote in mainstream film histories. Chan?s book sheds new light on this remarkable woman, who rightfully deserves to be lionized.

Review by: Johanna Massé

National Portrait Gallery

2008-01-29T19:11:00.000-08:00

PAST EXHIBITION ARCHIVE

Anna May Wong: Frosted Yellow Willows
A Centenary Celebration: The London Portraits

Showcase display
Room 31
8 December 2004 - 15 June 2005

Anna May Wong was born Wong Liu Tsong (translated as Frosted Yellow Willows) on 3 January 1905 in Los Angeles to second generation Chinese-American parents. This display celebrates the centenary of the birth of the most important Chinese-American film star of the twentieth century.

Part of what makes Anna May Wong such an icon is the number of famous photographers that she sat to and collaborated with to produce images that transcend mere portraiture and elevate the results into high art. In America these include works by Edward Steichen, George Hurrell and Carl Van Vechten. Other memorable images, that also appear in histories of the art of photography, were made in Germany by Alfred Eisenstadt and Lotte Jacobi. Fortunately most of the key studio portraits taken in London survive at the National Portrait Gallery and make up this display. They range from a signed vintage print from the early stills and studio photographer Fred Daniels, who was recruited to work on Piccadilly, to the leading West End photographers Dorothy Wilding and Paul Tanqueray. The recently rediscovered portraits by Dudley Glanfield were first published in the March 1929 issue of Theatre World to herald her London stage appearance in Circle of Chalk.

Anna May Wong made over sixty films in her career. She is best known for her role in Joseph Von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932) in which she starred alongside Marlene Dietrich. Wong made her screen debut in The Red Lantern (1919) and after appearing in five further films had her first starring role in Technicolor's first two-strip colour film, The Toll of the Sea (1922). This led to her casting in Douglas Fairbanks Snr's silent classic The Thief of Bagdad (1924).

In order to take on new challenges she travelled to Europe and visited England in 1928 causing an immediate sensation. She made several European films, many directed by Richard Eichberg, who first directed her in Song (1928) in Germany.
In London E A Dupont directed Wong in her most famous European film Piccadilly (1929) from a script and story by Arnold Bennett. Subsequent films she made in England included Elstree Calling (1930), Tiger Bay (1933) and Chu Chin Chow (1934). Anna May also appeared on stage alongside Laurence Olivier in Circle of Chalk (1929) and later toured England with a variety show in 1933-4 (See illustration).

Links
- Forthcoming Documentary Film produced and researched by Elaine Mae Woo and other centenary events click on: Official Anna May Wong website

Publications
- Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong by Anthony B. Chan (2003)
- Anna May Wong: A Complete Guide to Her Film, Stage, Radio and Television Work by Philip Leibfried and Chei Mi Lane (2004)

Anna May Wong: A Synopsis

2008-01-29T19:09:00.000-08:00

Anna May Wong - The First Chinese-American Film Star

BORN:
January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, CA.

DIED:
February 3, 1961, in Santa Monica, CA.

REAL NAME:
Wong Liu Tsong ("Frosted Yellow Willows")

OVERVIEW:
From the late 1920s to the early 1940s, Anna May Wong appeared in films in Hollywood, England, and Germany, becoming the first international Chinese-American film star. Although her career faded during the 1940s, she continued to work on stage, television, radio, and in an occasional movie until 1960.

Throughout her life Anna May battled racism and stereotyping, while at the same time being widely criticized by Chinese Nationalists in both America and China for taking roles they felt perpetuated a negative image of Chinese people. However, her determination, elegance, beauty and sophistication brought many positive elements to her performances, and she became the embodiment of Asian womanhood for a generation of American and European audiences. Anna May appeared in over 50 films.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:

First Film:
"The Red Lantern" (1919), starring Alla Nazimova. While the film was being shot on the streets of Chinatown in Los Angeles, Anna May was cast as an extra. She played a lantern bearer.
First Screen Credit:
"Bits of Life" (1921), in which she played Lon Chaney, Sr.'s wife, Toy Sing.
First Significant Role:
Cast as Lotus Flower, the lead roll in "The Toll of the Sea" (1922), a film based on Puccini's opera "Madame Butterfly". It was the first feature to be filmed in Technicolor's two-color subtractive process.

Breakthrough Part:
Cast by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., as a Mongol slave in his lavish production "The Thief of Bagdad" (1924). Directed by Raoul Walsh for United Artists, this film cost $2 million and took five weeks to shoot. The impressive sets, which included towering minarets and Moorish buildings, were constructed on a six-and-a-half acre location at the Pickford-Fairbanks studio in Hollywood. Although Anna May Wong had only a supporting role, her brief appearances on screen caught the attention of audiences and critics alike.

First Talkie:
"The Flame of Love" a.k.a. "The Road to Dishonour" (1930), produced by British International Pictures. Anna May spoke the dialog in the French, German and English versions of the film.

Film Highlight:
In 1932 Anna May Wong starred with Marlene Dietrich in "Shanghai Express". This film, directed by Josef von Sternberg, was nominated for Academy Awards for "Best Picture" and "Best Director", and won the Oscar for "Best Cinematography".

Major Disappointment:
After testing for the role of O-Lan, Paul Muni's wife in the film "The Good Earth" (1937), and then being considered for the smaller role of Lotus, his concubine in the film, Anna May lost out to Luise Rainer and Tilly Losch respectively. (It's interesting to note that both Rainer and Losch were born in Vienna, Austria, and were not Asian.) The film went on to be nominated for five Academy Awards, and Luise Rainer won the 'Best Actress" Oscar for her performance.

Best Films:
"The Toll of the Sea" (1922); "Thief of Bagdad" (1924); "Peter Pan" (1924); "Piccadilly" (1929); "Shanghai Express" (1932).

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES:

Anna May Wong was 5 feet 7 inches tall, had black eyes and usually wore her hair in bangs. She was widely regarded as having the most beautiful hands in filmdom, and many of her contemporaries considered her to be among the world's best-dressed women. She loved to read, and studied everything from Asian history and the teachings of Lao Tzu, to Shakespeare. For exercise she played golf, rode horses, and skied. After critics lambasted her voice and singing while she was doing a play in London in 1929, she paid a Cambridge University tutor to help her gain an upper-class English accent.

Because love scenes between Oriental and Caucasian actors were not permitted on U.S. screens at the time, Anna May was limited to playing supporting characters during the 1920s while the lead parts often went to a Caucasian actress in Oriental makeup.

In 1928, Anna May left for Europe where she made a number of films in Germany and England. She also appeared on the London stage with Laurence Olivier in "The Circle of Chalk", and in Vienna in the play "Springtime". While in Europe she met and partied with many other rising film personalities, and an Alfred Eisenstadt photo of her with the German actress Marlene Dietrich and the German actress/director Leni Riefenstahl, at the Press Ball in Berlin, was widely circulated and eventually published in the U.S. by LOOK magazine. Anna May learned to speak both French and German, and many people believed that in both attitude and outlook she quickly became more European than American.

After retuning to the United States in 1930, Anna May appeared on Broadway in the play "On the Spot", which ran for 167 performances. She then proceeded to Hollywood where Paramount put her under contract. Her first film for Paramount was "Daughter of the Dragon", based on Sax Rohmer's popular novel "Daughter of Fu Manchu". Anna May commuted between Hollywood, New York, and Europe throughout the 1930s, acting in both plays and movies.

In 1932, Anna May did a test for the lead role in a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture "The Son-Daughter". She heard through the grapevine that she did not get the role because M-G-M considered her "too Chinese to play a Chinese". Helen Hayes was eventually given the part.

Irving Thalberg's assistant, Albert Lewin, was put in charge of casting the film version of Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Good Earth" (1937). After testing Anna May and other Chinese actors, he argued that despite their ethnicity they did not fit his conception of what Chinese people looked like.

In 1937, Anna May Wong appeared on the cover of the second issue of Look magazine where she was identified as the "World's Most Beautiful Chinese Girl", even though she was shown brandishing a dagger.

In 1942, Anna May wrote the preface to one of the first Chinese cookbooks printed in the United States. Compiled by Mabel Stegner and Fred Wing, the cookbook "New Chinese Recipes" was sold to raise money for United China Relief.

In 1951 Anna May starred as a Chinese detective in the Dumont Network's television series "The Gallery of Madame Liu Tsong". The weekly half-hour show debuted on August 27th, and ran until November 21st, 1951.

Anna May smoked, often abused alcohol and suffered deep bouts of depression. After a long battle with the liver disease, Laennec's cirrhosis, Anna May died in her home at the age of 56 while taking a nap.

AFTERWARD:
In 1997, Bowdoin College in Maine presented the World Premier of a play about Anna May Wong entitled "China Doll - The Imagined Life of an American Actress". The play was written by Elizabeth Wong, and it had its New York City premier during the 2005/6 season at the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre.

In 2004, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Hugh M. Hefner, presented a lecture and film series entitled "Rediscovering Anna May Wong". In the same year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City presented a program entitled "Retrospective of Chinese American Screen Actress Anna May Wong", which screened six of her films and rare newsreel footage.

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Books:

Anna May Wong: A Complete Guide to Her Film, Stage, Radio and Television Work, (2003) by Philip Leibfried, et al
Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong, (2003) by Anthony B. Chan

Richard Corliss's Review, Time

2008-01-29T19:06:00.000-08:00

Anna May Wong Did It Right

Saturday, Jan. 29, 2005 By RICHARD CORLISS

Article Tools

I'm Anna May Wong.
I come from old Hong Kong.
But now I'm a Hollywood star.
—from a song she performed in her cabaret act

Richard Corliss recalls those dear dead 'Deep Throat' days

This week, the Oscar nominations were announced, and five of the 20 slots in the acting categories went to Africans or African-Americans. That number, the most in the 77-year of the Academy Awards, heartens those who know how rare it was for any actor of color to be recognized as an accomplished artist in Hollywood. In 1940 Hattie McDaniel became the first non-white to win an Oscar, and that for a stereotype role, as Mammy in Gone With the Wind, a Civil War-era house slave who stayed loyal to the mistress of her plantation. The Oscar was for Best Supporting Actress. No black had been nominated for an Oscar in a leading role, for the simple reason that no black had played a leading role — not in a mixed-race film produced by a major Hollywood studio.

RICHEE / PARAMOUNT / MPTV

Anna May Wong in 1933

In the quarter-century of Hollywood feature films before 1940, only two non-white actors had been regularly cast in starring roles. One, Sessue Hayakawa from Japan, was a stalwart heartthrob in the late teens. The other was all-American: born in California, a native English speaker, and with a sensual, intelligent allure that even the studio bosses could not ignore. She was Anna May Wong, whose centenary we celebrate this month.

Born Jan. 3, 1905, in Los Angeles' Chinatown, Wong played the lead role in the first Technicolor feature, The Toll of the Sea, in 1922, when she was just 17. By 19 she was intriguing against the movies' top action star, Douglas Fairbanks, in his super-production The Thief of Bagdad. At 23 she went to Europe, where she starred in a half-dozen A pictures — including her best one, E.A. Dupont's Piccadilly — and, when sound films arrived, performing roles in three languages: English, German and French.

She returned to the U.S. to share top billing with Hayakawa in a Fu Manchu melodrama, Daughter of the Dragon, and, a year later, was Marlene Dietrich's companion in Shanghai Express. After starring in three films in England, she anchored a series of B pictures at Paramount, a major studio, then starred in two more for a Poverty Row outfit.

Wong's eclat spread beyond the big screen. In 1929 and 1930 she starred in plays in London (The Circle of Chalk, with the young Laurence Olivier), Vienna (the title role in Tschun Tschi) and New York (the Broadway melodrama On the Spot, which she would film at Paramount as Dangerous to Know). Her cabaret act, which included songs in Cantonese, French, English, German, Danish, Swedish and other languages, took her from the U.S. to Europe to Australia.

CHINESE CHIC

She was a figure of exotic fashion around the world, feted by high society in London, Berlin and elsewhere. (You can see her glamour and stature in a Jan. 1929 photo snapped by Alfred Eisenstadt: it shows Wong flanked by two almost-as-gorgeous German actresses: Marlene Dietrich, soon to decamp for Hollywood, and Leni Riefenstahl, soon to be the director of the Nazi-era documentaries Triumph of the Will and Olympia.) In 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her (to much uproar) the "world's best dressed woman"; in 1938 Look magazine named her the "world's most beautiful Chinese girl." TIME magazine, run by beetle-browed, China-born Henry Luce, was a special champion, taking every opportunity to chronicle her social life. A few excerpts, from the must-search Time Archive:

July 2, 1928: ...next month, Dr. Tien Lai Huang, 'Chinese Lindbergh,' hopes to take off for Hong Kong with a passenger, Anna May Wong, cinema star and daughter of a Los Angeles laundryman.

Mar. 20, 1933: Greta Garbo and Anna May Wong are among Margie Chung's best friends.

Dec. 7, 1936: Under a bright Hawaiian moon, dainty Anna May Wong put out to sea one night last week in a pineapple barge. Embarked on neither a pleasure jaunt nor a cinema stunt, Actress Wong and 446 fellow passengers were [sailing home after a] shipping strike...

Nov. 24, 1941: Anna May Wong, 34 [actually 36], unmarried, announced to interviewers: 'I've come to the conclusion that everybody should marry, including me.'

June 20, 1960: Announcing their comebacks after long retirements : two fiftyish former cinema stalwarts — Anna May Wong, 53 [actually 55], who quit the screen 17 years ago after countless mystery women roles in Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan easterns... and Leni Riefenstahl...

Feb. 10, 1961: Died. Anna May Wong, 54 [actually 56], Los Angeles-born daughter of a local laundryman, who became a film star over her father's objections that "every time your picture is taken, you lose a part of your soul," died a thousand deaths as the screen's foremost Oriental villainess; of a heart attack; in Santa Monica, Calif.

Tall, pretty and sinuously graceful, Wong had a smoldering effect on people, especially men; they could be driven to a purple passion trying to describe her beauty. It's said that her friend Eric Maschwitz wrote the dreamy lyrics to the pop standard These Foolish Things in Wong's honor. She also had mesmerized set and costume designer Ali Hubert. Listen to his little Wong rhapsody:

"On her tender and youthful body, expressing every moment with the indescribable grace of the Oriental woman, towers her head which, although completely Mongolian, is beautiful by European standards. Her eyes, for a Chinese unusually large, deep and dark like a Tibetan mountain lake, gaze with enormous expressiveness. Her well-shaped, slightly voluptuous lips form a striking contrast to the to the melancholy darkness of her eyes. Her hands are of outstanding beauty, slim and perfectly formed. Only a Van Eyck or a Holbein could capture her on canvas."

Her career as a leading lady ended during World War II, during which she devoted most of her energy to China war relief. In the 50s she appeared on a few TV shows, and for 13 weeks hosted her own, The Gallery of Mme. Liu-Tsong (making her the first Chinese-American to host her own show). But she was not an important presence after the war. Indeed, Wong may be unknown to most readers of this column. Still, her achievement and legend cast a long, sultry shadow. Three recent books appraise Wong's life and career with a sympathetic acuity: the biography Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend by Graham Russell Gao Hodges; the social and film critique Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong, 1905-1961 by Anthony B. Chan; and the very helpful catalogue Anna May Wong: A Complete Guide to Her Film, Stage, Radio and Television Work by Philip Leibfried and Chei Mi Lane.

All this for an actress who by convention was not allowed to kiss her leading man. All this for a Hollywood star who, at the peak of her popularity, could not have bought a house in Beverly Hills. All this for a woman no white man could legally have married in her home state until 1947.

THE PERIL OF BEING YELLOW

Anna May Wong, a third-generation Chinese-American — her grandparents had been in California at least since 1855, long before many of the state's natives — had plenty of hurdles to jump. She was a minority (a woman) within a minority (Chinese) within the larger, fractious congestion of minorities, in an America where white was all-right, the brown could stick around, the black had to get back, and the yellow... they'd better not bellow.

The Chinese, who in the mid-19th century had come to America by the tens of thousands and helped build the transcontinental railway, were on the receiving end of much prejudicial legislation. Various federal acts and Supreme Court rulings forbade the Chinese to own real estate, to become naturalized citizens, even to emigrate to the U.S. (if they were laborers). In California, an 1879 law banned Chinese laborers from working on public projects. Miscegenation laws enacted in 13 states, including California, criminalized marriages between whites and Chinese. In the slang wisdom of the day, sojourners from the Middle Kingdom "didn't stand a Chinaman's chance."

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LECTURE BY ANTHONY B. CHAN, UCLA, 2004

Film Retrospective: Rediscovering Anna May Wong

Friday, January 30, 20047:00 PM - 10:00 PMJames Bridges TheaterMelnitz HallUCLALos Angeles, CA 90095

National Portrait Gallery

Anna May Wong: A Synopsis

Richard Corliss's Review, Time

Anna May Wong Did It Right

Friday, January 30, 2004
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
James Bridges Theater
Melnitz Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095