She’s on the quarter, she even has a Barbie doll in her likeness, but many people still aren’t familiar with Chinese American actress Anna May Wong and her work on the screen and stage. Now, Yunte Huang, professor of English at UC Santa Barbara, has taken a deep dive into her life in the third installment of his Rendezvous with American History trilogy. The book is called Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History.
“She was one of the biggest Chinese stars in the first part of the 20th century. For many decades, Anna May Wong was really the only genuine Chinese face on the screen,” Huang notes.
Wong made her way into the industry as a teenager by haunting film sets in LA’s Chinatown, eventually becoming a background player and then starring, at age 16, in The Toll of the Sea, a retelling of Madame Butterfly. Huang says she was cast in this Technicolor film because of her tenacity…and skin color.
“The sinister part of this whole story is that because in black and white films in those years, Caucasian actors didn't look very good because of the white color. … So they thought color film could change that,” he notes. “They really wanted to use real Asian actors to test the color. … But of course, she took advantage of that and made a name for herself and became a really big star.”
After that film, finding leading roles proved very difficult for Wong, so she headed to Europe to work in its burgeoning film industry, learning German and passable French along the way. During this time, she embraced fashion, using it to create a mystique and strength.
“Once again, she figured out how to do things differently. And if her career got hampered in Hollywood, she turned to fashion for instance, and then later on she turned to food with Chinese recipe cookbooks,” Huang shares.
As she got older, however, Hollywood roles became fewer and Wong fell on hard times. “She was a really hard worker, really diligent, really brilliant, beautiful. But she was living in a cruel world at the time. And I'm not saying today is any better, but at least we get to talk about her story,” says Huang.