Anna May Wong

Anna May Wong (Wong Liu Tsong 黃柳霜) (January 3, 1905 – February 2, 1961) was an American actress, the first Chinese American movie star, and the first Asian American to become an international star. Her long and varied career spanned both silent and sound film, television, stage, and radio. As one of the minor – and ironic – roles of her career, just as she was becoming something of a hot star (despite her ethnicity) she played the Indian princess Tiger Lily in the 1924 silent film Peter Pan.

She was born Wong Liu Tsong (meaning "frosted yellow willows") on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, one block north of Chinatown, in an integrated community of Chinese, Irish, German, and Japanese residents to second-generation Chinese-American parents. She became infatuated with the movies – an industry rapidly developing in and around he own neighborhood – and began acting in films at an early age. At the age of 17, she acted in The Toll of the Sea (1922), one of the first movies made in color, which won her critical praise. At the age of 19, Anna May Wong was cast in a supporting role as a Mongol slave in Douglas Fairbanks' The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Playing a stereotypical "Dragon Lady" role, her brief appearances on-screen caught the attention of audiences and critics alike. The film grossed more than $2 million and helped introduce Wong to the public. It was during this time that she played the Indian princess Tiger Lily in 1924's silent Peter Pan. (Ironically, she would later complain about Native Americans being cast in Chinese roles.) Wong became a fashion icon, and by 1924 had achieved international stardom.

Cultural taboos – and even laws – against interracial relationships prevented her from playing opposite white leading men, even when they were performing in "yellowface" makeup as Asian characters. Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles she reluctantly played in Hollywood, she left for Europe in the late 1920s, where she starred in several notable plays and films, among them Piccadilly (1929). She spent the first half of the 1930s traveling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work. Wong was featured in films of the early sound era, such as Daughter of the Dragon (1931) and Daughter of Shanghai (1937), and with Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932). While in Germany, Wong became an inseparable friend of the director Leni Riefenstahl. Her close friendships with several women throughout her life, including Marlene Dietrich and Cecil Cunningham, led to rumors of lesbianism which damaged her public reputation.

During the 1930s, American studios were looking for fresh European talent. Ironically, Wong caught their eye and she was offered a contract with Paramount Studios in 1930. Enticed by the promise of lead roles and top billing, she returned to the United States. With the promise of appearing in a Josef von Sternberg film, Wong accepted another stereotypical role – the title character of Fu Manchu's vengeful daughter in Daughter of the Dragon (1931). This was the last stereotypically "evil Chinese" role Wong played,< and also her one starring appearance alongside the only other well-known Asian actor of the era, Sessue Hayakawa.

In 1935 Wong was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role in its film version of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, choosing instead the European Luise Rainer to play the leading role in "yellowface". Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her family's ancestral village and studying Chinese culture. In the late 1930s, she starred in several B movies for Paramount Pictures, portraying Chinese-Americans in a positive light. She paid less attention to her film career during World War II, when she devoted her time and money to helping the Chinese cause against Japan. Wong returned to the public eye in the 1950s in several television appearances as well as her own series in 1951, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, the first U.S. television show starring an Asian-American. She had been planning to return to film in Flower Drum Song when she died in 1961, at the age of 56.

For decades after her death, Wong was remembered principally for the stereotypical "Dragon Lady" and demure "Butterfly" roles that she was often given. Her life and career were re-evaluated in the years around the centennial of her birth, in three major literary works and film retrospectives. Interest in her life story continues and another biography was published in 2009.