Anna May Wong

Anna May Wong S. Louisa Wei, April G. Wei LAST REVIEWED: 18 DECEMBER 2020 LAST MODIFIED: 21 FEBRUARY 2022 DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199791286-0272 Introduction Anna May Wong (b. 1905–d. 1961) pioneered as the first Chinese American film star with celebrity status in every continent and the ability to perform in multiple languages. She starred or appeared in over sixty films, five plays, ten television shows, and her own vaudeville show that she staged throughout Europe in the 1930s and in Australia in 1939. She attempted to overcome racial prejudice even as her career suffered from being typecast with such stereotypes as “China doll” and “dragon lady.” Her early roles, including the leading role in the first-ever full Technicolor silent feature titled Toll of the Sea (1922), and the supporting role of a Mongol slave girl in The Thief of Bagdad (1924) made her the earliest embodiment and interpreter of Asian women on the international screen and stage. She crystallized the careers and roles of Asian actors in European and American filmmaking, and her achievement remains undimmed in the present day. Anna May Wong learned to code her talents and cultural references in spite of racist scripts and audiences fully ignorant of Asian culture. In supporting roles, she at times upstaged the lead actress; the most famous example was her performance with Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (1932). Struggling in a racist and conservative Hollywood in an era when the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882–1943) was in effect, her strategy of sustaining her professional life and film career for two decades was through ocean-crossing—pursuing roles in the United Kingdom, the Weimar Republic, and Australia, then returning to Hollywood on her own will. Rejected for the role of a lifetime as O-Lan, the good wife, in the cinematic adaptation of Pearl Buck’s novel, The Good Earth (1937), she made a highly publicized trip to China. Upon her return, she starred in a series of B-movies with a positive view of China and its people. During World War II, Anna May Wong made several propaganda films and toured USO bases entertaining the troops. Never completely forgotten, Anna May’s legend was revived by scholars during the centennial of her birth in 2003. As an early cosmopolitan woman, a fashion icon, and an imposing photographed image, Anna May Wong inspired scholarly studies, as well as creative works including song, children’s books, documentaries, and recently, a multimedia work. In the era celebrating global cultures, Anna May Wong is recognized for defining a lifestyle that was unique then but is now considered distinctly modern. Nancy Gibbs named Anna May Wong as the woman of 1928 in her article “100 Women of the Year” for Time magazine’s 16–23 March 2020 issue to celebrate women of influence. Autobiographies and Biographies The diversity of Anna May Wong’s work, her artistic forms, her performative language, and the international settings of her film pose sizable challenges to a biographer. As an eloquent actress, fashion icon, and early cosmopolitan, Anna May Wong documented her life and career through many interviews, articles, and letters, as exemplified by her mini-autobiography published in China (Wong 1936). Her self-expressed philosophy of life enlightens her biographers as well as urging them to (re)interpret the not-so-favorable realities in her professional life. As early as the 1970s, Chu 1976 attempted to put major events of her life together through a selection of reportage. Parish and Leonard 1976, Gee 1980, Gan 1995, Zia and Gall 1995, and Ng 1999 follow suit by including her in various listings; Chan 2003 is mostly informative in contextualizing Anna May Wong’s life within the history of Asian Americans, yet Wong’s legend was mostly formed outside that context. Leong 2005 offers a shorter biography of her with a more focused context of SinoAmerican relation and cultural exchange. Hodges 2012 remains the only biography that covers nearly all periods of Anna May’s life— from the eventful years to eventless ones where she still tried to break through. Other biographies are relatively brief, and their approaches are described below. Chan, B. Anthony. Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905–1961). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2003. Chan’s biography provides background information about Wong and Asian American history. Chan portrays how Wong defied many restrictions and conventions, showing that she defined herself with a “perpetual coolness.” Chan asserts, lacking any clear evidence, that Wong had a Daoist philosophy, without mentioning her reading of and friendship with Lin Yutang, whose work influenced the actress. Chu, Judy. “Anna May Wong.” In Counterpoint Perspectives on Asian America. Edited by Emma Gee, 284–289. Los Angeles: Asian American Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 1976. This short piece published in 1976 puts together Anna May Wong’s career through a selection of media reportage from the 1920s to the 1960s. It presents a solid summary of how Anna May perceived herself and how she was viewed in her time. As an earlier study of Anna May, this piece is a reference for nearly all later biographers and researchers. Gan, Geraldine. “Anna May Wong.” In Lives of Notable Asian Americans: Arts, Entertainment, Sports. By Geraldine Gan, 83– 91. New York: Chelsea House, 1995. This brief encyclopedia entry is useful as an initial survey of Anna May’s life. Gee, Emma. “Wong, Anna May.” In Notable American Women: The Modern Period; A Biographical Dictionary. Edited by Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green, 744–745. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980. This early encyclopedia entry is useful for a quick survey of Anna May Wong’s life and career. Groves, Derham. Anna May Wong’s Lucky Shoes: 1939 Australia through the Eyes of an Art Deco Diva. Ames, IA: Culicidae, 2011. This book describes in great detail Anna May Wong’s trip to Australia in 1939, where she performed on stage as a diva of opera. Onethird of the book is like a biography of Wong in Australia, describing her performances, interactions with journalist and friends. Hodges, Graham Russell. Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend. 2d ed. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. Hodges’ comprehensive, definitive biography covers Wong’s life and career using vast, original primary materials including Wong’s personal correspondence and newspapers from many countries. Hodges portrays Wong’s cosmopolitanism and reveals Wong’s struggles against the endemic racism of her time, and negative reception in Nationalist and Communist China, and the paradoxes of her search for a Chinese American identity, while performing stereotypical roles. This book’s Chinese translation ( ) was published by Post Wave Publishing in 2016. 兒到好萊塢傳奇 黃柳霜：從洗衣⼯女 Leong, J. Karen. “Anna May Wong.” In The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism. By Karen J. Leong, 57–105. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Leong’s book takes a biographical approach to three individuals—Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, and Mayling Soong—who served as a bridge between China and America in the 1930s and 1940s and represented what she calls “the China mystique.” The chapter on Anna May exposes her legacy through how misunderstandings of her cultural origins are forced on her all the way through her career as an actress in Hollywood and in Europe. Ng, Franklin. “Anna May Wong.” In Distinguished Asian Americans: A Biographical Dictionary. Edited by Hyung-chan Kim, 352–354. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999. This entry summarizes Anna May Wong’s acting career with brief descriptions of her most famous films. Parish, James R., and William T. Leonard. “Anna May Wong.” In Hollywood Players: The Thirties. By James R. Parish and William T. Leonard, 532–538. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1976. The authors provide a memorable panorama of 1930s Hollywood with career studies of seventy-one actors and actresses who were notable but not quite superstars. Warner, Jennifer. The Tool of the Sea: The Life and Times of Anna May Wong. N.p.: LifeCaps, 2014. This book is a general introduction of Anna May Wong’s life story. Wong, Anna May. “Wo De Zishu” (“My Self Account”). The Young Companion 114 (February 1936): 24. Written in the first person, this short piece was translated from Anna May’s English writing for The Young Companion, a popular Chinese-language magazine published in Shanghai and most influential between 1926 and 1941. Printed in the “Celebrity Life” column of the magazine shortly after her arrival in Shanghai, this article briefly summarizes her film career and responds to criticisms over her “demeaning roles” in American and European films. Zia, Helen, and Susan B. Gall. “Anna May Wong.” In Notable Asian Americans. By Helen Zia and Susan B. Gall, 414. New York: Gale Research, 1995. This reference presents narrative biographical entries on 250 prominent Asian Americans, from past to present. The entry on Anna May Wong summarizes information regarding her background and achievements. Film/Stage Career and Performing Art Concerning Anny May Wong’s film career, scholars all agree upon her exceptional talent but disagree upon her status as a film star. As Parish and Leonard 1976, cited under Autobiographies and Biographies, and Leibfried and Lane 2004 demonstrate, Wong was a very rare actor who made strong impressions through even bit roles; and her unusual cross-oceanic performing career created an impact that is quite different from that of other screen goddesses. She had rarely appeared in the conventional star studies before 2000, but in recent years as more scholars focuses on the talents who did not make it to the top due to racial and social discrimination, her filming career has been compared with those of other actresses by works like Wollstein 1999 and Doromal 2007. The restorations of her early works including The Toll of the Sea (1922, restored by National Film Preservation Foundation) and Piccadilly (1929, remastered by Milestones Films, 2004) not only have led to retrospective screenings of her works—notably, the 2004 event hosted by MoMA, as reported by Camhi 2004, but also have returned her career to film history, as closely and vigorously read by Lennon 2012. Taves 2012 is a good example of how to break the conventional perceptions and paradigms in reading America’s wartime propaganda film by highlighting the creative collaboration between Anna May Wong and director Joseph H. Lewis. Tu 2004 praises Wong’s performance in Piccadilly as showing great imagination of immigrant life. Wong 2018 compares Anna May Wong and Lily Yeun, and especially their enactment of prostitutes who murder the men, raping and attempting to overpower them. Camhi, Leslie. “Film; A Dragon Lady and a Quiet Cultural Warrior.” The New York Times, 11 January 2004. A general introduction of Anna May Wong’s life and career published before the five-film retrospective of her films sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art at the Gramercy Theater in New York, which was held 22–25 January 2017. The article summarizes Wong’s most celebrated works like The Toll of the Sea (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), and Piccadilly (1929), also making a reference to two biographies of Anna May Wong—Hodges 2012 and Chan 2003 (both cited under Autobiographies and Biographies). Doromal, Krystle. “From Yellow Peril to Yellow Fever: The Representation of Asians from Anna May Wong to Lucy Liu.” Off Screen 11.5 (May 2007). This essay sees Lucy Liu as Anna May Wong’s reincarnation today and compares the two actresses’ acting styles with interesting insights. Leibfried, Philip, and Chei Mi Lane. Anna May Wong: A Complete Guide to Her Film, Stage, Radio and Television Work. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004. The book is an annotated list of Anna May Wong’s work: six chapters focus on her fifty silent-era films, seven European sound films, fifteen American sound films, five stage works, and twenty performances in radio and television. Each chapter includes a general introduction to Wong’s work and includes media reviews and press reports. The book is a useful source for initial investigation of Wong’s career. Lennon, Elaine P. “Peccadillo and Taboo in Piccadilly (1929).” Off Screen 16.9 (2012). Well-versed in film narrative and film history, Lennon offers a close reading of Piccadilly in its visual style, narrative structure, character dynamic, art deco, etc., to explain why this film is a masterpiece in the age of Expressionist cinema, and how the appearance and performance of Anna May Wong made the film stand out among other backstage movies of its time. Taves, Brian. “Joseph H. Lewis, Anna May Wong, and Bombs over Burma.” In The Films of Joseph H. Lewis. Edited by Gary D. Rhodes, 116–133. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012. This book chapter evaluates Wong’s film Bombs over Burma as wartime propaganda and as Wong’s vehicle for personal expression. Taves demonstrates how Lewis’s screenplay strategy and directorial sensibility renews the image of Wong as an emblem of Chinese resistance and a self-sufficient heroine. Taves asserts the film was a realistic portrayal of the Chinese World War II sentiment despite its B-film production scale. Tu, Thuy Linh Nguyen. “Forgetting Anna May Wong.” Wasafiri 19.43 (2004): 14–18. This essay is inspired by how Anna May Wong was reimagined by artists; offers Tu’s own reading of her favorite role of Wong: Shosho in her last silent picture, Piccadilly. Wollstein, Hans J. “Anna May Wong.” In Vixens, Floozies, and Molls: 28 Actresses of Late 1920s and 1930s Hollywood. By Hans J. Wollstein, 247–259. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999. This book covers the lives and careers of, as claimed by its title, twenty-eight actresses who played the other woman or bad-girl roles during Hollywood’s late silent and early sound period. With much irony, Anna May Wong is included as the twenty-ninth actress (and perhaps the most famous today). Wollstein effectively reveals the patterns of her film career as often two steps back for one step forward and analyzes her handling of demeaning roles in the racist context of her time. Wong, Lily. “Over My Dead Body: Melodramatic Crossings of Anna May Wong and Ruan Lingyu.” In Transpacific Attachments: Sex Work, Media Networks, and Affective Histories of Chineseness. By Lily Wong, 48–76. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. This book chapter compares Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s first Chinese American actress, who performs a murderous Chinese prostitute in Paramount Pictures’ Shanghai Express (1932), with Ruan Lingyu, Shanghai left-wing cinema’s icon, who enacts a “virtuous sex worker” in Lianhua Studio’s Shennü (The goddess). Wong draws a parallel between two icons’ “degenerate” images and closely examines the mass-mediated process across the Pacific Ocean. Between China and America Her celebrity ensured that Anna May Wong would hold a leading and controversial place in Asian American historiography. Gates 2013 discusses her image in classical Hollywood detective movies, and Metzger 2006 focuses on the transformation of her public image after her China trip in 1936. Wang 2005 reads her counterinfluence on “yellowface” performance (white actors portraying Asian roles). Wang 2010 argues that Wong’s influential position in the 1930s allowed a cultural coding instructive for today’s globalized cultural context. Wang 2015 is an in-depth reading of Chinese media reportage from the 1920s through the 1940s. Wong 2006 reveals Anna May’s awareness and rejection of orientalized roles, while Worrell 2003 analyzes Wong’s struggles with stereotypical roles. Gates, Philippa. “The Assimilated Asian American as American Action Hero: Anna May Wong, Keye Luke, and James Shigeta in the Classical Hollywood Detective Film.” Canadian Journal of Film Studies 22.2 (2013): 19–40. Through examining Daughter of Shanghai (Paramount 1937, starring Anna May Wong), Phantom of Chinatown (Monogram 1940, starring Keye Luke), and The Crimson Kimono (1959, starring James Shigeta)—all of which are notable for their casting of Asian Americans in the leading roles—the paper explores how, for Hollywood, the “problem” of Asian/Americanness was less the race of the actor who portrayed the detective than that of the character being portrayed. Lim, Shirley. “Anna May Wong and Asian American Popular Culture.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Lim contends that Anna May Wong’s film career helps comprehension of the film business between the two world wars in relation to other forms of popular culture. This entry also includes a literature review of scholarly studies on Wong and a brief listing of some of her most important film works and the magazines film reviews. Metzger, Sean. “Patterns of Resistance? Anna May Wong and the Fabrication of China in American Cinema of the Late 30s.” Quarterly Review of Film & Video 23.1 (2006): 1–11. Metzger focuses on American late-1930s representations of Anna May Wong following her well-publicized sojourn in China from January to November 1936. Wong introduced the latest Chinese fashions in Hollywood Party (1937). Metzger discusses how Wong’s attire positively influenced white Americans’ attitudes toward Chinese clothing. The article then discusses Wong’s positive roles as a modern Chinese American woman in late-1930s films including King of Chinatown, Dangerous to Know, and Island of Lost Men. Wang, Yiman. “The Art of Screen Passing: Anna May Wong’s Yellow Yellowface Performance in the Art Deco Era.” Camera Obscura 20.60 (2005): 159–192. This paper considers the legacy of Anna May Wong and describes how it has been constructed to best serve Asian American interests. The author’s aim is to focus on Wong’s performative strategies and to highlight their repressed subversive potential. Wang, Yiman. “Anna May Wong: A Border-Crossing ‘Minor’ Star Mediating Performance.” In Chinese Film Stars. Edited by Mary Farquhar and Yingjin Zhang, 19–31. London: Routledge, 2010. This book chapter examines Anna May Wong’s visual and vocal performance of (racial) difference in her late-1930s films and radio plays. The author argues that Wong’s performance of the “minor” position enables difference from within the dominant matrix, thereby opening up a flexible structure of minority positioning that is instructive for today’s global landscapes. Wang, Yiman. “Watching Anna May Wong in Republican China.” In American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows. Edited by Lisa Funnell and Man-Fung Yip, 169–187. New York: Routledge, 2015. Wang’s article thoroughly investigates Chinese media coverage of Anna May Wong during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937– 1945). Examining the popular magazines Ling Long and Young Companion, Wang discloses how Chinese journalists first viewed Wong from afar and then reclaimed her as a patriotic daughter after her departure from China. Wang inserts the diaspora to comprehend the Sino-American filmic and cultural interactions. Wong, Anna May. “I Am Growing More Chinese—Each Passing Year! (1934).” In Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present. Edited by Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang, and Mark Lai, 177–182. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Originally an interview with Los Angeles columnist Harry Carr in 1934, the piece presents Wong’s vivid summary of her life and career, telling of racism in her early school days to the pinnacle of her career as an international star. Wong recounts these milestones of her life. The interview shows that Wong was fully aware of paradoxes of her complex identity as she embraced the wisdom of Chinese philosophy. Worrell, Joseph. “On the Dragon Lady’s Trail: Rediscovering the Films and Image of Anna May Wong in Classical Hollywood Cinema.” Asian Cinema 14.2 (September 2003): 3–34. Beginning with a vivid description of how the name of Anna May Wong would bring smiles among the most sophisticated cinephiles, Worrell mainly focuses on Wong’s films made in Hollywood to demonstrate how this oriental archetype of women spent forty years to fight roles demoralizing and mistreating of Asians. The article also lists selected extant films of Anna May Wong. Transnational Cultural Studies A global film star, Anna May Wong poses a unique case for transnational filmmaking and cultural studies scholars. Bergfelder 2004 and Thorpe 2016 reveal how European audiences perceived Wong’s Chinese/Hollywood identity. Chung 2005 shows how American film audiences perceived Asian romance. Leong 2006 and Lim 2012 respectively focus on Wong’s experiences in the United Kingdom and Germany. Lim 2019 expands Wong’s transnational cultural map to France and Australia. Yiman Wang’s two chapters depart from previous writings on Wong: they emphasize Wong’s lingua-cultural experiences as a source of her creativity (Wang 2016b) and how her works are remediated (Wang 2016a). Wei 2016 reconstructs Wong’s career in the context of cross-oceanic filmmaking during the pre– World War II and World War II eras. According to Politics & Government Week, Anna May Wong received many press coverages when she performed in Spain in 1935 as the best-known Asian American film actress of her generation. Donovan 2020 is the first source to summarize Wong’s activities and reception in Spain. Bergfelder, Tim. “Negotiating Exoticism: Hollywood, Film Europe and the Cultural Reception of Anna May Wong.” In Stars: The Film Reader. Edited by Lucy Fischer and Marcia Landy, 59–75. New York: Routledge, 2004. This book chapter takes the unique approach of studying the European years of Anna May Wong in the context of the Film Europe Project, which took place from the 1920s to early 1930s—mainly in Britain and Germany. Wong is analyzed as an imported talent from Hollywood; even though she received leading roles, those roles still trapped her in a form of discrimination stemming from public fascination with her race and exotic beauty. Chung, Hye-seung. “Between Yellowphilia and Yellowphobia: Ethnic Stardom and the (Dis)Orientalized Romantic Couple in Daughter of Shanghai and King of Chinatown.” In East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture. Edited by Shilpa Dave, LeiLani Nishime, and Tasha G. Oren, 154–182. New York: New York University Press, 2005. This chapter focuses on Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn, a Korean American actor; they had costarred in two films as romantic couples. Chung analyzes how their roles were configured in the background of Sino-Japanese War, and how their otherwise-forbidden on-screen romance is enhanced by their patriotism. Examining the expectation of their romance beyond the film world and the rumor on their lifetime single status, the article also taps into the paradoxes of ethnic romances. Donovan, Mary Kate. “Race, Celebrity and Fashion: Anna May Wong in Spanish Magazines of the 1930s.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 97.9 (2020): 931–953. This article offers an overview of how Anna May Wong was received before, during, and after her trip to Madrid in 1935 in Spanish magazines as a cosmopolitan fashion icon, a Hollywood star, and a racialized actress who upstaged costar Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (1932). Leong, Karen J. “Anna May Wong and the British Film Industry.” Quarterly Review of Film & Video 23.1 (2006): 13–22. Focusing mainly on Anna May Wong’s British films like Piccadilly, Tiger Bay, and Java Head, Leong’s paper analyzes the public identity of Wong in Great Britain and the United States and seeks to identify the political, economic, and social factors that Wong negotiated during the 1930s. The article shows how the British colonial approach and the American racist approach in writing her roles resulted in similar reactions from European and American audiences. Lim, Shirley Jennifer. “‘Speaking German Like Nobody’s Business’: Anna May Wong, Walter Benjamin, and the Possibilities of Asian American Cosmopolitanism.” Journal of Transnational American Studies 4.1 (2012): 1–17. Lim’s article is a very interesting and in-depth reading of the encounter between Anna May Wong and German philosopher Walter Benjamin that took place in the summer of 1928. Benjamin’s interview of Anna May titled “Gespräch mit Anne May Wong” [“Speaking with Anna May Wong: A Chinoiserie from the Old West”] was published on 6 July 1928, on the front page of the leading German literary review, Die Literarishe Welt. Lim brings out how Wong’s cosmopolitanism challenges Benjamin’s original (mis)understanding of her mixed cultural origins. Lim, Shirley Jennifer. Anna May Wong: Performing the Modern. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2019. Lim’s book is not a traditional biography of Anna May Wong, though its six chapters are arranged in chronological order and cover most major events of her life. Intended as a kind of “cultural history,” the book highlights Wong’s artistic activities and cultural receptions in metropolitans like Berlin, Paris, London, Shanghai, and Melbourne, comparing her to other border-crossing performers including Black American actress Josephine Baker and Mexican actresses Lupe Vélez and Dolores del Río. Wong’s self-imaging and struggle with racial standing in the show business was discussed in-depth through her exchanges with photographer Carl van Vechten and her encounter with Walter Benjamin. Thorpe, Ashley. “Fashion, Chinoiserie and Modernity in The Circle of Chalk, 1929.” In Performing China on the London Stage: Chinese Opera and Global Power, 1759–2008. By Ashley Thorpe, 85–102. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. In the context of fascination with Chinese artifacts and culture, Thorpe analyzes the 1929 stage play of The Circle of Chalk, which was designed to obtain success from the actress Anna May Wong, whose silent feature Piccadilly gained her fame and popularity in the United Kingdom. The stage performance marked Wong’s transition from silent roles to speaking roles, but the play was not well received. Thorpe suggests reasons from the sociocultural perspective. Wang, Yiman. “Playback, Play-forward: Anna May Wong in Double Exposure.” In New Silent Cinema. Edited by Paul Flaig and Katherine Groo, 106–125. New York: Routledge, 2016a. Wang’s paper is a study of the contemporary remediation of Anna May Wong. She focuses on three media works that re-signify Wong’s performances and performative strategies: Yunah Hong’s Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words (2013), Celine Parreñas Shimizu’s The Fact of Asian Women (2002), and Patty Chang’s two-channel video installation The Product Love (2009). Wang, Yiman. “Star Talk: Anna May Wong’s Scriptural Orientalism and Poly-phonic (Dis-)play.” In The Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema and Linguistic Difference. Edited by Tijana Mamula and Lisa Patti, 297–316. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016b. Wang examines Wong’s film and stage performances and heightened awareness of the “lingua-cultural shuttling between the Sinophone and the Anglo-American spheres” (p. 300). Reading moments of “scriptural orientalism,” Wang demonstrates how the broken linkage between Anna May’s Chinese look and her European “poly-phonic (dis)play” visual-vocal mismatch enabled the star to destroy the orientalism within film scripts. Wang discusses reporters’ orientalist descriptions of Wong’s cosmopolitanism during the transition to sound films. 霞哥傳奇: 跨洋電影與女性先鋒). Hong Wei, S. Louisa. Legend of Esther Eng: Cross-Ocean Filmmaking and Women Pioneers ( Kong: Chung Hwa, 2016. This book covers the history of pioneer women filmmakers from the 1910s to the 1940s and includes stories of four American-born Chinese women in motion pictures: Marion E. Wong, Anna May Wong, Olive Young, and Esther Eng. Race, Gender, Beauty, and Orientalism Wong’s exotic femininity, expressed through the gesture/movement of her Chinese body, her distinct facial expressions, and her fluency in Western languages, makes her an interesting combination of race and gender. Her career fulfilled yet defied the orientalist imagination. Essays in this session discuss fascinations with Wong’s film spectacles and the cultural implications of their reception. Chung 2006 brings in the issue of representation of healthy romances that film companies and censors allowed Anna May Wong and Korean American actor Philip Ahn to portray on screen. Berry 2000 and Cheng 2011 both mention perceptions of Wong’s beauty, while Staszak 2015 discusses the race and beauty issue by comparing Wong to black performer Josephine Baker. Lim 2005, Dominguez Andersen 2013, and Walk 2014 address orientalism in Wong’s European works and how she achieved her success partially by defying self-orientalization. Li 2020 analyzes Wong’s racial/sexual crossing in her roles in Piccadilly and Shanghai Express. Berry, Sarah. Screen Style: Fashion and Femininity in 1930s Hollywood. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. The book is a social history of 1930s film and women’s fashion. Berry particularly examines the ethnic exoticism in 1930s Hollywood. The casting of The Good Earth is mentioned as “one of the most notorious cases of casting discrimination in the 1930s” (p. 111). Cheng, Anne Anlin. “Shine: On Race, Glamour, and the Modern.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 126.4 (2011): 1022–1041. Cheng’s paper challenges the idea as seeing Anna May Wong as an iconic “race beauty” as she was in the early 20th century. She argues that Wong’s glamour is achieved neither through her apparently racialized performances nor through her uncomplicated assumption of female agency but rather through a paradoxical staging and erasure of her own body and skin. Chung, Hye-seung. Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006. Chung’s book mainly focuses on Korean American actor Philip Ahn (1905–1978), who had a coming-of-age background similar to that of Anna May Wong. The author analyzes in particular the political and ideological implications of the first self-representing Asian American romantic couple (Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn) in early sound-era Hollywood in two Paramount B-films, Daughter of Shanghai and King of Chinatown. Dominguez Andersen, Pablo. “‘So Tired of the Parts I Had to Play’: Anna May Wong and German Orientalism in the Weimar Republic.” In Crossing Boundaries: Ethnicity, Race, and National Belonging in a Transnational World. Edited by Brian D. Behnken and Simon Wendt, 261–283. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. Dominguez Andersen’s paper examines Anna May Wong’s fame in Weimar Germany. “Wong was one of the very few markedly nonwhite stars of the cinema of the Weimar Republic. While her exoticism and her exhibited racial otherness were clearly the main currents of her star persona, she simultaneously challenged seemingly stable racial categorizations” (pp. 262–263). Li, Yumin. “Shape Shifters: Racialized and Gendered Crossings in Piccadilly (1929) and Shanghai Express (1932).” Sexualities 23.2 (2020): 170–200. The paper analyzes the crossing of racial and sexual boundaries in two of Wong’s films, Piccadilly (1929) and Shanghai Express (1932), revealing and comparing sets of interrelated socio-racial motifs in narratives, as well as aesthetic tropes in both films. Lim, Shirley Jennifer. “I Protest: Anna May Wong and the Performance of Modernity.” In A Feeling of Belonging: Asian American Women’s Public Culture, 1930–1960. By Shirley Jennifer Lim, 104–175. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Lim explores the historical circumstances that enabled Anna May Wong to portray a Chinese American surgeon in King of Chinatown. She argues Wong’s career in the film industry of the 1930s embodies the possibilities and limits of American-born Asian women’s ability to make important interventions into American cultural production of gendered and racialized images of themselves. Liu, Cynthia W. “When Dragon Ladies Die, Do They Come Back as Butterflies? Re-imagining Anna May Wong.” In Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism. Edited by Darrell Hamamoto and Sandra Liu, 23–39. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. This article examines the influence of Anna May Wong and reads into works inspired by her screen images and life stories. The three works that the author concentrates on include John Yao’s short poem titled “No One Kisses Anna May Wong”; Jessica Hagadorn’s long poem titled “The Death of Anna May Wong”; and David Henry Hwang’s famous play “M. Butterfly,” which was adapted into a film by Hwang himself and directed by David Cronenberg. Staszak, Jean-François. “Performing Race and Gender: The Exoticization of Josephine Baker and Anna May Wong.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 22.5 (2015): 626–643. Staszak compares Afro-American actress Josephine Baker and Chinese American actress Anna May Wong in this paper as two exceptions to the white hegemony of early show business, revealing much that the two performers had in common. Both built their success on (partial) nudity and exoticism, played roles with different ethnic origins—tropical and Asian mostly—and reached star status in Europe rather than their native America. Their transatlantic journeys partially overlapped in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and both reinvented themselves during World War II. Walk, Cynthia. “Anna May Wong and Weimar Cinema: Orientalism in Postcolonial Germany.” In Beyond Alterity: German Encounters with Modern East Asia. Edited by Qinna Shen and Martin Rosenstock, 137–167. New York: Berghahn, 2014. Recognizing Anna May Wong as a rare actress with Chinese (American) heritage, Walk’s chapter investigates her performance as leading actress in four films created for the European market between 1928 and 1930, including three pictures directed by German director Richard Eichberg—Song (1928), Pavement Butterfly (1929), and Hai-Tang (1930)—as well as E. A. Dupont’s film Piccadilly (1929). Walk argues that Wong’s success lies in her embracing and promotion of orientalism as a career strategy, while simultaneously defying stereotypical roles by imaginative performances. Documentary Films with Anna May Wong as a Character Anna May Wong’s legacy as a Chinese actress in Hollywood is presented in the trajectory of Hollywood Chinese in Dong’s documentary (Dong 2007) and in two very informative documentaries devoted to her life stories (Woo 2007, Hong 2013). The paradox about her Chinese American identity and her influence are reflected in Shimizu’s short film (Shimizu 2002) and Wei’s feature documentary (Wei 2014). Although a biopic about Wong is yet to be made, she appeared as a talented actress facing racial discriminations in Netflix’s 2020 miniseries drama Hollywood (Murphy and Brenna 2020). Dong, Arthur, dir. Hollywood Chinese: The Chinese in American Feature Films. Harriman, NY: DeepFocus Productions, 2007. This 89-minute feature documentary was the recipient of the Golden Horse Best Documentary award in 2007. The film traces back the history of important Chinese figures in Hollywood from the silent period to recent years. It includes little-known stories and clips like those in Marion E. Wong’s 1916 film The Curse of Quon Gwon. Anna May is included as the pioneer Chinese actress, whose success inspired many later Chinese American actors. Ericson, Ross. The Unforgettable Anna May Wong. Huddersfield, UK: Red Dragonfly Productions, 2021. Coproduced by Grist to the Mill Productions and performed by Michelle Yim, this show includes songs and film clips to reveal Anna May Wong’s dream, fear, and search for identity. In July 2021, the work was presented at Liverpool Theatre Festival. Hong, Yunah, dir. Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words, 2013. This is a very informative 52-minute documentary that gives voice to Anna May Wong, in her own words—from her writings and interviews, through the enactment of actress Doan Ly. The documentary includes interviews with a Hollywood producer, biographer, and historians on their perspectives on Wong and effectively portrays a witty and talented woman who made her mark in most memorable ways. Murphy, Ryan, and Ian Brenna, prods. and dirs. Hollywood. Los Gatos, CA: Netflix, 2020. This miniseries drama on Netflix includes “Anna May Wong” as a character within a plot clearly sympathetic to Black actors in Hollywood under the Hays Code. Based on real-life events, the drama portrays her as a great actress and recreates her audition for The Good Earth in 1935, and later awards the Wong character for the Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Shimizu, Celine Parreñas, dir. The Fact of Asian Women, 2002. This highly reflective 26-minute film re-examines the stereotypical figures of the “lotus blossom” and “dragon lady” as exemplified by film roles played by Anna May Wong from the 1920s to the 1930s, the “prostitute with a heart of gold” as embodied by Nancy Kwan in the 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong, as well as the more contemporary “dominatrix” imprinted by Lucy Liu. The director invites young contemporary actors of color to perform these roles on the streets of San Francisco and then discuss issues like sexuality and self-formation. Wei, S. Louisa, dir. Golden Gate Girls. Women Make Films, 2014. This 90-minute feature documentary focuses on the life and time of Esther Eng, a third-generation Chinese American woman, who directed five feature films in Hong Kong and another five in the United States. The racial limitations faced by actress Anna May and the gender limitations faced by directory Dorothy Arzner are presented as subplots to contextualize the success of openly gay Eng, who was not only a successful female director but also a film distributor and restaurateur. Woo, Elaine Mae, dir. Anna May Wong, Frosted Yellow Willows: Her Life, Times and Legend, 2007. This 52-minute documentary is narrated by actress Nancy Kwan and reveals the story of the actress with photographs, movie clips, news clippings, and newsreels. Precious materials like the 1956 home video narrated by Wong herself are heard in this film. Creative Works Inspired by Anna May Wong Anna May Wong continues to inspire artists and reincarnate in various cultural, literary, and historical contexts. As a fashion icon, she continues to inspire design work (Groves 2011). As a complex, beautiful, and sophisticated cosmopolitan, her image has been revered in song (Maschwitz 1936), in poems (Mao 2015, Yau 1989, Hagedorn 1971), in a script (Wong 2005), in a children’s book (Yoo and Wang 2009), and in a novel (Koe 2019). Groves, Derham. Anna May Wong’s Lucky Shoes: 1939 Australia through the Eyes of an Art Deco Diva. Ames, IA: Culicidae, 2011. Two-thirds of this interesting book reveals fifty-two students’ design of shoes for Anna May Wong. The images of shoes are often displayed with the photograph of Anna May in her film stills or publicity shots to indicate the source of inspiration. Hagedorn, Jessica. “The Death of Anna May Wong.” In Four Young Women: Poems by Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn, Alice Karle, Barbara Szerlip, and Carol Tinker. Edited by Kenneth Rexroth, 3–43. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. This long poem situated in San Francisco blends images of Anna May Wong, actress-singer Dorothy Lamour, and the narrator’s own mother into an imagined glamorous mother figure adorned with oriental fashion. The rich imagination in this poem attracted lots of attention, and many researchers on Anna May Wong have mentioned this work. Koe, Amanda Lee. Delayed Rays of a Star: A Novel. 1st ed. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2019. This expansive novel is inspired by a photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt at a Berlin soirée in 1928, which captures the first encounter of Anna May Wong, Marlene Dietrich, and Leni Riefenstahl. Koe delineates the paths of these women’s lives and interweaves them with a number of historical figures, including German critic Walter Benjamin who makes himself a pen pal to Anna May Wong after their meeting in 1928. Mao, Sally Wen. “‘Anna May Wong Fans Her Time Machine’; ‘Anna May Wong Blows Out Sixteen Candles’; ‘Anna May Wong Meets Josephine Baker’; ‘Anna May Wong Makes Cameos’; and ‘Anna May Wong Rates the Runway.’” The Missouri Review 38.1 (2015): 83–93. These five poems are written in the first person, lending an imaginative voice to Anna May Wong in describing scenarios in her life. Maschwitz, Eric. “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You).” 78 RPM single. London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1936. English writer and broadcasting executive Eric Maschwitz was romantically linked with Anna May Wong during her stay in London around 1929 and wrote this song after they parted. With music by Jack Strachey, the song was famously sung by Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as Rod Stewart, gaining more popularity since the 1950s, throughout the 1960s, and after 2005. Wong, Elizabeth. China Doll: The Imagined Life of an American Actress. Woodstock, IL: Dramatic Publishing, 2005. This is a script by an award-winning playwright for a stage play inspired by the life of Anna May Wong, from her early entry to Hollywood studios to the end of her life, spanning from the 1920s to the 1960s. The script is written for a performance that runs about ninety minutes, with minimal props, a bare stage, six actors (two women and four men, if all Asian cast) or eight actors (three women and five men, if multiculturally cast). Yau, John. “No One Ever Tried to Kiss Anna May Wong.” In Radiant Silhouette: New & Selected Work, 1974–1988. By John Yau, 187. Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow, 1989. This is a short poem with only two stanza and sixteen lines, but it sketches an imagined silhouette of an Anna May traveling on a train, with her mind disturbed by recognizable plots and scenarios from her films—and most distinctively Shanghai Express (1931). Yoo, Paula, and Lin Wang. Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story. New York: Lee & Low, 2009. This children’s book is written by Paula Yoo and illustrated by Lin Wang, providing a vivid portrait of Anna May Wong’s life and career, her hardships, and triumphs. back to top Copyright © 2022. All rights reserved.