By Dwight Cleveland
On November 21, 1920, an unknown 15 year-old local Los Angeleña whose father was a launderer, made her film debut in DINTY, released by Associated First National Pictures. In so doing, Anna May Wong became the first Asian American film star. The scenario was by Marian Fairfax.
In 1922, at just 17, she had her first staring role in TOLL OF THE SEA, produced by The Technicolor Motion Picture Company, which would evolve, rather than as a movie studio, into an actual film process utilized later by almost all the major studios.
Ms. Wong went on to initially make 32 films in Hollywood. But, like other non-whites, she became frustrated by the cliché roles offered to her. Off-screen, of course, pretty much anything and everything happened in Hollywood, please see the recent 2022 Damien Chazelle film BABYLON for reference. The Anna May-inspired character, Lady Fay Zhu, is played by Li Jun Li. But on-screen, there was a code that paralleled the social code in America. Miscegenation laws in the United States during the early part of the 20th century precluded mixed-race relationships.
Paul Robeson couldn’t kiss Jean Harlow; Josephine Backer couldn’t be married to Clark Gable, Anna May couldn’t even date Cary Grant – on screen that is. Off screen, Hollywood was known for all sorts of wild behavior, climaxed by the debauchery and intrigue of the unsolved deaths of William Desmond Taylor, Thelma Todd and the infamous Black Dahlia along with the Virginian Rappe affaire. All of this lead directly into the need for a code of conduct on-screen which evolved into the Hays Code of 1934, spearheaded by Will H. Hays. It was instituted and followed from 1934 until 1968.
In 1928, Ms. Wong, not unlike Robeson and Baker, decamped to Europe for a more open playing field. While there, she starred in 7 films in England and Germany.
She was lured back to Hollywood with the prospect of better roles and of course, everyone’s dependence on the soon to be world-dominant U.S. film market. WW1 had decimated the European film business and the approaching WW2 would completely shut it down. Only Leni Riefenstahl reigned there as Adolph Hitler’s premier propagandist (Note: she’s a woman!).
In 1932, Anna May made what is considered her best film, alongside Marlene Dietrich, in SHANGHAI EXPRESS, directed by the Astro-Hungarian master artisan, Josef von Sternberg. In it, she’s cast as a hooker (and spoiler alert, a murderess), not exactly the type of role that inspires women. Her first on-screen kiss was with John Loder in the 1934 film JAVA HEAD.
The role that should have been hers was the lead in the film version of the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Pearl S. Buck, THE GOOD EARTH, but that sadly went to Luise Rainer, who was coming off a strong performance in THE GREAT ZIEGFELD. She would win a Best Actress Academy Award for both films. Once M-G-M boy wonder, Irving Thalberg cast Paul Muni as the male lead, the Hays Code’s anti-miscegenation rule obligated him to cast a white woman in the coveted O-Lan female lead role.
Heartbroken at being only offered a supporting role as a villainous concubine, Anna May shipped off to China to explore her heritage and her father’s indigenous family.
She returned a few years later with a Paramount Pictures contract starting with DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI.
She would go on to make 9 more films followed by a television series and some cameo roles.
