The Observer, April 8, 2005
Volume XXXVII, Issue 24
Anna May Wong remembered after 100 years
Behind the gaze of Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong lies a story that is masked by her beauty.
It is that of racial prejudice legitimized by rules, such as the 1930 Production Code, a Hollywood self-censorship that prohibited Wong from doing love scenes with Caucasian men through its miscegenation rule.
To capture this discord between glamorous Hollywood and the realities minority actors face, New York-based filmmaker Yunah Hong began producing documentaries exposing these obstacles. At her talk on Tuesday at Ford Auditorium, Hong showed a brief clip Dangerous to Know: Anna May Wong.
The event was sponsored by the Center for Women with funds from the Korea Society.
A hundred years after Wong's birth, Asian actors and actresses are still struggling to break into the business.
To examine these difficulties, Hong filmed, Becoming an Actress in New York (2000), a documentary following three Korean- American actresses making a living with an acting career in New York. This film came about during the time Hong's fascination with Wong's role in film began.
"In the film and TV industry there are not enough roles for Asian-American actors, and I have noticed that there are a lot of young actors who are highly trained, graduating from the top acting schools in the United States," Hong said. "I was curious how these young actors are going to deal with this problem we have, and once you have a role, it's pretty much typecasted."
When Hong started researching Wong, who was the first Asian-American to appear on screen, she realized she had found a story to be told.
"I was curious about what she was like as a person because here is this very suave Asian-American woman, and I wondered whether she was the same person as her cinematic images," Hong said.
Wong, who appeared in over 60 films in her career and starred alongside Marlene Dietrich in her Joseph Von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932), was called the "Chinese Flapper."
Despite her success, Wong faced racial prejudice from Hollywood and scorn from her own community, who saw her as a disgraceful Chinese woman.
She first appeared as an extra in Red Lantern, which Hong explained was an "Orientalist film."
"They hired white or occidental actors to wear a technique called 'yellow face' to make them look like they are Asian and exaggerate the features," Hong said. "They always hired Chinese extras to create a more authentic feel to the film."
To this day, Wong is still seen as an icon. With her extensive work both in the U.S. and in Europe, Wong had a much-celebrated international film career.
In honor of the centennial celebration, the National Portrait Gallery in London is currently exhibiting photographs of Wong taken by world-renown photographers, such as Edward Steichen and Carl Van Vechten.
"This is the first time they showed a Chinese-American woman in the history of the gallery," Hong said. "It's quite an honor."
