My investigation on Anna May Wong
My investigation on Anna May Wong
She looks like temptation. Her slim eyebrows, cat eyeliner and the pearls that wrap around her neck in this film photograph all screams the fact that she was a good girl gone bad, and her gorgeous physique comes through her silky long gown. the pleats on the bottom of her gown makes her elongated her wafy figure. She looks like she's smiling and plotting at the same time; you cannot see through her mind; she looks innocent and sophisticated. She is the modern woman with her well polished bob hairstyle, however, she looks more feminie than anyone in the old time, and that is the ultimate hollywood glamour, and it is also the ultra escapism that people would do anything to reach for. She was an ideal, yet the reality is always crueler than this black and white photograph which captured a ravishing moment of this delicate creature. She is Anna May Wong, she is Chinese, and she is an actress.
She is surrounded by this intriguing interior in the photo from the Daughter of the Dragon, which was striking similarities to her life story: not being fully identified as a Chinese and not being fully identified as Western as well.
In 1875, the Page Act was passed, which banned Chinese women from immigrating to the United States, the Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law implemented to prevent all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating. Anna May Wong was born in 1906 as a third-generation Chinese immigrant, whose parents were owner of a laundry shop. She had a similar experience to a lot of other actresses at the time, she was obsessed with films and she dreamt of "making it" in Hollywood. However, she wasn't the same to the other hollywood actresses at the time, and summed it up perfectly, “I’m Chinese by race and I love Chinese people and things. I love our traditions and even our ancient religions. I think there is poetry in our plural gods of the North Wind, West Wind and the like. They are beautiful like the American Indian gods. My only regret is the limitation upon my work, as I can only play oriental roles, or sometimes Indian parts.”
Anna May Wong was portrayed like that beautiful chinoiserie porcelain collection in the finest China cabinet, she is the eastern representative in a mid century upper class household to show off their wealth, just like how she is depicted in this photo, she is surrounded by Chinese inspired atmosphere from the decor to the interior, but she would never be eastern enough for the Chinese people to acknowledge her as a part of them. She is still remembered as the actress who took off her clothes in the Chinese culture even till this day, and people pity her instead of acknowledging her talent and the spotlights she had worked so hard for.
She was undoubtedly a victim of the violent racism of America during the time, but she was also every bit the dramatic screen actress as Garbo and every stitch the style icon of Marlena dietrich. She was one of the first truly modern women in the 20th century, just like what is being depicted in this photo, she looks determined, decided and she knows what she wants. Anna May Wong was one of the most driven, ambitious self-publicists of all time even with all of the chances are stacked against her. She was not only Chinese American, who were largely villianfied in the American culture, she grew up in a traditional Chinese family which her father was frightened by her interest in movies. She moved out of her family's house at the age of 17, which was revolutionary.
She was noticed for her beauty, and in 1922, she played the lead of " The toll of the Sea, " a silent movie that was the first technicolor picture during the time. Young Anna impressed the audience, and it made her a star in the silent movie film industry. During the silent movie era, she played traditional roles which portrayed terribly Chinese stereotypes like the innocent Lotus flower in the Toll of The Sea. However, in real life, she was the quintessential flapper: always showing her legs, dressing in modified menswear, being sexy, drinking champagne in a top hat like Marlena Dietrich, making money as an independent woman, driving cars and wrecking them... Because of her race, she was casted the most bizzare roles, including an inuit in a movie called the Alaskan, or Tiger Lily in Peter Pan. She would play slave girls or Arabic dancers because of Hollywood's confusion on this gorgeous woman. She ended up having to "die" so many times in Hollywood due to the law of California which forbade Asian actresses having love affairs with white male counterparts, therefore most of her roles ended up dying either for love or for justice.
However, she didn't give up her dream of being a movie star. She followed Josephine Baker's footsteps to move to Europe being increasingly disappointed by the limited role she could play in Hollywood, and of course she became a huge hit on the German expressionist cinema landscape.
The move to Europe represent two things in her career: the end of the innocent lotus flower personna, and the beginning of the sound movies. She learned fluent Germany and French after moving to Europe, and for her American accent that was being constantly mocked by the European audience, she spent a fortune on eloquence class, which helped her with this deep slightly British sexy voice she appeared in films.
In 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her the "world's best dressed woman"; in 1938 Look magazine named her the "world's most beautiful Chinese girl." The world is mesmerized by her beauty, girls from London would have her hair cut, which is the one that is being depicted in this photo in " the Daughter of the Dragon" and she became the ultimate mystique figure which everyone was trying to figure out so that they could have a glance at her beauty. It's said that her friend Eric Maschwitz wrote the dreamy lyrics to the pop standard These Foolish Things in Wong's honor. "A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces/An airline ticket to romantic places/ Still my heart has wings/ These foolish things remind me of you. " She also had mesmerized set and costume designer Ali Hubert, and he famously said, " Only a Van Eyck or a Holbein could capture her on canvas."
All her life she loved movies, "We were always thrilled when a motion picture company came down into Chinatown to film scenes for a picture," she recalled in 1926. "I would worm my way through the crowd and get as close to the cameras as I dared. I'd stare and stare at these glamorous individuals, directors, cameramen, assistants, and actors in greasepaint..." "And then I would rush home and do the scenes I had witnessed before a mirror. I would register contempt, shame, reproach, joy, and anger. I would be the pure girl repulsing the evil suitor, the young mother pleading for her baby, the vamp luring her victim." She was that independent woman like the flappers from the 1920s, and she actually did what she wanted to do, which is to quote her, " I am Anna May Wong, I am from Hong Kong, and I am a movie star." If she followed the obstacles that were being stacked against her, she would have married someone when she was 17 follow
ing her parents' will not hers, and she would continue to be a laudrymen's wife in Chinatown Los Angeles . It is highly unfair that she lost out to Luise Rainer (who won an Oscar) when she lobbied for the role of the Chinese peasant in The Good Earth because obviously she was too Chinese to portray a Chinese woman. The salary that she was paid were nowhere near comparable to what her white counterparts or even her Asian male co-stars. For Daughter of the Dragon (1931), which was where this photo was taken, Wong was paid $6,000 compared to Sessue Hayakawa who was paid $10,000 or Warner Oland who made $12,000 for 23 minutes of screen time. The newspapers and film critics in China were also harsh in their criticism of her film roles: that they were shameful, like if she was in a position to pick and choose, and she just chose the ones that had her playing prostitutes and dragon ladies.
As her biographer Graham Russell Gao Hodges puts it, "her movies are almost always a representation of social fears about interracial sex". And when she was asked why she never married in the 1950s, she replied," I have lived too broad a life to accept the Chinese attitude that treats a wife as a chattel, yet I look too different to marry outside that community." Besides, it was against the Californian laws of the time for a Chinese woman to wed a white man. Even at today's America where you can see mixed racial couples everywhere, it is engraved in parts of the society that Asian women can only be either the purest and most innocent Lotus flower who would sacrifice everything for love or the Femme fetale who represent the decadant beauty but deserve to be condemned. I can't exaggerate how many people have called me "the porcelain doll" or that I am too "progressive" for an Asian woman, and by that I do not mean just the toxic "white man masculinity," the Asian community itself did contribute to this polarized depiction on Asian woman: there are the kind of innocent girls you marry and the femme fetale you love but shame at the same time.
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