Hollywood’s First Asian American Star Celebrated in L.A. Museum Present

Anna Could Wong — born Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles on Jan. 3, 1905 — is well known as Hollywood’s first Asian American film star.

A yr earlier than she died in 1961 from a coronary heart assault at age 56, she joked that her epitaph must be, “I died a thousand deaths.” Throughout her profession, she’d appeared in additional than 60 movies, TV collection and theatrical reveals, however a lot of her roles had been stereotypical caricatures of Asian ladies as unique temptresses, dragon women and China dolls who inevitably met their doom so the white leads might attain their blissful ending.

Although Wong’s many deaths are nicely documented on movie, her multifaceted life offscreen remained usually unacknowledged till now. For the subsequent seven months, the exhibit Unmasking Anna Could Wong at downtown L.A.’s Chinese language American Museum (CAM) will shine a broader gentle on the actress, philanthropist and socialite, who was recognized variously as “the world’s most stunning Chinese language woman” and “the world’s best-dressed lady.” (In 1938, she auctioned a few of her famed wardrobe to fund medical provides for individuals in China after Japan invaded the nation.)

“She was a very vibrant, alive particular person,” says Katie Gee Salisbury, one of many exhibit curators, who first stumbled upon {a photograph} of Wong again in 2004. As a lady of Chinese language and Anglo-Irish descent who grew up in Southern California, Salisbury was shocked she’d by no means heard of the Chinatown-born Chinese language American actress.

Thus started Salisbury’s 20-year journey studying the whole lot she might about Wong’s life. After in depth analysis, Salisbury observed that in earlier accounts “there was an overemphasis on the extra tragic parts of her profession” — together with Hollywood’s staunch refusal to offer her significant main roles (most notably 1937’s The Good Earth, during which German actress Luise Rainer appeared in yellowface) — in addition to her untimely loss of life.

To Salisbury — who additionally just lately printed a brand new biography of the actress, Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Lifetime of Anna Could Wong — “she definitely had troublesome, darkish moments, however I don’t suppose she was the form of one that would have checked out her life and thought [of it as] a tragedy. I simply can’t see her ever saying that.”

Certainly, the notoriously strong-willed Wong — who cheekily signed her autographs “Orientally yours” — was a lady who discovered success on tv and in Europe when the American movie trade not forged her.

However, says Salisbury, “you’ll be able to’t actually perceive Anna Could Wong until you’ve seen her onscreen.” To that finish, the brand new museum exhibition contains clips of Wong’s performances in such movies as 1924’s The Thief of Bagdad (during which she performed a Mongol slave) and the 1939 crime drama King of Chinatown. It additionally spotlights Wong’s self-produced documentary, My China Movie, during which she documented her first journey to China after being provided yet one more stereotypical minor position subsequent to Rainer in The Good Earth.

“She constructed up a stage of stardom in Hollywood, however Hollywood didn’t know what to do along with her,” David Schwartz, former chief curator on the Museum of the Transferring Picture, has stated.

In CAM’s museum present, private gadgets — corresponding to shows of Wong’s trendy clothes and glimmering jewellery — are on mortgage from Anna Wong, daughter of Anna Could Wong’s youngest brother, Richard.

All through her childhood, Anna Wong’s father was adamant that she hold her aunt’s historical past alive, and he or she took his needs to coronary heart. The exhibit wouldn’t exist in any respect with out her. Again in 2020, when artist Rachel O’Donnell painted a 12-foot-long mural of Anna Could Wong onto a wall on the second flooring of the museum, Anna Wong took one look and fell in love with the work. “I stated to Michael [Truong, CAM’s executive director], ‘You may by no means take this wall down,’ ” she recollects.

Anna Wong, who’s a CAM board member, claims she was joking, however museum workers nonetheless honored her request by constructing the brand new exhibit across the mural, which stays as a central piece within the last room of the present.

Though each Salisbury’s ebook and the exhibit took a number of years to return to life, their fruition was well timed. Inside the previous few years, curiosity within the actress has surged. In 2023, Mattel launched an Anna Could Wong Barbie doll, simply months after she turned the primary Asian American to be immortalized on the U.S. quarter. In Beverly Hills, Crustacean restaurant opened its Anna Could bar a few years again.

And onscreen, each Ryan Murphy and Damien Chazelle included characters impressed by Wong in Hollywood and Babylon, respectively. However Anna Wong desires individuals to know that these variations of her aunt are fictional. Above all, she says, “I need them to know her as an individual.”

This story first appeared within the June 12 problem of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click on right here to subscribe.