Anna May Wong: A Look at Her Career As She Graces the New Quarter

This week the U.S. Mint issued the fifth coin in its American Women Quarters Program. The new quarter bears the image of movie star Anna May Wong, making her the first Asian American to be featured on US currency. This honor is just the latest of many firsts for this pioneering actress.

Born in Los Angeles in 1905 to second-generation Chinese American parents, young Anna wasn’t interested in her father’s laundry business but instead was fascinated with the movies. Like her silent movie contemporary Clara Bow, Wong was part of the first generation who grew up wanting to be a movie star. Despite her parents' disapproval she was extremely determined and took advantage of frequent location filming in LA’s Chinatown to become an extra. By 1921, she had dropped out of school to pursue movie roles full-time, and the next year she starred in The Toll of the Sea (1922). This second Technicolor feature film was an adaptation of Madame Butterfly and a big success, with excellent notices and feedback for Wong’s performance. But despite her success, she had difficulty getting roles in Hollywood—finding herself passed over for white actresses appearing in Asian makeup and relegated to supporting roles as exotic or devious other women in pictures such as The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Mr. Wu (1927), Old San Francisco (1927), and Chinatown Charlie (1928).

Frustrated by, and very outspoken about, her limited opportunities in Hollywood she moved to Europe, where she developed her career to become a global star. Leading roles in films shot in France, Germany, and England, such as Piccadilly (1929), led to her own one-woman show in vaudeville, as well as appearances on the London stage and on Broadway in shows such as On the Spot and The Circle of Chalk opposite Laurence Oliver. Although she would occasionally appear in a Hollywood film, such as 1932’s The Shanghai Express, she also made radio appearances and acted in the first television show to star an Asian American actor—1951’s The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong. Meanwhile, she also toured China, worked for Chinese charities, and became an early media superstar with glamor photos featured in magazines all over the world, including a feature on the cover of the second issue of Look Magazine.

Her last major movie role was in 1960’s Portrait in Black starring Lana Turner, and when Wong died the following year at 56 she left a complicated legacy of her frustrations with the restrictions placed upon her. But her talent, great beauty, and activism have transcended those setbacks, assuring her a place in cinema and cultural history. The Library for the Performing Arts has photographs, lobby cards, clippings, theatre programs, biographies, and other materials that cover and inform all aspects of Ms. Wong’s career and life from the 1920s to the 1960s. But she wasn’t entirely alone as an Asian American making inroads in Hollywood.

The Library also has documentation on four of her less-remembered contemporaries: Sessue Hayakawa, Keye Luke, James Wong Howe, and Chai Hong.

Steve Massa looks at the lives and careers of these four contemporaries in a sequel article.