New biography explores how Golden Age actress became a star despite racism
A year before her 1961 demise, film star Anna May Wong joked with a reporter, “My epitaph should be: I died a thousand deaths.” Katie Gee Salisbury’s biography of Wong, “Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong,” shows the near-reality behind her light words. Salisbury’s heavily researched look into this mostly forgotten star is a sad but inspiring look into the history of Asian American cinema.
In standard roles offered to her, the well-read, beautiful and talented Wong portrayed a servant, menial worker or dancer, condemned to die in imaginative ways. Lotus Flower, Wong’s character in her first film, “The Toll of the Sea,” drowns herself after giving up both her white lover and the son they conceived. In “Song,” the actress falls on a sword while dancing on a rotating stage. Wong’s character Shosho, a scullery maid turned dancer, is shot and killed by a lover in the film “Piccadilly.” Often, Wong was barely seen at all, dying in the opening scenes.
Wong had no chance to be a heroine with a happy ending onscreen; an interracial relationship could never be shown positively (and later wasn’t shown at all) because of racism and a miscegenation clause in the Hays Code, a set of guidelines of acceptable content that governed the movie industry at the time. Wong and Asian women like her could only be seen as delicate blossoms, trampled on before tragically expiring, or as a traitorous villain, deserving to have her life cut short.
A method of torture called “death by a thousand cuts” was practiced in China for thousands of years. The victim of this agonizingly slow style of execution was often displayed in public tied to a wooden frame, adding a dimension of humiliation to the punishment. In the 1930s and ’40s, during the so-called Golden Age of movies, Wong and other Asian actors experienced small symbolic cuts. This gilded time didn’t sparkle for actors of color.
Though Hollywood had interest in what it deemed “the Orient,” producers preferred filling Asian roles with actors of European descent, who’d portray the characters in yellowface. Wong, while often outshining those higher billed as she played secondary roles in the same films, would gamely teach the white stars how to hold chopsticks. Her frequent co-star, Warner Oland, was Swedish but spoke in pidgin English for his most famous role, the Chinese detective Charlie Chan, who he played in multiple movies.
A further indignity of Wong’s roles was the skimpy costuming. In “The Thief of Bagdad,” Wong wore little more than a bandeau and short shorts for her outfit as a slave girl. Asked what he thought of that, her conservative father shivered and commented, “It’s cold.” He never watched another of her films.
Wong was well-reviewed by film critics and the recipient of abundant fan letters. She worked hard, turned in good performances even for thankless parts and didn’t cause difficulties on the sets of her pictures. Yet she had to work throughout her life to scrape by financially, receiving far less payment than white actors of similar fame. Oland, who had an ongoing drinking problem, made $20,000 per picture and owned four homes. In Wong’s perhaps best-known film, 1931’s “Shanghai Express,” her co-star Marlene Dietrich insisted on wearing black (a color that didn’t photograph well) and kept a large mirror next to the camera at all times to quickly rectify unflattering angles. The costumes Dietrich’s character wore cost more than $1,600, compared to Wong’s $300 clothing budget. Overall, Wong’s salary for the film was $8,100. Dietrich earned a staggering $78,666.67.
The worst slight occurred when MGM bought the rights to Pearl S. Buck’s 1931 bestseller “The Good Earth.” The story told a sweeping saga of a Chinese farmer, Wang Lung, and his wife, O-lan. Buck stipulated that it had to be filmed in China and suggested casting Chinese actors. Gossip columnists hinted that Wong was being considered. At last, she might have a part worthy of her talents. After a long delay, MGM head Irving Thalberg chose a Polish actor to play Wang Lung, while the part of O-lan went to German-born Luise Rainier. Wong was even passed over for a smaller part as a teahouse girl. Though known worldwide for her beauty and stylish clothing, in the studio’s screen tests, casting directors noted she was “a little disappointing as to looks.”
Despite Hollywood’s mishandling of Wong and her many disappointments, Salisbury doesn’t portray her as a hapless victim. Rather, Wong emerges as an ever-evolving survivor, clever and resourceful, from the beginning to the end of her life. Born in 1905, young Wong helped out in her father’s Los Angeles laundromat like the rest of the family, but living in the city meant film studios surrounded her, and she was crazy about the movies. Wong worked her way up from playing extras to her breakout role in “Thief of Bagdad” with Douglas Fairbanks. In the ‘20s, Wong was a cane-carrying flapper, spouting slang like “It’s the kitty’s whiskers, what?” Later she became a sophisticated fashion plate, while her clothing always had a little touch of China somewhere. Unlike many silent movie stars, she even survived the transition to talkies.
When Hollywood continued to cast her in stereotypical bit parts, Wong traveled to the UK and Germany where she was better received and given more substantial roles. She learned German by studying for six hours a day and took elocution lessons to soften her American accent for the British stage. In her later life, Wong quickly embraced the new medium of television.
Salisbury shows Wong as quietly rebellious, refusing to conform to the expectations of her time. The actress took lovers but never married or had children. Telling her story to the movie magazine Pictures, Wong explained that she had no desire to wed, because Chinese women were considered beneath Chinese men, more the equivalent of a servant. Wong traveled alone and renovated a house, which she named Moongate, to live in by herself.
In her later career, she advocated for movies that showed a balanced picture of Asian Americans, such as “King of Chinatown,” in which Wong portrayed a Chinese surgeon. In London, Wong and Black American actor Paul Robeson became friends, finding that their experiences as people of color in the U.S. had many similarities.
This meticulously researched book is sympathetic toward Wong yet strikes a balance. The author notes Wong’s drinking problem and her snubbing of the people of Hong Kong on a visit.
During her life, Wong desired only to be regarded as a fully fleshed-out human being. In “Not Your China Doll,” Salisbury achieved that. Today, Wong might be inspired by the small gains Asian Americans have made in the entertainment industry, but she might also be frustrated with how the COVID-19 pandemic brought out latent racism again, as hate crimes against Asian Americans increased. Yet, her own star rises. In 2022, Wong was the fifth woman and first Asian American to be featured on an American quarter. She also became a Barbie in 2023; the doll wears a red dragon gown and has Wong’s “signature chic bangs and smoky eye.”
Mattel warns us that the doll cannot stand alone. The real Anna May Wong shouldn’t have had to, but she always could.
Read more of the May 22–28, 2024 issue.