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The First Lady of Film: Anna May Wong

Ricepaper
10, no. 1 (2005)

Anthony Chan

Hollywood studio moguls could not ignore her sensual, intelligent allure. China's government both censored and celebrated her films; Europe's high society hailed her as a figure of exotic fashion. In a world where recognition for any actress of colour was rare, Anna May Wong defied racism to become a legend in her own time. This month,
Ricepaper
celebrates the centenary of this pioneer Chinese-American screen siren.

In an age when Hollywood offered only Charlie Chan and Little Lotus Flower roles, a strong willow sprang to life. Her grandfather, Leung Chew Wong, arrived in the United States during the 1850s. Anna May was born in 1905, the second daughter of California-born parents, Sam Sing Wong and Gon Toy Lee, and the second of their seven children. She was given the name Liu Tsong Wong, which means “frosted yellow willow.” Her father ran a laundry outside of central Chinese Los Angeles.

Young Anna May Wong was fascinated with the movie shoots in her neighbourhood. At the age of eleven, Wong began cutting classes so that she could sneak off to the sets of the “moving pictures” that were being filmed on location in Chinese Los Angeles.

Wong later reminisced, “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 who had come down into our section of town to make movies.”

Enter Ms Wong

Wong began with marginal roles in a handful of films, and then in 1922, at the young age of seventeen, she had her first starring role in
The Toll of the Sea
. In this adaptation of Madame Butterfly, Wong played a young Chinese maiden named Lotus Flower who is abandoned by her European-American husband. Many critics responded to Wong's performance with great enthusiasm and praise.

The
New York Times
was laudatory, exclaiming: “Miss Wong stirs in the spectator all the sympathy her part calls for … She makes the deserted little Lotus Flower a genuinely appealing, understandable figure. She should be seen again and often on the screen.”

But this role would come back to haunt Wong, as many Chinese came to perceive her characters as demeaning to China and to Chinese people in general. Some Chinese journalists claimed that Wong “lost face” for China. In fact, when Anna May's half-brother first saw Anna May on film in China, he warned their mother: “Take her out [of the pictures], quick.”

An American Asian in Europe

Undaunted by her critics, she continued her career. German director Richard Eichberg made Wong an un-refusable offer to star in five pictures abroad. In Hollywood, she had no major contracts and no real recognition. She was eager to try her luck elsewhere.

Working in Europe's film industry was challenging. In Eichberg's
The Flame of Love
, Anna May's character, Hai Tang, finds romance with a European. Since miscegenation was frowned upon in the British Empire, the embrace and kiss between an Englishman and
an Asian woman were sacrilegious.

This film was shot in three different language versions: English, German, and French, with three different male leads. When she starred in German films, critics remarked that “her German is too perfect. She must have had a double.” But when they found out that she learned German “studying six hours [a day] for many weeks,” the critics later revised their criticisms.

From 1928 to 1930, Wong was the toast of Europe. In England, Wong starred in the stage production of
The Circle of Chalk
with a young Laurence Olivier and in
Piccadilly
with Gilda Gray and Charles Laughton. In Berlin, she partied with the likes of Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl. With [Wong's] stunning beauty, statuesque figure, and ability to wear the latest fashions with sophistication, grace, and panache, she represented to Europe a new Chinese woman hitherto unseen and unimagined.

European audiences were enchanted with her. Wong entered a stage of success that she had never experienced in America. But more importantly, this time gave her a clarity of purpose and agency that would empower her as she returned to the US to face the continuing burden of race in Hollywood.

Anna Takes on Hollywood

Wong's journey to Europe made her an international star, and Hollywood producers who had previously relegated her to supporting roles began to take notice. Wong returned to the States to her first starring role, in Paramount Picture's arguably racist film,
Daughter of the Dragon
. She played Ling Moy, daughter of the notorious villain Fu Manchu (played by the white actor Warner Oland in “yellowface” makeup, a theatrical device designed to exclude Asian-American performers from playing Asian or Asian-American roles).

The next year Wong was cast in another Paramount feature entitled
Shanghai Express
, a big-budget production directed by the legendary Josef von Sternberg. Many believe that Wong's perfectly nuanced performance as the cool, detached, and heroic former prostitute Hui Fei was her finest role.

But in the minds of Chinese censors,
Shanghai Express
brought disfavour upon China. Its focus on prostitutes in the heart of China angered Chinese nationalists. The film was eventually banned by the Guomindang censors, who ordered that all prints of the film be destroyed.

In 1935, Wong campaigned fiercely for the coveted role of O-lan in Pearl S. Buck's novel set in China,
The Good Earth
. She lost the role to a German actress, Luise Rainer, who would later win an Academy Award for her performance. After seventeen years of acting in films and stage plays, Wong no doubt figured that she could command lead roles that reflected positively on the Chinese people. But yellowface was so ingrained in the Hollywood studio system that Wong had little chance to capture one of the most sought after Asian roles for an Asian-American actress.

A Girl Peers through the Looking Glass

After disappointment over
The Good Earth
, Wong decided to explore her Chinese roots. She had always felt that she was “suspended between two worlds.”

In an interview, she reports that during her visit to China, she would “study the customs and languages of China since they are so strange to me. I shall study the Chinese theatre that I know as casually as you. Then I shall be able to tell whether I am really Anna May Wong or Liu Tsong Wong.”

Before her trip, Wong admitted that her preconceived ideas
about China resembled “a place where the people always sipped tea and philosophized about life.” But once there, she exclaimed that “so many of (my) preconceived ideas have been upset that I feel like a Chinese Alice who has wandered through a very strange looking glass.”

In China, she was a woman who looked Chinese, yet spoke American English and acted like a Westerner. She gave the impression that she was an integral part of Western society even when her roles smacked of blatant racism. In the eyes of the Chinese people especially, she epitomized success in the European American and white world.

The fallout from the Guomindang censorship of
Shanghai Express
four years earlier would now affect Wong. Little did she know that her invitation as the guest of honour at a Guomindang banquet would result in public roasting.

“They made speeches that lasted for four hours, but instead of the usual ‘welcome to our city' speeches, they all took turns berating me for the roles I played. Since I didn't speak Mandarin then, I had to answer in English. I told them that when a person is trying to get established in a profession, she can't choose parts. She has to take what is offered. I said I had come to China to learn and that I hoped I would be able to interpret our country in a better light. It all ended with their apologizing to me!”

Anna for Asia

After her sojourn to China in 1936, Wong's roles became more positive, reflecting her vow only to appear in films with sympathetic portrayals of Asians. She transcended her angst about Hollywood and European-America and gained a new meaning as an enriched human being whose persona was beyond race and ethnicity. Wong
played a variety of positive characters, including several brave and selfless heroines, crime fighters, and a doctor.

As her roles changed, China's role in the world also changed. After the Japanese invaded China in 1937, Hollywood's attitude toward China changed as well. By 1941, China was firmly on the side of the Allied powers against fascism.

In response, she made
Bombs over Burma
and
The Lady from Chungking
. In both films, Wong played a freedom fighter attempting to vanquish Japanese invaders. Although the films were low-budget and certainly not the high points of her career,
Bombs over Burma
and
The Lady from Chungking
provided Wong with the opportunity to express her political sentiments.

In Retrospect

Wong's unparalleled career spanned over forty years, from 1919 to 1961, including more than fifty films and a television series. Wong has always had a place in Asian-America as the first Asian-American female film star. Evolving into a sophisticated and cosmopolitan woman with a self-contained persona and a global perspective who steadfastly refused to be submissive to males or any race or ethnicity, Wong predated the idea of the independent European-American woman of the 1950s. She was the type of woman that twenty-first-century feminists and women of agency and empowerment would have admired. In 1928, she defied Hollywood and dashed off to Europe and its accolades, celebrity, and fame. She returned to Hollywood in 1930 and took Broadway by storm with her portrayal of Minn Lee in
On the Spot
. By the time she signed to portray Madam Liang in
Flower Drum Song
, she had already lived many lives. It was as if her death at fifty-six came not from failing health, but from exhaustion after having lived a full and eventful life in many places and time zones.

This excerpt was selected from the text and references in
Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong, 1905–1961,
Scarecrow Press, 2003. Reprinted with permission from the author
.

       
A
UTHOR
C
OMMENTARY

“Anna May Wong: First Lady of Film” was a synopsis of the 2003 biography
Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905–1961)
. As a piece of nonfiction, it was the first biography of Anna May Wong with a significant Asian-North American sensibility. Wong was a feminist before feminism was in vogue and a sophisticated hipster with an aura of coolness that was revealed in her films, interviews, and attire. The highlight of the journey of
Perpetually Cool
came in June 2014, when Lucy Liu purchased the film rights to the book. She will star as Anna May Wong in this biopic. —
Anthony Chan, 2015

       
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Born and raised in Victoria, BC, Anthony Chan returned to Canada after thirty years in the US with eighteen years at the University of Washington as an associate professor of journalism. Before his academic career, he was an anchor and journalist at HK-TVB, producing fifty documentaries, and a television reporter at CBC Calgary. Chan's independent films include a series on Asian-Americans and the Vietnam War. He has published
Arming the Chinese
(2010),
Gold Mountain
(1983),
Li Ka-shing
(1996), and
Perpetually Cool
(2003).

My Great-Grandfather, the Necromancer

Ricepaper
10, no. 2 (2005)

Ann Marie Fleming

I've been given a mission—to revisit the life of my great-grandfather, Long Tack Sam. If you talk to American magicians, they'll tell you he invented the “goldfish bowl” trick, a feat of great skill and strength. If you talk to people in China, they'll tell you he had many wives, which is not impossible for world-travelling vaudeville performers. There are many stories of who he was and where he came from. Are any of them true?

In all the legends, Long Tack Sam was born in 1885 in a small village in Northern China. According to one tale, his father was a high official at the Imperial Palace. As a boy, my great-grandfather ran away from home after breaking a jade bracelet in the market and encountered a magician's apprentice who introduced him to a new life. In another story, the famous magician Wang came to the village and performed dazzling tricks. Sam begged him to make bread appear because he was so hungry. The magician took him on as his apprentice and trained him in the arts of acrobatics and Chinese necromancy.

In yet another version, Sam was born near Wuqiao, the home of acrobatics in China. He was trained by his cruel older brother (also named Long Tack Sam), and it was the elder and not the younger who was meant to go on to an international career. Sam told people
he escaped from his brother and found his own fortune. Most likely, he was recruited by a circus travelling through China. In any case, it was the younger Sam who went on to fame with the name Long Tack Sam, which is an English approximation of the Shandung family name, L'ung.

Sam was short, stocky, strong, and extremely handsome. He would have been about eight years old when he joined the Tan Kwai troupe, a Chinese circus run by Julian Kwai that had already toured the West. In those days, there were few Chinese acts that toured internationally on the vaudeville circuit. There was an inherent audience of Chinese workers spread all over the world, and among non-Chinese, orientalism was popular. People loved the colours and spectacle of the stage shows, from opera to martial arts to magic.

Friends of his insist that Sam told them he ran away from home and made his way to Shanghai, where he stowed away on a boat to England. This is probably a romantic vision, since it was difficult for Chinese to travel during that period due to barriers like the Chinese Exclusion Act in the United States and the head tax in Canada. It is likely Sam left China with the Tan Kwai troupe, travelling under a special dispensation for performers. The troupe went to San Francisco, toured the United States and Canada, and around 1903 started touring the vaudeville circuits in Europe. By 1908, Long Tack Sam had become the director of the troupe. They were known particularly for their hair tricks, performing feats of strength by hanging things from their long braids, or queue, which was the custom under the Ching dynasty.

While preparing for a performance at the Coliseum in Linz, Austria, Sam went to a haberdashery to buy supplies. He met Leopoldine Roessler, the shop clerk. They had nothing in common:
no language, no culture, but love was a quick teacher. Amazingly, her family agreed to a marriage. Sam traded his Buddhism for Roman Catholicism. Their marriage made the front page of every Austrian newspaper. Yet, on the big day, Sam was late for his own wedding and left early for a show that evening. This set the tone for their life together; the show always came first.

Within a couple of years, Poldi and Sam had two daughters, Mina, my grandmother, and Neesa. In 1911, the Ching dynasty was overthrown, and Sam and his troupe had to cut off their braids, effectively curtailing a large part of their act. But the show must go on.

Economic depression in Europe forced Sam to leave his young family in Linz and lead the troupe on a tour of the States in 1914. Initially, booking agents confused the Tan Kwai troupe with the vaudeville crooner Eva Tanguay, so the troupe changed their name to the Royal Pekinese Troupe. This caused confusion, as they were booked as a dog act! They finally settled on the Long Tack Sam troupe. The group's new act featured a full Chinese variety circus act. They juggled plates, jumped over flying knives, and produced plates of fire and water bowls full of fish.

During World War I, the troupe was caught in the United States, playing big tops, Broadway, and benefits. Sam was unable to return to Europe and his family. During this time, the troupe travelled with other international acts on the circuit. Sam had a heyday picking up the accents of everyone he met. He became a great mimic, incorporating his new skills into his comedy routines. On stage, he flogged the exotic culture of China and the mystery of distant places. Offstage, he adopted a cosmopolitan style and became one of few Asian men to sport tuxedos and fedoras.

After the Great War ended in 1918, Sam returned to Europe, where he made his wife, Poldi, his manager and trained his daughters to be
in his act. He played up their mixture of European and Chinese heritage. The family act had the girls doing everything from contortions to ballet dancing, assisting with magic tricks, and playing the ukulele. They toured with the likes of Laurel and Hardy, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Al Jolson, and Cary Grant.

By the 1920s, Sam had befriended the elite in magic: John Mulholland, Max Malini, and Dai Vernon. He was a member of every vaudeville and magic association: The Society of American Magicians, International Brotherhood of Magicians, Grand Order of Water Rats. He even became a Mason. In 1922, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini asked Sam to join his prestigious magic club. Houdini was impressed with Sam and went as far as to take out a bogus patent on Sam's ancient Chinese needle-swallowing trick. A few magicians at the time were performing this trick, but Houdini successfully prevented anyone but himself from performing it. The Long Tack Sam troupe continued to travel around the world. It wasn't until 1920 that Sam returned to China, where he was already a big star. Sam built theatres in Shanghai, including the Majestic, the Metropole, and the Cathay. These buildings continue to be used today as movie theatres and venues for live performances. Sam also built a home in Shanghai and was reunited with his brother.

During this time, the Japanese invaded China, and fascism was on the rise in Europe. Anti-Asian sentiment was growing in North America. Stagehands were being unionized, and shows were getting more expensive to run. The movies were taking over. The advent of talkies began a new age, which brought about the death of vaudeville. Most vaudeville acts began playing before the films. But Long Tack Sam still had a lot of cachet, and fans flocked to see his full evening shows. Audiences in places like Hawaii greeted him like a king.

According to Gordon Bean, a librarian at the Magic Castle in
Los Angeles, Long Tack Sam was probably one of the first conduits of Western magic to the East, since he toured so consistently. For instance, in 1927, the popular song “The Doll Dance” came out in the States. Within a year, western magicians had incorporated this into an illusion featuring a full-grown woman emerging from a very small dollhouse. Sam was performing this act with his daughter Mina in China the very same year. Alongside them, Neesa was doing traditional Chinese contortions, playing Strauss on the violin while bent over backwards.

By the early 1930s, the Depression in Europe forced the troupe back to America. These were the dustbowl years for the United States, but people still needed popular entertainment. Sam choreographed a show for his other daughter Mina to perform at Sid Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles for the premiere of
Rain
. Mina and Neesa were up for parts in features but were considered “too pretty” to play the Chinese roles in films like
The Good Earth
. Sam forbade his family from taking denigrating roles in movies and made them opt out. Flo Ziegfeld tried to talk Mina into his Follies, but Sam didn't see that as a positive role for Chinese women either. As daughters of Long Tack Sam, the girls had the double burden of being in show business (which was looked down upon by society) and of being Eurasian. In a time when mixed marriage was illegal in the States, Eurasians were considered the children of prostitutes.

In 1932, the family played at Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre before the ominously named William Powell vehicle
One Way Passage
. Sam was signed on with impresarios Marco and Fanchon and joined their tour of the West Coast. Back in Asia, the girls had acquired many admirers on their frequent trips around the world. Sam took his family back to Shanghai, but their world was already splitting apart. Mina left to start her own ballet studio and then went
to help the Red Cross with its efforts in the Japanese war against Manchuria. She began to write a column in
The China Daily News
advocating women's rights through physical exercise. In 1934, she left the troupe permanently to marry my grandfather, Ernest To, who came from a long line of doctors in Hong Kong.

Neesa became the troupe's manager. Sam stayed in Shanghai and ran an ongoing show with more than eighty performers. Neesa later left the show to marry N.C. Yao, a wealthy Shanghai industrialist. For the first time, Sam passed the responsibility for his show on to a nonfamily member, a man named Pang. This effectively marked his retirement.

In 1938, Sam's son, Frank, graduated from school in England. Sam and Poldi travelled to take him back to Linz and Villa Long for the holidays. But Hitler's Germany and Austria invaded Poland, cutting off their path. The family tried to return to England, but they were unable to do so, due to Poldi's nationality. They eventually made their way to Italy, but Mussolini soon joined the Axis powers, thereby forcing the family to take a boat to the United States.

In 1940, Sam was interviewed in
The World
, where he stated his plan to get simple supplies to relatives in Austria. He revealed his intentions to keep his son out of show business and his plans to go back to China. Although he was being feted by the Society of American Magicians for his contribution to magic, he couldn't stay in America since the country wasn't letting in any Chinese. The family returned to Shanghai, and Sam came out of retirement to headline his show again. The Japanese had been invading China for years, but they'd been leaving nationals from other countries alone. As one of the remaining free ports in the world, Shanghai attracted exiles from Russia and Western Europe, especially Jews. But times
turned ugly when the Japanese joined forces with the Germans and bombed Hawaii's Pearl Harbor. Sam's fame and Poldi's Austrian nationality were the only things that saved them from the Japanese internment camps.

The end of the war came, but there was more for the family to endure. With the Communist Revolution in 1949 and the march on Shanghai, a new era was born. All of Sam's properties and theatres were seized. Sam and Poldi returned to New York City, where Sam was given refugee status and American citizenship. The Chinese were allowed to apply for citizenship because of their service to the United States during the war, and Japanese-Americans found themselves in their own internment camps. Poldi was not allowed to apply for refugee status because she was European, even though she had held a Chinese passport for more than forty years. She had to keep going back and forth to Canada to renew her visitor's visa.

Sam and Poldi spent the 1950s based out of the Ruxton Hotel on West 72nd Street in New York City. He worked with emerging magicians and mentored some of America's next big talents, such as Orson Welles. They passed late nights at the hotel, going over the newest close-up magic act from vaudeville's golden days.

Sam spent the last part of his life in great pain due to his acrobatic activities. Unknown to many, he had large [bone] spurs sticking out of his spine. In spite of this, he continued to perform throughout his remaining days. His last performance was at the Roxy Theater, where he served as master of ceremonies for “The China Doll Revue.” Sam performed his famous water bowl trick, where he did a frontward somersault and came up with a bowl full of water. Although many people think this trick originated with Sam, it did not; however, Sam was one of few artists who could perform it. He was seventy-three
years old at this last performance.

As a young girl, all I knew of my great-grandfather was that he was a magician who could make coins appear from behind the ear. What happened to this man throughout his extraordinary life? It has taken me five years of travelling the world, researching magicians, historians, and long-lost relatives to meet my great-grandfather. This man has shown me a sliver of twentieth-century history in a new light. As immigrants of the world, necessity sometimes compels us to move forward without our histories. But we are all part of history; we are all part of a continuum. It is through the details of the lives of our families that we see how we fit into this world, a world combining the magical with the mundane, and suffering and sorrow with the extraordinary and the exciting.

Timeline

1885:
Long Tack Sam is born.

1893:
Sam is recruited by the Tan Kwai troupe.

1903:
Sam and his troupe tour Europe.

1908:
Long Tack Sam becomes director of the Tan Kwai troupe.

1908:
Sam trades in his Buddhism for Catholicism.

1911:
Sam and his troupe have to cut off their braids, curtailing a large part of their act, when the Ching dynasty is overthrown.

1914:
Because of an economic depression in Europe, Sam tours the United States, where he gains popularity.

1914:
During World War I, Sam waits to go back to Europe after the troupe is caught in the US.

1918:
Once the war is over, Sam returns to Europe to make his wife, Poldi, his manager and train his daughters to be in his act.

1920s:
Sam acquires ownership of many theatres in Shanghai.

1920s:
Sam has befriended everyone in magic and has become a member of every vaudeville and magic association.