Anna May Wong: A Celestial Star in Piccadilly

Anna Chen has written and narrated a wonderfully moving tribute to the Chinese-American actress, Anna May Wong, for Radio 4 and I would urge comrades to listen to it. She gives a fascinating insight to the rebellious and strong willed Anna May who defied racism to carve out a career in early Hollywood.

Anna gives a political and historical analysis of what it was like for Chinese people living in the States who were viewed as ‘aliens’ and ‘non-people’, constantly demonised. Anna May recounted the racism and hostility she faced when she said that it was like a knife stab that left a ’scar on her heart’.

Anna May Wong starred in 50 films during the 20s and 30s yet she couldn’t go beyond playing stereotypes where a pattern started to emerge. Prostitute, slave, mistress, prostitute, prostitute….and so on. These roles reflected the sexist and racist western interpretations of the time. The Chinese woman luring the white man with her ‘exoticism’ and ‘otherness’. Anna May Wong died in her films and again this shows the necessity to punish the non-white woman.

The Hollywood system kept Anna May Wong firmly in her place. She left for Britain in the late 1920s where she made the silent film noir, Piccadilly, directed by EA Dupont. Anna deconstructs the politics of the film which reflects the dominant power structures in society. Though for the first time the film shows a Chinese woman using her sexual power over her white lover. The film is decribed as a sexually driven melodrama. But as Anna points out, it doesn’t bode well for Anna May.

And for the first time the audience would see Anna May kiss her white leading man (something which never happened in the States) but it was censored at the last minute. So much for ‘tolerant’ Europe!

Anna May Wong’s portrayal of Shosho was a success. She later went back to the States. In 1931, Pearl Buck wrote The Good Earth about Chinese farmers at the start of the century. It was turned into a film. You would expect the most famous Chinese actress to get the role of O-Lan…. No, the part went to the white actress Luise Rainer. In other words, white actors in yellow face!

Anna May Wong died at the age of 56 in 1961. Her films into obscurity and the woman rendered invisible. And it is a programme like Anna’s that brings Anna May back into the light and visible again. It gives an invaluable testimony to a life of a woman who was denied chances because of her race but it also exposes a courageous fighting spirit in Anna May Wong.