Anna mae wong biography of donald

How does one begin to write about Anna May Wong? She was a laundry man’s daughter who became Hollywood’s first Chinese American actress during the Golden Age and eventually an international star. She is usually written as a tragedy: having had to play stereotypes on screen, being rejected from &#;The Good Earth&#; in favor of a white actress in yellowface who would end up winning an Oscar for the performance, and dying after years of alcoholism. These dim parts of her life overshadow her barrier-breaking accomplishments. In biographies and articles with discrepancies, how much is true?

Katie Gee Salisbury, a Brooklyn-based writer, was first introduced to Anna May Wong in a giant photograph at the Chinese American Museum where Salisbury interned. The picture of Wong in a convertible in a parade was striking. Salisbury asked who the woman in the picture was and was shocked she had never heard of her before. 

Salisbury felt a deep connection with Anna May Wong, who reminded her of her mother and how she grew up in the Montana suburb of Los Angeles. Wong’s family was also from Toisan in southern China, like Salisbury’s family. Salisbury thought she could learn more about her own history through Anna May Wong, who’s been a beacon in her life ever since. This compelled her to write a biography of Wong, “Not Your China Doll,” to depict the wild and glimmering life of the star.

The most surprising discovery that Salisbury found during her research was that Wong had suffered from alcoholism. “Many people had said [Wong] had been an alcoholic at the end of her life,” Salisbury said. Through correspondence between Wong and her friends, Salisbury found that Wong did have a drinking problem in her later life, likely related to depression. 

“She was experiencing a different kind of rejection from Hollywood,” one that “didn’t have to do with her race so much as it did with her age,” Salisbury said.

The other interesting disc

Anna May Wong rose to fame as an actress during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Living from to , when the Chinese Exclusion Act of and its extensions were enforced, Wong grappled with racism that limited her opportunities. Nevertheless, over the span of her career, she acted in over 60 productions and marked many firsts for Asian Americans.

“As Hollywood’s first Chinese American movie star, Anna May Wong faced more challenges than most actresses of her era,” says Katie Gee Salisbury, the author of Anna May Wong’s biography Not Your China Doll. “In spite of the racism she experienced—studios balked at casting her in leading roles and often relegated her to China doll or dragon lady stereotypes—Wong persisted and even thrived, working in silent films, talkies, radio, theater, and television across four decades.” 

As a result of her artistic achievements and philanthropic efforts, Anna May Wong became the first Asian American to be memorialized on American currency in when the U.S. Mint released quarters bearing her likeness as part of the American Women Quarters program. Below are 13 facts about her life, career and legacy.

1. She was a third-generation American.

While Anna May Wong was of Chinese descent, she was born and raised in the United States and was considered a third generation American. She was born Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles on January 3, She was given the name “Anna” by the family’s American doctor at birth. She later added "May" to her name and made “Anna May” her stage name as a teenager.

She was the second of seven children of her parents Sam Sing and Gon Toy Lee, who were both California natives. The couple owned and operated a laundry business near Chinatown in Los Angeles, where Wong and her siblings also worked alongside their parents.

2. She experienced racism in school.

Wong and her siblings initially attended a predominantly white public school in California and experienced racism and hostility from her classmates. She recalls

American actress (–)

For the Canadian artist, see Anna Wong (artist).

In this Chinese name, the family name is Wong.

Wong Liu Tsong (January 3, - February 3, ), known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.

Born in Los Angeles to second-generation Taishanese Chinese American parents, Wong became engrossed in films and decided at the age of 11 that she would become an actress. Her first role was as an extra in the movie The Red Lantern (). During the silent film era, she acted in The Toll of the Sea (), one of the first films made in color, and in Douglas Fairbanks' The Thief of Bagdad (). Wong became a fashion icon and had achieved international stardom in Wong had been one of the first to embrace the flapper look. In , the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her the "world's best dressed woman." In the s and s, Wong was acclaimed as one of the top fashion icons.

Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles she reluctantly played in Hollywood, Wong left for Europe in March , where she starred in several notable plays and films, among them Piccadilly (). She spent the first half of the s traveling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work. Wong was featured in films of the early sound era, and went on to appear in Daughter of the Dragon (), with Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (), Java Head (), and Daughter of Shanghai ().

In , Wong was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role of the Chinese character O-Lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. MGM instead cast Luise Rainer

Anna May Wong was Hollywood’s first Chinese-American star, a gifted actor who refused to allow racism and sexism to stymie her career. She was one of the silent era’s most popular celebrities, but was often cast in demeaning roles: women who were minxy and exotic, or doomed, sly and treacherous. Wong was gorgeous, willowy and insouciant (in terms of body type and attitude, Wong’s modern-day equivalent would be Zendaya). But Hollywood’s studio heads were “blinded by their own prejudice”, says Katie Gee Salisbury, the author of a new biography of the star. The book details how Wong set off for Berlin, and later London, in search of more nuanced roles.

The gamble paid off. The European films Wong made in the late Twenties – Song, Pavement Butterfly and Piccadilly – are politically provocative and beautifully lit, all of them place her centre stage. In close-up shots, her frequently anguished eyes resemble melting scoops of ice cream. Hollywood, by now making talkies, got the message. Upon her return to the US, she was offered (if only grudgingly) better parts. In the classic Shanghai Express, Wong is a sardonic and fearless sex worker who enjoys the company of a libidinous gal pal, played by Marlene Dietrich. The pair’s chemistry is the stuff of legend.

But a supposed affair between them, Salisbury says, is just one of the narratives surrounding Wong that she wanted her biography – titled Not Your China Doll – to challenge. Video-calling from her apartment in Brooklyn, New York, Salisbury tells me that the many biographies of the star already in existence fail to capture the real Wong. For starters, they were all written by men, and they all push a theory “that, to me, sounds more like male fantasy than the truth”, Salisbury says.

It gives her no joy to put the record, ahem, straight when it comes to Wong’s sexuality. “I think it’s amazing how she