Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend

by Graham Russell Gao Hodges

Anna May Wong was perhaps the best known Chinese American actresses during Hollywood's golden age, a free spirit and embodiment of the flapper era much like Louise Brooks. She starred in over fifty movies between 1919 and 1960, sharing the screen with such luminaries as Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Marlene Dietrich. Born in Los Angeles in 1905, Wong was the second daughter of six children born to a laundryman and his wife. Obsessed with film at a young age, she managed to secure a small part in a 1919 drama about the Boxer Rebellion. Her most famous film roles were in The Thief of Baghdad, Old San Francisco, and Shanghai Express opposite Dietrich. Despite these successes, instances of overt racism plagued Wong's career. When it came time to make a film version of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, she was passed over for the Austrian-born actress, Luise Rainer. In a narrative that recalls both the gritty life in Los Angeles's working-class Chinese neighborhoods and the glamour of Hollywood at its peak, Graham Hodges recounts the life of this elegant, beautiful, and underappreciated screen legend.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Film, Biography Memoir, Media Tie In, China

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 2004

About the author

Graham Russell Gao Hodges is the George Dorland Langdon Jr. Professor of History and Africana & Latin American Studies at Colgate University.

Reviews

[Jun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love Anna May, but this book is a kind of downward spiral of the inevitable decline of old Hollywood movie stars that left me kind of depressed. She was Chinese American, who through talent, looks, and hard work, ended up becoming a glamorous and famous movie star--these two things were a volatile and unrecommended mix during the racist heyday of "yellow peril" Hollywood orientalism. So she ended up, admittedly like many stars that bridged the silent and sound eras, an alcoholic who saw all the work dry up in her later years because she had both age and race working against her. She died of alcoholism induced liver disease in her 50s. It's sad. And it is suggested in the book that she died of heartbreak--both from the racism of the industry that refused her roles in favor of white actresses in yellowface, and also by the devil-may-care, white, older men who took advantage of her "adventuresome spirit" and the fact that interracial marriage during the 1930s would cost her her career. Damn, that's haunting. The book itself is pretty good, fairly well written and well researched, but I would have wanted a bit more analysis and introspection--perhaps that is where "history" and "cultural studies" diverge. Someone needs to make a major motion picture about Anna May--it may already be happening. There is so much here--parties, exotic sets, sex, drugs, Walter Benjamin! Berlin, London, Paris, and Shanghai. But since we are still suffering from the same shit--Asian American actresses in major ghettoes--I don't know if it will ever be--unless it is a Chinese production. Ang Lee? But the conservative Chinese government notoriously hated Anna May--what a shame.

[Creolecat · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few years ago I watched a film on the life of Anna May Wong with an actor portrayal. And even though I do not like reenactments, the actress did a fine job conveying Ms. Wong’s words, and I learned more about the star than I did reading this book. The editing errors were a little frustrating and there was quite a bit of repetitious information. I can understand the author’s enthusiasm for his subject, but he jumped around too much and spent too much time on unnecessary items. Also, there’s quite a few ignorant statements throughout the book.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed learning about Anna May Wong's life and her resilience at a time where she really had to fight for everything in Hollywood. I recommend watching her films and also putting the upcoming book The Brightest Star by Gail Tsukiyama on your reading list to complete your knowledge of this amazing woman.

[Jimmy Yanes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a lot and appreciated the information. However, it felt like I was reading about Anna May from a researchers point of view. It felt a bit too cold and distant at times.

I wanted to get a bit more insight into who Anna was and not just what she accomplished. There was a lot I wanted to learn about the complex relationships with her family and romantic relationships, but those dynamics aren't explored.

It was quite an enjoyable read but more as a history lesson about China, Hollywood, and life in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s with Anna May as the tour guide.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was glad to have been able to find out a little more about Anna May Wong, one of the first Asian actors, certainly the first Chinese-American actor, to have become a star in Hollywood. The question I had after reading the book was: would an Anna May Wong achieve greater success and encounter less prejudice in today's Hollywood?

[Ke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book helpful because it provided context to Anna May Wong's life and career.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

love this quote: "A tree with a bent body, a woman with a twisted soul, may love more nobly than others who are physically and morally more fortunate" -Anna May Wong- p. 135

[Allyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you #goodreadsgiveaway for the book

I won this book from Good Reads and it was Ella’s turn to pick from my shelf a book for me to read. This was her pick. Not anything I would ever pick up, but I did learn some new things. What was most interesting was the fact I am teaching a unit on American Voices and American identity and this fit in so well with what I was teaching. So that was super cool. But overall, it was sort of boring to read, it took me a month to read it all the way through. Probably not a fair assessment, as this isn’t my genre whatsoever, but it really just read as a commentary of facts.

[NellyBells · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was surprised to see that the author has a chair at Colgate; the writing is not very good. I never saw an Anna May Wong movie but her name was in my brain as a movie goddess of the 30s. What Graham Hodges wrote about the Chinese in America at this time was interesting. Wong was sexualized to the exclusion of acting talent. Tired of overt racism and being typecast she went to Germany in the early and mid-30s and had international success. Back and forth, the US and Europe. I read this fast, skimming sometimes.

[Raz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Anna May Wong was such a fascinating person with a unique story in Hollywood, which makes it so much more disappointing that this book is so deathly boring.

I have read Wikipedia entries with more life; it's just endless blocks of dry text, the writer doesn't really inject any personality or energy into it and he describes the plot of every one of her films in excruciating detail. I honestly just skimmed the last 40 pages or so, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless you're having trouble falling asleep on public transport.

[Ostap Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anna May Wong? Try Anna May Goddess. What a fantastic and informative read this was, about an actress I really admire. She was a pioneer, and I had no idea just how much unfairness she faced. There was the racist backdrop of course, which was particularly bad against Chinese-Americans from roughly 1870 to 1940, and author Graham Hodges provides excellent context with the laws and attitudes of the times. In Hollywood there were limits on roles she could play, and she was often confined to stereotypes, not allowed to kiss a white actor onscreen, and almost always needing to die at the end, which Hodges shows us again and again as he marches through her filmography. Her ironic and casual comment about it was that her epitaph should read “She died a thousand deaths,” but she internalized her disappointments.

Because Hollywood was producing movies that contained overt or subtle racism against Asians, and often had white actors in ‘yellow-face’ playing them, Wong also faced a lot of scorn and backlash from China, and with overseas Chinese intellectuals. She was also Cantonese, which was a negative with the Nationalist Chinese government, and they were also shocked and critical of her outward displays of sexuality, her flapper lifestyle, and how much skin she showed. Early on, her father also thought she was ‘disgracing the family’, and pushed her to get married. She faced a triple whammy of racism, sexism, and cultural conservatism. Wong rejected Rudyard Kipling’s line, oft-quoted in movies of the day about the dangers of racial mixing and miscegenation, that “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” and herself drew the best from both worlds, but was judged harshly in both.

It’s all a bit heartbreaking to read, because she carried herself with such dignity and grace, often incorporated subtle elements of Chinese culture into her films, and always fought for better parts and better movies. She was cheerful, charming, and endearing, both publically and privately. She spent years in Berlin and London, and travelled all over Europe, learning multiple languages and moving in elite circles. She was fashionable, cosmopolitan, and sophisticated, and yet pragmatic and self-effacing. She was a third generation American, and one of the great events of her life was returning to her ancestral home in China in 1936, despite the criticism and in one case, getting rocks thrown at her.

Anna May Wong’s biggest disappointment of her professional life was when the lead roles for the film version of Pearl Buck’s ‘The Good Earth’ were given to white actors, as casting director Albert Lewin argued that “despite their ethnicity, they [Asian-American actors] did not fit his conception of what Chinese people looked like.” Good Lord. And so, despite frequently garnering rave reviews from critics in America and Europe, she was never quite able to take the next step into being a superstar.

Hodges does a good job with taking us through her life, in chapters that align well to its phases. It was fascinating to me that she had fallen in love with movies at an early age, playing hooky to go the cinema, hanging around film shoots at age 9, and, showing her persistence early on, getting her first uncredited part at age 14. As her career developed she played many small roles, servants, mistresses, and prostitutes, but she put effort into learning aspects of even the smallest roles before performing, and made the most of them. She broke through in the ‘The Toll of the Sea’ (1922) at age 17, and then later in ‘The Thief of Bagdad’ (1924). She played with major stars and stood up well to them, e.g. with Marlene Dietrich in ‘Shanghai Express’ (1932). I love how Hodges lists her entire body of work in the appendices, and it gave me plenty of films to explore.

He also covers her personal life in respectful ways that are honest, and not sensationalistic. Anna May Wong was sexually free and had affairs with several white Hollywood directors, Tod Browning among them, and the ‘love of her life’, Eric Maschwitz. She also may have had a dalliance with Marlene Dietrich, and as Hodges puts it “if anything, the tryst demonstrates Anna May’s adventurous character and willingness to cross boundaries.” She was athletic; swimming, skiing, riding horses, and playing tennis. She loved carousing, and often returned from nights out at 7 a.m. Unfortunately, she drank too much, and starting at the age of 43 would have liver trouble, leading to a tragically early demise at 56.

Whew. Someone really should make a movie about this woman.

Hodges’ book is meticulously researched and very well annotated, and it’s clear a great deal of effort went into it. The photographs included are wonderful, and it would have been nice to see a lot more, particularly as others are alluded to regularly in the text. He also could have done with better editing; there are places with repetition and a level of detail which could have been excised. With that said, you can see how inspiring his subject was to me, and I really appreciated how much information he gathered about her, and from such a wide range of sources. Not my usual type of read, but maybe it ought to be.

[Liz Fedor · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5. It took me quite a while to finish this book. There were parts that were interesting but there were boring parts as well. I’ve watched a couple of her movies and enjoyed them. Too bad she never had the opportunity to show what a good actress she was by playing more substantial roles.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anna May Wong:  From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend.  Graham Russell Gao Hodges.  Chicago Review Press, 2023.  304 pages.  Updated 2nd edition, first published in 2004.


Between 1919 and 1960, Anna May Wong appeared in over 50 movies, and she was one of the biggest celebrities in the world.  American, European, and Asian movie magazines constantly published photos of her, stories about her, and stories written by her.   She socialized with other A-list celebrities and with European royalty.  She was recognized as an excellent actress, but she was also a stage and nightclub star, as an actress, singer, and monologist, often performing in multiple languages.  She was incredibly talented at presenting herself, thoughtfully using her own hairstyles and wardrobe to develop fuller characters and to advance the film plots.  During the Sino-Japanese War and World War II, she contributed most of her income and much of her time to raising funds for aid to Chinese civilians and refugees.  She invested wisely and made a comfortable living, enough for herself and to educate her siblings.  She was one of Hollywood's brightest stars --- quite an accomplishment for the daughter of a laundryman born in Los Angeles in 1905 who made her on-screen debut at 14.


Yet, few people know her name today, and far fewer have ever seen one of her films.  Her career and legacy were handicapped from the beginning by outside forces over which she had no control.  Strict movie codes of the day forbade any hint of romance between characters or actors of different races, so she was not considered for leading roles.  Her roles were often stereotypical, reflecting American racism. She played the devious Chinese female, almost always a villain or a servant, and almost always forced to kill herself in the end. Hollywood refused to hire Asian actors, casting white actors in "yellow-face," instead.  While she had many adoring fans in China, the Nationalist government condemned her because she embraced being a flapper, bared her legs and arms in films and photos, and she often played prostitutes or slave girls.  She was accused of shaming the Chinese people and their culture.  Wong was a very complicated and interesting character, and there has been a bit of resurgence in curiosity about her in recent years, with new biographies, documentaries, and even a Wong Barbie and U.S. quarters.  This bio was ahead of the curve, however, and this new, updated edition is a thorough look at her life and career, although it's a bit dry.

[rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/3

[B Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is currently the best biography on Anna May Wong

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

This read to me like a thesis and not quite a biography. I personally don’t like the author’s style (too many of his own opinions), but it offered good insight into a complex and challenging life.

[Vladimir Zivkovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed this book and it revealed a lot of interesting things about her, her family, her growth, and the hopefulness she had inside. It’s a must-read book!

[Jim Dooley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a difficult review. The content of the book is quite good ... well worth the time investment for the person who is curious to learn more about Anna May Wong. Also, the writer has studied Chinese culture and traditions that were typical during her lifetime, so there are more insights into the societal influences and the power of their impact.

My difficulty comes with the writing style which is not inspired or intriguing. There is frequent speculation as to how Anna May Wong likely felt without documentation, there are frequent repetitions of points already made as if the document had not been reread for editing purposes, and there are seeming inconsistencies of perspective.

Let me give an illustration of what I mean by that last point. The writer makes frequent reference to the Western perception of Orientalism. This was an inaccurate view, not unlike foreign perceptions in the 30’s and 40’s that most people from Chicago were gangsters. The book repeatedly mentions how Anna May ... and many Chinese ... were disturbed by the unflattering portrait of the Chinese people shown in American films. (Anna May Wong was in her share of these.) The writer “calls out” shows that were particularly egregious ... then withholds criticism about one of Anna May’s most successful films, DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, in which she plays the vengeance-filled daughter of Fu Manchu!

There are still many “gaps” in the details of her life and a great deal of speculation (especially regarding her sex life since she never married and was seen in the company of some famous “notorious” folks). The Reader will not find definitive answers here due to the paucity of information and the lack of cooperation from the direct surviving family member. Even so, this book is meticulously researched and provides excellent insight into her life that will certainly enhance my viewing of her films.

It is difficult to imagine the mental adversity that she had to survive. Being born in America, she was seen as being an undesirable foreigner, and she was subject to many restrictive laws and mandates. In China, she was seen as unworthy and unpatriotic because she did not speak Mandarin (although she latter learned a conversational version) and her films portrayed an undesirable stereotype of Chinese life. She was also turned down for some film roles because she didn’t conform to what the studios saw as “Chinese.” All of these things took their toll.

My own perception of Anna May Wong had come from her performances in film. Some roles were exceptional such as in PICCADILLY. However, even in very minor roles that I’ve seen (especially playing servants), she never simply “walked through” a performance. She took the time to find some characteristics that made her performance stand out. Unlike Louise Brooks and Clara Bow who gave honest reactions onscreen, Anna May had obviously studied the heart of her character closely before the cameras rolled.

So, although I have concerns, I must also recommend this book for anyone with a serious interest in learning more about Anna May Wong. She was fascinating.

[Lauren Alwan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t be misled by the tabloid nature of the title. Hodges’ biography is a meticulously researched and carefully constructed account of one of early cinema’s most notable icons. You could be forgiven for not knowing the work of Anna May Wong, as nearly half of the sixty-one films she made were silent, and those that followed in the sound era were uneven—though as an actress, she never was. She was the first internationally acclaimed Asian American film star, and her career spanned decades, from 1919 to 1961. Sadly, many of her films have been lost, but it’s likely you’ve seen her photographs, the gorgeous black and white portraits by Van Vechten, Steichen, or Hurrell, and any number of artists who photographed her in the twenties, thirties and forties.

Perhaps because of her strong screen presence, and an artistic range that ran from sultry to tragic, rumors about her private life were constant. She never married, due to the feeling of being caught between two worlds—sure that a traditional Chinese marriage could never work due to her unconventional life, while anti-miscegenation laws and social stigma at the time prevented her from marrying someone outside her race. That led to lore like the still-persistent one of an affair with Marlene Dietrich. On that, Hodges’ careful research, here in regard to work on Shanghai Express with Marlene Dietrich in 1932, gives as clear a picture as any: “In Hollywood, gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper operated out of restaurants opposite the major studios and effectively policed the movie community. Both columnists liked Anna May and gave her appreciative publicity; both had spies everywhere to dig up any clue of gay activity. Lesbian chic, so popular in the 1920s, was now going underground in the newly conservative era. Anna May especially had to be completely above suspicion. Nonetheless, her scenes with Dietrich offered coded signals to gay people about her own sexuality. Gay love among actresses of this era was hardly news, and if Anna May and Dietrich did have an affair, it would offer yet another example of Anna May’s courage in crossing boundaries.”

Read the rest of the review at LitStack, http://litstack.com/litstack-recs-ann...

[Madeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anna May Wong was a really interesting figure in early Hollywood, and her legacy is complicated. Unfortunately, Hodges' biography doesn't grasp a lot of the complexity. He's best when talking about race in the early twentieth century, and weakest when talking about personalities. A biography should probably be the other way around. A lot of the time it reads like a first draft rather than a final one, and sometimes it seems like Hodges didn't even watch the rarer movies. He very rarely quotes from primary sources, although he does summarize them very well.

It's still worth it for a basic outline of Wong's life, especially if you're unfamiliar with the specifics. Hopefully, she'll get a better biography in a few years. I'd recommend getting it from the library instead of buying it.

[Emil · Rating 3 out of 5]

This biography of Anna May Wong attempts to recuperate her image as a movie icon, which was tarnished by the relative obscurity of many of her films and the stock victim and villain roles she often played. It is well-researched and detailed even to the level of many of her television appearances. It offers a broad view of the differing interpretations of Anna May Wong, as the first commercially successful Asian-American actress, as a victim of the racism inherent in the American and European film markets, later as a victim of the criticism of Chinese film scholars, and later her reinvention as a gay screen idol.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book discusses Anna May's career and her life from beginning to end; the first Chinese-American movie star. I was expecting more from this book. My issues with the book have to do with the author writing about how he assumes this and assumes that about her life, but I can understand that it's difficult to write about someone with very little documented information. I prefer anecdotes and there weren't many of those.

[Sharon Beck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting look at the actress Anna May Wong. Meticulously researched, the author occasionally digresses on who's who in Hollywood and their backstory. This was still a solid read and I gained a new appreciation for Ms Wong, the challenges she faced, and her body of work.

[Brittani Z · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this bio. Anna May Wong was an amazing and very underrated actress. I love reading the story and getting to know her better. Highly recommend to any old Hollywood or Asian cinema fans.

[Luis Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is good there exists a comprehensive biography of the Anna May Wong. This is a very good read, even though the style is a bit stilted. Nevertheless, I recommend it.