I was killed in virtually every film': how trailblazing Chinese-American star Anna May Wong upended cinema

"Wong was born in Los Angeles to second-generation Chinese parents in 1905. At the very beginning of her film career in 1921, she self-consciously told a movie magazine that she was a considerable spot of yellow that's come to stay on the silver of the screen, announcing her difference as a rare Asian-American leading lady and her determination to become a star in the same breath."

"I was killed in virtually every picture I appeared in. Pathetic dying seemed to be the best thing I did, she said. She never got the career she deserved, banned from playing romantic leading roles where she would kiss a white co-star, and passed over for Chinese roles in favour of white actors in yellowface. She was forced to reinvent herself at different points of her career, says season curator Xin Peng, assistant professor in film and screen studies at the University of Cambridge."

"Anna May Wong is everywhere these days. The chic Chinese-American actor who first made a splash in the silent era has been fictionalised in films and TV shows, including Ryan Murphy's Hollywood and Damien Chazelle's Babylon, and an excellent novel, Amanda Lee Koe's Delayed Rays of a Star. She has her face on the quarter, the first Asian-American to be honoured in that way, and she is the subject of a page-turner of a biography, Not Your China Doll by Katie Gee Salisbury."

Anna May Wong, born in Los Angeles in 1905 to second-generation Chinese parents, became a prominent Chinese-American film star beginning in 1921. She declared herself a visible Asian presence on screen and pursued stardom despite pervasive racial barriers. Typecasting relegated her to dying roles and barred her from romantic parts with white co-stars, while white actors often took Chinese roles in yellowface. Wong repeatedly reinvented her career, from a 1922 Technicolor lead in The Toll of the Sea to later appearances, and later received renewed recognition through portrayals, a biography, a novel, a commemorative quarter, and a BFI retrospective.

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