It was recently announced that Anna May Wong, Hollywood’s “first Asian American movie star”, would be the first Asian American to appear on U.S. currency, as part of the U.S. Mint’s American Women Quarters program. Wong started appearing in films over a hundred years ago, and worked primarily in the 1920s and 1930s, most famously alongside Marlene Dietrich in the 1932 film Shanghai Express. Wong was a major proponent of representation in film and played non-stereotypical Asian roles whenever she could. Often, though, she encountered bamboo ceilings and discriminatory attitudes in Hollywood, telling the Los Angeles Times in 1933: ““I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is nearly always the villain of the piece, and so cruel a villain–murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass. We are not like that.”
Unsurprisingly, in an industry where yellowface and whitewashing still occurs, Wong had to contend with those issues regularly as an occupational hazard. The first image that often comes to mind for yellowface is usually Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but one of the great “what-ifs” in movie history is the 1937 film The Good Earth. Based on the fantastic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel written by Pearl S. Buck, the film was nominated for a slew of Oscars, winning Best Cinematography for Karl Freund and for Best Actress for Luise Rainier. The film starred white actors in all of the major roles, with Paul Muni playing the lead Wang Lung and Rainier as his simple but hard-working wife O-Lan, the proverbial “woman standing behind the great man”. Wong famously auditioned for the role of O-Lan but was turned down because the Hays Code anti-miscegenation rules meant that mixed-race marriages couldn’t be shown on screen, even if it were the race of the actors rather than the characters.
There is little doubt that Wong would have been mesmerizing as O-Lan, and one can’t help but think whether that Best Actress Oscar would have gone to Wong instead. Watching the film now, Rainier’s performance seems stiff and wooden, underusing one of the meatiest and most complex Asian American role in the 20th century. Racial background aside, Wong’s talent and subtlety would have brought depth to a character that was rich on the page but had turned out flat on-screen. Wong was eventually offered another role in the film – for the concubine Lotus. While there’s no doubt that she would have elevated the underbaked film character if given the chance, she refused, not wanting to be an actor of Chinese heritage to play “the only unsympathetic character in the picture.”
Actors of color still face challenges today, but the sacrifices and obstacles of trailblazers like Anna May Wong have opened the door for future generations, even if meaningful change wouldn’t occur until decades after Wong’s death. Wong retired at age 37, her promising career being cut short by the circumstances of her time. She was often grossly underpaid, even for her successful films, compared to her white counterparts. It seems appropriate that her countenance will live on in minted memory, whether we’re buying tickets to watch the next Crazy Rich Asians movie or just grabbing some loose change to pay for parking.
