Anna May Wong

Anna May Wong (English: Anna May Wong, January 3, 1905 - February 2, 1961), also known as Anna May Wong, was the first Chinese-American Hollywood movie star and the first Asian-American actress to gain international fame. Her career was long and varied, spanning silent films, talkies, television dramas, stage plays and radio plays. Occupying a spot on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she is one of the five Chinese besides Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Lucky Lu, and Lucy Liu. She is also the first Chinese actress to have a star in Hollywood. Her location is at 1708 Vine Street. Born near Chinatown in Los Angeles, Anna May Wong is a third-generation local Chinese-American and her ancestral home is Taishan, Guangdong. Her grandparents had already come to California to prospect for gold in 1855. Her parents were both Chinese-born and raised in the United States. Her father, Wong Sam Sing, and her mother, Wong Lee, ran a laundromat near Chinatown. Wong Liu Shuang is the second among eight children in her family. She was just an unknown little actress in the 1919 "Red Light". She first appeared in the credits in 1921's Life. In 1922, she became an instant hit with "Death of the Sea," the first film shot with Technicolor technology. Her subsequent masterpieces include "Chinatown" in 1929, "Shanghai Express" opposite Marlena Dietrich, "Daughter of Shanghai" in 1937 and "Chongqing Heroes" in 1942, which shocked the Europeans, and "The Dragon Girl" in 1931. In 1935, when Sydney Franklin started filming "The Good Earth", MGM rejected Anna May Wong as the heroine and instead asked German actress Louise Rainer to play the yellow-skinned role, much to her disappointment. The following year, she traveled to China and visited her father in her hometown, where she learned Chinese language and culture, and even studied Peking Opera with Mei Lanfang. In the late 1930s, she returned to the United States to play positive characters in Paramount Pictures' B-movies. In "Shanghai Daughters" and "Chongqing Heroes" (1942), she played a truly wise and resourceful heroine and a woman full of patriotic integrity respectively. During the Second World War, she faded out of the film and television industry and focused on supporting China's Anti-Japanese War.