Anna May Wong: International Star, Forgotten Icon

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​Ambitious, resilient, and internationally famous, Anna May Wong was one of the biggest movie stars of the 1930s. She had her first starring role in Hollywood before she was 20. She had also left Hollywood twice by the time she was 30, frustrated by the racism she faced as a Chinese-American woman. Throughout her career, she had to fight racism and censorship rules to get leading roles. But she also made international headlines for her performances on stage and screen. Though comparatively obscure today, Anna May Wong was a celebrity and style icon in a time when the options for women’s roles were being redefined in art and life.

​Host: Lucy

Further Reading

Emily Carman, Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System, University of Texas Press, (2016).

Anthony B. Chan, Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905-1961), Scarecrow Press, (2003).

Nicole Chung, “The Search for Madame Liu-Tsong,” Vulture, (2019).

Erica Gonzales, “Hollywood Tries to Right Anna May Wong’s Story: Here’s What Really Happened,” Harper's Bazaar, (2020).

Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend, Palgrave Macmillan, (2004).

Yunah Hong, dir., “Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words," documentary, (2013).

Karen J. Leong, The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong, and the Transformation of American Orientalism, University of California Press, (2005).

Shirley Jennifer Lim, Anna May Wong: Performing the Modern, Temple University Press (2019).

John Lutz, “Gemma Chan to Star in and Produce Biopic of Hollywood Legend Anna May Wong," Collider, (2022). 

Unladylike PBS, “Anna May Wong: The First Asian-American Movie Star,” via YouTube. 

Yiman Wang, “Anna May Wong: A Border-Crossing ‘Minor’ Star Mediating Performance,” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 2:2 (2008), 91-102.

——, “Anna May Wong: Toward Janus-Faced, Border-Crossing, ‘Minor’ Stardom,” in: Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s, ed. Patrice Petro (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 159-181.

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This episode is part of our Film History Series.

Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)