[left, Anna May Wong. Click on image to link to the gallery]
As part of an extensive pictorial review of modern China's Republican era (1912-1949), the news service PeopleNet has a picture gallery of Anna May Wong, the first Asian actress to make a dent in Hollywood, although the virulent racism of the time prevented her from getting the opportunities for major stardom she was capable of achieving. The captions to the 30 photos briefly review her life and career, and while acknowledging the major role played by racism, it puts some of the resonsibility for exploiting it on Song Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek). The article alleges Chiang used her U.S. political clout to encourage the suppression of Anna May's career, as Wong came from the immigrant class of Chinese that had a Western image of laundry and restaurant owners, gangsters, coolies, etc., and not the emerging, highly-educated elite the Madame herself came from and was now leading.
I will leave that topic to the political historians, but from the editor's standpoint, I hope that when an Asian actress at last takes an Oscar for Best Actress, she will devote a few moments of her acceptance speech to giving a shout-out to Anna May for blazing the trail, as Halle Berry did in acknowledging her debt to Dorothy Dandridge.
