Anna May Wong - The First Chinese-American Film Star
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http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0938923/
BORN: January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, CA.
DIED:February 3, 1961, in Santa Monica, CA.
REAL NAME: Wong Liu Tsong ("Frosted Yellow Willows")
Biography
Born and educated in Los Angeles, Anna May Wong began playing small parts
in her preteen years. Her first role of consequence was as a slave girl in
Douglas Fairbanks' lavish The Thief of Baghdad (1924); shortly afterward,
she played Tiger Lily in the first film version of Peter Pan (1924). While
she had several large roles in subsequent Hollywood films, it wasn't until
Wong went to Europe in 1929 that she was taken seriously as an actress.
Once back in Hollywood, however, it was back to exotic oriental stereotypes,
with little opportunity for romantic roles, as there were still many taboos
against racial intermingling in films of the 1930s. Her best film assignments
included Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932), the Sherlock Holmes
opus A Study in Scarlet (1933), and a string of Paramount second features in
the late-'30s, notably Dangerous to Know (1937) and Daughter of Shanghai (1937).
Wong retired from films in 1942, thereafter making occasional stage appearances
in the Los Angeles area. Anna May Wong died of heart failure at the age of 56,
just before she was to begin work on the screen version of the Rodgers and
Hammerstein Broadway hit Flower Drum Song.