Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend

Between 1919 and 1960, Anna May Wong starred in over fifty movies, sharing billing with Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Ramon Navarro, and Werner Oland. Her life, though, is the prototypical story of an immigrant's difficult path through the prejudices of American culture.

Born in Los Angeles in 1905, she was the second daughter of six children born to a laundryman and his wife. Childhood experience fueled her fascination with Hollywood. By 1919 she secured a small part in her first film, The Red Lantern. Her most famous film roles were in The Toll of the Sea, Peter Pan, The Thief of Baghdad, Old San Francisco, and Shanghai Express.

Discrimination against Asians, though, was commonplace, and when it came time to make a film version of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, she was passed over for the lead female role that was ultimately given to Luise Rainer.

In a narrative that recalls the pathos of life in Los Angeles's Chinese neighborhoods and the glamour of Hollywood's pleasure palaces, Graham Russell Gao Hodges recovers the life of a Hollywood legend.