Word: anna
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...Wong may have broken through the Hollywood race barrier, but her success didn't help others; no studio boss told his casting director, "Get me another Anna May Wong!" It didn't even help her. When Hollywood made movies about Chinese people, it simply put white actors in "yellowface." The term is a misnomer. Whereas a white actor playing a black was obliged to dab cork to darken the visage, a white playing an "Oriental" character didn't change face color but applied spirit gum to give the eyes a higher slant...
...Buck's thoughts were similar to Wong's. As Anthony B. Chan relates in his book Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong, 1905-1961, Buck had lunch with an MGM executive, some time before The Good Earth was to be cast. "I said I hoped they would use Chinese actors in the leading parts," she recalled, "to which he replied that this was impossible because of the American star system." Wong, who had just turned 30, tested several times for O-lan, meeting with skepticism and animosity. The skeptic was Albert Lewin, the MGM producer in charge...
...like." What were they supposed to look like? Warner Oland? No, not a Dane like Oland - Austrians! Paul Muni played Wang, Luise Rainer was O-lan and Tilly Losch got the role of Lotus. Wong, Chan, speculates, was "Too beautiful for one part and too old for the other." (Anna May's younger sister Mary Liu Heung Wong did get the small role of the Little Bride. She hanged herself in the family garage...
...Resistance to Wong came from outside the studio as well as inside. The Chinese government's official advisor to MGM, who said that her odor in China was "very bad ... whenever she appears in a movie, the newspapers print her picture with the caption 'Anna May again loses face for China.'" He wasn't exaggerating. When Shanghai Express played in the city it supposedly was set in, a local newspaper called Wong "the female traitor to China," and a journal in Tianjin carried the headline: "Paramount Uses Anna May Wong to Embarrass China Again." Apparently not realizing that the villain...
...THREE RULES FOR ANNA MAY WONG...