I can't let Angeleno Anna May Wong get away without adding a few favorite pix:
Anna May Wong/Wong Liu Tsong ("Frosted Willows") , 3 Jan 1905 - 2 Feb 1961. Born on Flower Street in a German, Chinese, Irish and Japanese neighborhood. In 1910 the Wong's moved to an Eastern European/Latino neighborhood centered on Figueroa. Her father, Wong Sam Sing, owned the Sam Kee Laundry. Chinese-born cinematographer James Wong Howe (1899-1976) was her cousin. Wong was picked to be an extra in the Alla Nazimova's vehicle, "The Red Lantern" (1919), her first film of 50. When Anna May's mother was struck and killed by a car outside the Figueroa Street house in 1930, Wong's father, although a second-generation American, moved to his ancestral village in China, taking some of Anna's younger siblings with him. His first wife and first child (a son, born in 1890) lived there too (he'd been married at the end of the 1880s on a previous trip to China, when he was only 19). He returned to LA in 1938 where he later died at 91, outliving his famous daughter by a year.
With her elegant, Edwardian-gowned mom, Lee Gon Toy, and older sister, Lulu/Liu Ying, in Los Angeles, circa 1906:
http://gingerpost.com/?p=2049
A sensation in Europe (1929):
http://chinarhyming.blogspot.com/200...-dietrich.html
Rumoured to have had an affair with Dietrich in Berlin in the 20s,
they later made Shanghai Express" (1932) together.
http://blackundwhite.tumblr.com/page/3
(Speaking of Dietrich and Robinson's too, I was rushing through Robinson's 7th St store on my lunch hour in the 70s when I noticed Dietrich sitting on a chair placed on a low, round plinth in the center of the main aisle completely unattended. I have no idea what the occasion was, some promotion I expect. I couldn't stop as my beeper had just gone off meaning there was a truck waiting at the loading dock which I had to deal with, but she looked
terrific.)
A fave undated photo:
http://pinterest.com/pin/138133913542488522/
A little memoir Wong wrote for Pictures Magazine in 1926 is here:
http://gingerpost.com/?p=2049
P.S.
A dance from "Picadilly":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njtyFAhJ6ZE
In her own words:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rdjiMN_NSs
A tribute (stills):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htl-G9kSQf0
Wong's ashes (and those of her younger sister Mary) were buried in their mother's grave at Angelus Rosedale on W Washington Blvd. The sisters' names are etched on the stone in traditional Chinese. Anna May's name, 黃柳霜, is on the right:
find a grave
Obviously still a place of pilgrimage.