Quote:
Originally Posted by tovangar2
I can't let Angeleno Anna May Wong get away without adding a few favorite pix:
Anna May Wong/Wong Lew 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 owned the Sam Kee Laundry. Chinese-born 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. 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 six younger siblings with him. His first wife and first child, a son, lived there too (he'd been married many years before on a previous trip to China). He returned to LA in 1938 where he later died at 91.
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 |
From Time Magazine January 29, 2005:
Tall, pretty and sinuously graceful, Wong had a smoldering effect on people, especially men; they could be driven to a purple passion trying to describe her beauty. It's said that her friend Eric Maschwitz wrote the dreamy lyrics to the memorable pop standard
These Foolish Things in Wong's honor.
A cigarette that bears a lipstick's traces
An airline ticket to romantic places
And still my heart has wings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumbling words that told you
What my heart meant
A fairground's painted swings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
You came, you saw, you conquered me
When you did that to me
I somehow knew that this had to be
The winds of march that make my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings, but who's to answer?
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsUVKmDHNcg
She also had mesmerized set and costume designer Ali Hubert, in his little Wong rhapsody:
"On her tender and youthful body, expressing every moment with the indescribable grace of the Oriental woman....only a Van Eyck or a Holbein could capture her on canvas."
In 1938 Look magazine named her the "world's most beautiful Chinese girl." TIME magazine, run by, China-born Henry Luce, was a special champion, taking every opportunity to chronicle her social life.
All this, for an actress who by convention, was not allowed to kiss her leading man. All this, for a Hollywood star who, at the peak of her popularity, could not have bought a house in Beverly Hills. All this, for a woman (an American citizen) no white man could legally have married in her home state of California, until 1948.
Read more:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/articl...#ixzz2Q4mwN73W
New Chinatown Los Angeles 1938
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