Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong set Hollywood ablaze with her status as one of America’s top actresses and will soon grace quarters in the United States — but her story is not without tragedy. Born Wong Liu-Tsong in Los Angeles, California, she was a third-generation Taishanese-American who dreamed of becoming an actress after discovering the magic of cinema at a Nickelodeon theater. When Wong was 17 years old, she landed her first leading role in the 1922 silent film The Toll of the Sea. This movie set the undertones for the rest of her career: while Wong would find success in the acting world, she, unfortunately, would forever be limited by how she was a Chinese-American woman navigating through uncharted territory in the 1920s and 1930s.
Throughout her career, Wong was forced to play stereotypical characters whose origins were rooted in racism. With the implementation of the Hays Code in 1934, her fate was sealed. Interracial romance was officially banned from Hollywood movies, delegating Wong to secondary roles in favor of white actresses in yellowface. She would die young, but her legacy is significant due to the path she helped pave. These are her best movies ranked.
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7 The Toll of the Sea
Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation
The Toll of the Sea not only made movie history because it was the first classical Hollywood film made in color, but also because it was Anna May Wong’s first leading role. She portrays Lotus Flower, a woman who finds an American man floating along the seashore. When he wakes up, they fall in love and get married, but this is no romance story. For many years, the movie was presumed to be lost, but then it was restored by UCLA. While Wong’s performance is truly one of the movie’s key highlights, it is important to note that it fetishized Chinese culture as a story aesthetic.
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6 Daughter of Shanghai
Paramount Pictures
Released in 1937, Daughter of Shanghai is unique because of how it featured two premier Asian-American actors active during the Golden Age of Hollywood: Anna May Wong, of Chinese descent, and Philip Ahn, who is widely considered to be Hollywood’s first Korean-American actor. Daughter of Shanghai was a B-film, meaning it did not receive mainstream level funding and marketing. This lack of funding allowed a story set in San Francisco’s Chinatown to be made, especially with Wong and Ah uncovering the roots of illegal smuggling.
5 Impact
Harry Popkin Productions
Brian Donlevy and Ella Raines star in the 1949 movie Impact, which boasted an impressive supporting cast consisting of Helen Walker, Anna May Wong, and Philip Ahn. It was a B-film mixing elements of film noir and melodrama as a San Francisco millionaire (Donlevy) dodges attempts by his wife to kill him. However, Impact is not a film noir to skip, as its storyline is tight and well-executed with solid performances from its actors.
4 Peter Pan
Before Disney released its iconic movie Peter Pan in 1953, there was a silent film adaptation of the beloved tale released in 1924. Betty Bronson starred in the titular role, while Ernest Torrance was Captain Hook. Anna May Wong portrayed Peter Pan’s friend Tiger Lily. While the Disney version of the story riffed from the original narrative and made it into something completely different, this silent film was true to the original, keeping key details (such as Wendy’s romantic love for Peter) intact.
3 Piccadilly
British International Pictures
E.A. Dupont’s Piccadilly was released in 1929, when Anna May Wong departed the United States in search of something greater, like more creative freedom in the roles she could portray. Set in a nightclub and restaurant in London, a group of dancers at the establishment struggle through their work lives and relationships with each other. The movie’s characters are compelling, a silent film that could be classified as a film noir a decade before it became popular.
2 The Thief of Baghdad
Douglas Fairbanks Pictures
The Thief of Baghdad is one of Anna May Wong’s best-known films. Released in 1924, two years after her appearance in The Toll of the Sea, she portrays a Mongol slave with tendencies to betray other people. Douglas Fairbanks starred in the role of Ahmed, a young thief living in the city of Baghdad who falls in love with a princess. The movie is considered one of the greatest silent films to have ever been made, but offers a complicated perspective indicative of its era when it comes to proper representation.
1 Shanghai Express
Pre-Code films are a unique glimpse into the mindset of Hollywood’s creators in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and Shanghai Express is one of the most memorable pre-Code movies. Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brooks, and Anna May Wong all star in this drama, set on a train traveling through China in a civil war. Dietrich and Wong are two well-desired courtesans traveling to Shanghai when Dietrich’s Madeline discovers her former lover is on the same train. The movie holds feminist undertones and offers interesting insights into colonialism and racism during the era.
