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Frosted Yellow Willow
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Anna May Wong was born in 1907 as Wong Liu Tsong, a name meaning "Frosted Yellow Willow" in English. Since she grew up in Los Angeles, the little girl was fond of watching film crews, and this practice earned her the anonymous name of "Curious Chinese Child" as well. Her parents were opposed to her career and never fully accepted her movies. Once discovered by matinee idol Douglas Fairbanks, the rechristened Anna May Wong became a globe-hopping star. She traveled to Europe; working in England, France and Germany. Wong even turned to China, though the natives in Chinese theater found her ways too American for their tastes. America was her ultimate disappointment, however. She was always offered the part of an illicit love or abandoned spouse, the bad girl in some tacky opium den. Kevin Brownlow's massive study of controversy in the time of the silents, Behind the Mask of Innocence, quotes her complaint to an interviewer about the misrepresentation of Chinese culture on the Hollywood screen: "How should we be [such villains], with a civilization that's so many times older than that of the West?"
Wong could bring a feisty air of self-reliance to her portrayals of lower-class, "shady ladies," but more often than not, especially in the silent films, it was demanded that she suffer!
She was, therefore, one of the best criers in the business, as shown in The Toll of the Sea, the first 2-strip Technicolor film ever released:
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