On January 22, 2020, users opened Google to find a new, striking Google Doodle. In the middle of their screens sat an Asian American woman depicted in black and white, reminiscent of the era of silent films and colorless movies dating back to the early 1900s.
Her name was Anna May Wong.
Born in 1905 in the Chinatown of Los Angeles, California, Wong grew up in close proximity to movie sets following the move of film production from New York to California. Wong’s fascination and interest in film and actors started at a young age as she used her lunch money to go out and watch movies. By the age of nine, she was set on becoming a movie star.
In the 1920s, Wong began to pursue acting full-time. She landed leading roles in several films, one of which was The Toll of the Sea, the first feature-length film produced in Technicolor.

During Wong’s time, anti-miscegenation laws prevented interracial marriages and even went on to prevent interracial kissing on the big screen. This law barred Wong from being able to play leading roles in romantic films. In a recent interview published in Playwright’s Center, John Olive, the director of a biographical play on Wong’s life, states that, “[Wong] was in Hollywood in that era when non-white actors could not kiss. This meant there was a whole range of parts that were not available to her. She couldn’t play a romantic lead where she would have to kiss her leading man. So, she had to watch parts that she could have played — should have played — go to other actors. And that frustrated her, to say the least.”
So, while critics commended her talent, Wong was cast aside to play side characters while white actors played Asian characters in yellowface. The side characters she played were deeply flawed and stereotypical Asian caricatures, and the studio system consistently profited off of these cruel depictions.
Such stereotypical roles could often be categorized as either the “China Doll” or the “Dragon Lady.” The “China Doll,” or “Lotus Blossom” roles were characterized as quiet, submissive Asian women completely dependent on the white man, existing only to please the white man. Such caricatures were exemplified in Wong’s portrayal of Lotus Flower in The Toll of the Sea (1922), coining the name of the stereotype, and Cho Cho-San “Butterfly” in Madame Butterfly (1915 and 1932).
Meanwhile, the “Dragon Lady” was an archetypal villain characterized by dominant, manipulative, and apathetic behavior, shown through Wong’s portrayal of characters Ling Moi in Daughter of the Dragon (1931) and Hui Fei in Shanghai Express (1932).
Both stereotypes were hypersexualized to satisfy the white man’s fantasies, and neither saw any character development, rendering them completely one-dimensional.
Wong was frustrated with playing such roles and, after realizing she couldn’t wait for Hollywood to improve, she decided to open her own studio, creating Anna May Wong Production Studios in 1924.
Wong planned to center Chinese mythology and culture in the films she produced. Unfortunately, the studio closed within a year as her business partner was caught using bad practices.
With the failure of a studio on her hands, Wong was thrust back into Hollywood’s racist roles and tight boxes of how Asians should be portrayed on the big screen. However, she refused to yield to Hollywood’s unfair ways and decided to try her luck in Europe in 1928.
There, with Europe enamored by her beauty and talent, Wong turned into an overnight star. In comparison to the United States, Europe’s attitude toward race and “racial mixing” on screen was much more relaxed. So, while there were still racist ideas found throughout Wong’s roles, they were far less pronounced than the stereotypes she had played in the U.S. and the characters she played were given much more dimension. Wong was even allowed to kiss a white man on screen in Europe, an act that was unthinkable in the United States. As a result, she flourished as a leading lady in numerous films such as Piccadilly. Piccadilly was particularly progressive in its approach to race, showing multiple interracial couples at a time when this was rare. Wong was also featured in her first talking film, The Flame of Love, and the operetta Tschun Tschi, where she spoke in fluent German.
Captivated by her extraordinary success in Europe, Hollywood wanted her back. Paramount Studios made Wong an offer to place her in leading roles if she returned to the States..
However, upon her return, Wong was still forced into stereotypical roles and racist casting, similar to the experiences she had braved two years prior.

When the director of a film requested her to use Japanese mannerisms whilst playing a Chinese character, Wong outright refused. In a 1933 Film Weekly interview with Doris Mackie, she reflected, “I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese are nearly always the villain of the piece, and so cruel a villain — murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass. We are not like that.” Wong was vocal about her unhappiness at the stereotypes that she and other Asian actors faced during a time when most actors of color never broached the subject.
In 1935, Wong experienced the most extreme disappointment of her career. At the time, Good Earth, a Chinese-centric film about the lives of Chinese farmers was in production. As such, directors were looking to cast people for the roles in the movie. The director reached out to Wong, asking her to play the role of concubine Lotus, a supporting character. In response, Wong stated, “I’ll be glad to [audition], but I won’t play the part. If you let me play O-lan [the leading female character], I’ll be very glad. But you’re asking me—with Chinese blood — to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture, featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters.”
The role of O-lan, one of the leading characters, ended up being given to white actress Luise Rainer, who would play the character in yellowface. Meanwhile, Wong rejected the studio’s offer to play Lotus. In the end, Rainer received an Oscar for her playing of O-lan while Wong, an actual Chinese American, was denied the role.
In an interview with the Center for Asian American Media, Nancy Wong Yuen, a sociologist and author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism, says, “I re-watched The Good Earth audition scenes. I still cried watching her perform those scenes because the words that she was saying in those scenes matched what the actress was experiencing in life.”
However, Wong didn’t let this disappointment burden her; instead, she charged on, continuing to act in movies and actively work with screenwriters to remove racist and stereotypical content. In 1937, she performed ground-breaking work with fellow Korean American actor Phillip Ahn in the thrilling crime movie Daughter of Shanghai, starring an Asian American woman teaming up with an Asian American man to fight human traffickers. In an interview conducted by Louise Leung for Hollywood Magazine about the movie, Wong expressed, “I like my part in this picture better than any I’ve had before, not because it gives me better acting opportunities nor because the character has exceptional appeal. It’s just because this picture gives the Chinese a break — we have the sympathetic parts for a change! To me that means a great deal.” In the 1950s, she starred in The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, becoming the first Asian American to play a leading role in an American TV series. In 1960, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Throughout the hardships and the racism that chased her career, Wong remained vocal about the inequities she faced in Hollywood. She knew her worth and was proud of her heritage. When she found that she was not valued in the U.S., she moved to Europe. Wong openly used her stardom to criticize the industry, forcing directors and screenwriters to look past racist assumptions when writing Asian characters. By fighting against these stereotypes, Wong showed that Asian Americans were more than just the caricatures and yellowface performances shown on the big screen.
Two years before her unfortunate death in 1961, Wong proclaimed, “When I die, my epitaph should be: ‘I died a thousand deaths.’ That was the story of my film career.”
Wong’s legacy outlived the obstacles Hollywood forced on her and she is renowned as the first Chinese American star in Hollywood that has paved the way for many Asian Americans today.
On October 25 2022, Wong’s face was put on the U.S. quarter, proving that, in light of her thousands of deaths, Wong has become immortal.