But the many successes of Wong’s career happened despite – not because of – Hollywood. As an Asian-American, Wong was overlooked for roles, thrust into stereotyped bit parts, and burdened with the double-edged sword of being “too Asian” in appearance and “not Asian enough” in voice. As a fifth-generation American and native Californian, she sounded just like every other LA flapper, which cinema and theatre critics found unpleasantly discordant with their expectations.

Wong had wanted to be in movies since she was a child. Watching renegade film crews crop up all over her rapidly growing hometown, she was certain that she belonged in them, and as soon as she earned her first roles on-screen as an extra, it became instantly clear that she was right – the camera loved her.

On-screen charisma is a difficult thing to pin down. It isn’t beauty (though beauty doesn’t hurt) and it isn’t good acting (the two rarely go hand-in-hand). Marilyn Monroe had it. Marlon Brando had it. And Anna May Wong had it in spades. With her jet-black hair and large, expressive eyes, she had a striking screen presence, but it was more than that. She had that “it” factor that leaps off the screen, which is why, at a time when Hollywood was deathly allergic to diversity, she became a movie star.

Wong’s breakthrough came in 1922 when she was cast in the lead role in The Toll of the Sea, the second film ever produced by Technicolor and the first to reach a broad audience. Critics hailed her performance as the spurned lover of a white man as “practically carrying the film,” and said that she showed “real restraint and subtlety that only a true artiste can attain.” One critic gushed that she “should be seen again and again on the screen.”

Douglas Fairbanks, the so-called “King of Hollywood,” agreed. When he cast her in The Thief of Bagdad, she became an undisputed star, even though she was playing the role of a double-crossing slave. Despite her obvious popularity and mesmerising screen presence, however, the studios refused to cast her in roles that were not Asian caricatures.

Following her stint in Europe at the end of the 1920s, Wong returned to the U.S. and enjoyed success in Josef von Sternberg’s Marlene Dietrich vehicle, The Shanghai Express. But she left Hollywood again shortly thereafter when she was delivered an especially cruel blow. The bestselling novel, The Good Earth, was set to be adapted for the big screen. Following a family in rural China, it seemed like the perfect opportunity for Hollywood’s only Chinese-American star to finally receive the role she deserved, but the studio passed over her in favour of a white actor in yellowface.

Crushed, Wong travelled to China for the first time, documenting her 10-month journey on film. Encountering adoration from fans there, she was surprised to find just how many people were outraged by the stereotyped, usually villainous roles she was given in America. Upon her return to Hollywood, she changed tack, striking a deal with Paramount Pictures which allowed her to star in B movies.

Although this might seem like a demotion, B movies were the one part of the Hollywood system where the long arm of censorship seldom bothered to reach. Here, Wong was able to star in movies in which she was not the villain nor a tragic side character. In the 1937 crime film Daughter of Shanghai, for example, she starred alongside her childhood friend and fellow Asian-American actor Philip Ahn. Not only do they play the heroic protagonists, but they fall in love and are happily married at the end.

The same year that movie star Lucille Ball changed the face of television forever with her popular show I Love Lucy, Anna May Wong starred in her own series, a 13-episode crime caper called The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong in which her character travelled the globe solving art crimes.

Her health began to decline in the late ‘50s due in large part to cirrhosis of the liver from excessive drinking. By 1960, however, she was on the cusp of what could have been a comeback. Ross Hunter, a producer who had helped revive the careers of fading Hollywood stars like Lana Turner and June Allyson, wanted to turn the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song into the first Hollywood movie with an all-Asian cast. Wong died shortly before the production began, and her role was the only one that went to a non-Asian actor.

Wong had a front-row seat to some of the biggest developments in Hollywood history. But her career wasn’t based on luck. Only an actor with determination, ambition, and a genuine optimism about the industry could have forged the career she did. Nevertheless, she was decades ahead of the industry, and although she, like Lena Horn, was able to carve out her own legacy through a mixture of concession and rebellion, it took decades for film historians, cinema-goers, and the U.S. Treasury to fully appreciate her role in the arc of Hollywood.

More than a century after Wong earned her first starring role, Hollywood films centred on Asian and Asian-American actors remain a rarity. But whenever movies like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Past Lives come along, it’s worth remembering the actor who was a pioneer at the dawn of Hollywood itself, even if very few people were there to share it with her.

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