35DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI

Philip Ahn and Anna May Wong in Daughter of Shanghai, 1938 (Courtesy of Everett Collection)

IT WAS WHILE Anna May was crossing the English Channel from Le Havre to Portsmouth on her way from Paris to London that she heard the disturbing news about China. Under a full moon on July 7, 1937, the Japanese army had exchanged fire with Chinese troops on the Marco Polo Bridge outside Peking, in the process shelling a nearby walled town with mortar and artillery fire. The eight-hundred-year-old stone bridge, an architectural gem with parapets adorned by marble lions that spanned the river on graceful arches, was a monument so named in honor of the first Westerner who crossed it in the thirteenth century. The skirmish and subsequent bombardment proved to be the start of a full-scale Japanese invasion.¹

Within days, the Japanese army marched into Peking and also began to attack other cities. On August 14, a day that would be known as “Bloody Saturday,” ill-trained Chinese pilots badly missed their target, mistakenly dropping bombs on crowded areas and luxury hotels on Shanghai’s Bund, instead of on Idzumo, a Japanese warship anchored in the Whangpoo.² Two weeks later, another round of aerial bombardment, this time by Japanese aircraft, hit Shanghai’s South Station, killing hundreds of refugees trying to flee the besieged city by train. Gruesome images of the carnage—comparable to the German Condor Legion’s bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War earlier that year—were captured by none other than Newsreel Wong. Less than a year after he had photographed Anna May’s visit to China, and likely using the same Leica, Wong alarmed and angered the world with a picture of a crying baby sitting alone in the debris of the bombed-out Shanghai train station. The tragedies in Shanghai were just a grim forerunner of the Nanking Massacre in December, when the Japanese army engaged in a barbaric rampage, killing an estimated three hundred thousand civilians and committing mass rape, looting, and arson.

Bloody Saturday, Shanghai, 1937 (Courtesy of National Archives)

For Anna May, the news from China was personally devastating. Not only had she cultivated an almost patriotic affection for her ancestral land, but also most of her family members were still there. Her eldest brother and younger sister, in particular, were both living in Shanghai: James had been teaching there, and Mary was working as a secretary to the Inspector-General of Customs. Fortunately, James had left for Hong Kong on August 14, two hours before the bombing started; and Mary was convalescing at home from a cold and did not go out that day.³ But the rapid onset of the war would pose an existential threat to everyone, including her father and other siblings in Hong Kong and Canton, areas that also would fall to the Japanese.

The outbreak of war in China riveted America’s attention and piqued Hollywood’s interest. Ironically, World War II would prove to be a windfall to Hollywood impresarios, who always knew that with a good script, patriotism and profit could go hand in hand. Many of the classic films exploiting war and postwar themes, such as The Great Dictator (1940), Casablanca (1942), To Have and Have Not (1944), and The Stranger (1946), were all made during the period from 1937 through the end of the Korean War in 1953.

With China now in the headlines every day, it was no surprise then that Paramount finally offered Anna May her first American starring role since Daughter of the Dragon, marking her return to the screen after a three-year hiatus. Even though the new film, as she confided to a friend, was plain hokum, Anna May took Hollywood hokum seriously.⁴ In Daughter of Shanghai, she played Lan Ying, the daughter of a San Francisco Chinatown importer. After the murder of her father, Lan Ying becomes a detective on the trail of smugglers, traveling as far as the Caribbean and occasionally having to don men’s clothes. Because of the intensity of the action involved, the director, Robert Florey, asked Anna May to trim her long fingernails. For a dozen years, she had diligently cultivated the stiletto tips of her slender fingers and protected them against breakage by wearing gold guards. Like Mary Pickford’s golden ringlets or Veronica Lake’s peek-a-boo cascade, these gilded cuticle attachments had served to exoticize her presence. Yet, for the sake of making her character more believable in the film, Anna May sacrificed her nails.⁵

Dubbed “The Anna May Wong Story” by the studio insiders, Daughter of Shanghai did well upon its release in January of 1938 and received good reviews. The New York Times praised the lead actress as an “attractive Oriental” in a tense melodrama. Motion Picture Exhibitor also considered the film as being “well made, holding enough punch for action houses.” Secretly mourning the loss of her fingernails, Anna May was happy that the film, given the outpouring of sympathy for China, now portrayed the lumbering giant of a country in a more positive light. “I like my part in this picture better than any I’ve had before,” she declared. “This picture gives Chinese a break—we have sympathetic parts for a change.”⁶

In addition, this was the first film in which Anna May’s character is given a happy, romantic ending, although it was, of course, with an Asian man, and Americans were hardly aware that there were cultural differences between a Korean and a Chinese. In her star vehicle, Anna May paired with the Korean American actor Philip Ahn, who played a federal agent, Kim Lee. The combined factors that Wong and Ahn were chums from high school and that Kim Lee proposes marriage to Lan Ying at the end of the film spurred the Hollywood rumor mill into wild speculations that the two Asian American actors were romantically involved, unaware that Ahn was, quite possibly, gay.⁷ Interestingly, both Anna May and Ahn added fuel to the speculative fire themselves. In a joint interview, Anna May teased the journalist by remarking, “Of course, I’m very fond of Philip, we’ve been good friends for many years, but marriage—,” and Ahn chimed in, “But who can tell where love is concerned?” In a separate occasion, on CBS Radio, Ahn responded to the rumored romance by proclaiming, “All I can say is that she is one of the finest young ladies I know, and we have been friends since childhood. Further than that, I think you had better ask her. And that’s the truth.”⁸

Being ambivalent and elusive might have been a good publicity tactic, for, in typical Hollywood fashion, unfounded gossip always creates buzz, keeping curiosity alive. But it is also possible that these two Asian American actors, living in an era when homoeroticism was taboo, were using each other as a proverbial “beard.” Especially in an industry where being “outed” as a homosexual could easily doom one’s career, there were countless examples of “lavender marriages” or “tandem couples”—Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli, Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, Laurence Olivier and Jill Esmond, Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, to name just a few.⁹ While she was making Daughter of Shanghai, Anna May resumed her cozy relationship with Marlene Dietrich, who was shooting Angel on the same Paramount lot. According to Maria Riva, her Mutti found Melvyn Douglas, the male lead in the romcom, rather boring. “He is a talented light comedian,” Dietrich opined, “but for my taste, not a romantic lead. He has no glamor—no sex appeal.” Still married to her husband while maintaining an on-and-off triangle relationship with Mercedes de Acosta and Greta Garbo, Dietrich was at the time romantically involved with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. And she enjoyed hanging out with Anna May, androgynous John Barrymore, and others. “Anna May Wong got her green tea piping hot at four,” as Riva writes in her recollection of how Dietrich and her friends spent their time together on the studio lot and at Mutti’s private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel.¹⁰

Unfortunately, except for these sketchy allusions that occasionally appear in the biographies of other stars, we know very little about how Anna May navigated the sub rosa lesbian world of Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. Anna May’s rumored liaisons with Marlene Dietrich, Leni Riefenstahl, Dolores del Rio, and others were not the kind of sapphic love affairs openly discussed or graphically described as those in, say, de Acosta’s Here Lies the Heart (1960)—a controversial memoir that serves as an indispensable chronicle of “the sewing circle.” Instead, Anna May’s fluid sexuality manifested itself mostly in her myriad images, thus giving credence to contemporary feminist views that gender or sexual identity is socially performative rather than biologically determined. In her screen roles, vaudeville skits, and publicity photos, Anna May used costumes, coiffures, and gestures to curate an image of Oriental femininity, while also projecting a style of what would be called, in today’s lingo, “lesbian chic.”¹¹

In a series of studio portraits of Anna May taken by Carl Van Vechten, Edward Steichen, and others in the 1930s, there is an impressive array of aesthetic styles and erotic appeals. Exploring the liminal space between submissive Madame Butterfly and mannish Dragon Lady, these photographs are full of elements of camp theatrics—some showing her in drag, wearing a blonde wig or a Japanese kimono, some nude or seminude. In one photo by Van Vechten, Anna May is attired in a tuxedo and a top hat, holding a cocktail glass close to her glossy lips, while her stiletto fingernails curve around the alcoholic nectar. In a period when famous Hollywood butches like Garbo and Dietrich flaunted their menswear and constantly looked for so-called trouser roles both on and off the screen, homoeroticism latent in Anna May’s cosplay with a tuxedo and a coquettishly slanting top hat became unmistakable. In fact, Van Vechten, a bisexual white author who served as a patron and dealmaker in the Harlem Renaissance, claimed that Anna May was his “first subject” when he began to dabble in photography in 1932. In the ensuing years, he not only took celebrity shots of notable white and African American cultural elites—including Eugene O’Neill, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Henri Matisse, and Georgia O’Keeffe—but also took numerous images of nonwhite male nudes often posed in highly suggestive scenarios. The latter, along with collected hard- and soft-core homopornography, circulated within a closed circle of Van Vechten’s most trusted male acquaintances, most of whom were gay or bisexual, and remained sealed in the archives until twenty-five years after his death.¹² Finding Anna May’s provocative images lying next to this clandestine cache of photos certainly gives us a sense of the racialized cultural space in which she negotiated and performed her evolving sexual identity.

Portrait of Anna May Wong by Carl Van Vechten, 1932 (Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-42509)

While Anna May continued to orbit in Hollywood’s gender-fluid sewing circle, Ahn actually served as a precursor for gay actors, such as Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, who were constantly linked to starlets to throw audiences off a forbidden trail. Straitlaced studio heads could be willing to look the other way as long as actors were discreet about their sexual orientations—and, if they were not, as long as they remained viable as “cash cows.” But the standard “moral turpitude” clause in an actor’s contract, which could be cited to end a career, always hung like the sword of Damocles over the heads of those having to lead secret lives. As already marginalized Asian actors, Anna May and Ahn faced double jeopardy and would have to tread even more carefully in a pre-Stonewall world.

As soon as Daughter of Shanghai finished shooting, Paramount gave Anna May a three-picture contract, in addition to a salary of $4,166 for the film, while Ahn earned a paltry $1,000. With her film career seemingly back on track, Anna May celebrated her thirty-third birthday on January 3, 1938. To her relief, her younger sister was able to return from shell-torn Shanghai, where Mary’s office at the Customs House had been splattered by shrapnel.¹³ The horrific stories and the daily headlines—the six-week savagery in Nanking happened during the Christmas season—made Anna May eager to do more for the Chinese cause both on and off the screen. She sent money to Dr. Margaret Chung, who was raising funds in San Francisco to send medical supplies to China. In March, as mentioned earlier, Look magazine proclaimed Anna May “The World’s Most Beautiful Chinese Girl,” with a cover photograph and a feature article describing her sense of fashion. Riding a wave of newfound prestige and glamour, she auctioned off her film costumes to raise money for China war relief.¹⁴

On June 25, New Chinatown opened to great fanfare, and Anna May was invited to join the impressive lineup of dignitaries, celebrities, and community members who gathered at the Central Plaza to celebrate the first Chinese-owned enclave in the United States. After the demolition of Old Chinatown in 1933, proposals were put forth for a new settlement that would continue to serve as a tourist attraction and also house a displaced population of about 2,500 Chinese. It resulted in two competing projects, setting the stage for a “Battle of the Chinatowns.”¹⁵

One was China City, which opened three weeks earlier than its rival and should more appropriately be called Hollywood Chinatown. Led by the social activist Christine Sterling, it was built from the props that had been used in the film production of The Good Earth. Combining Hollywood’s Oriental vision with pure fantasy, China City sported a centerpiece that was a replica House of Wang set from the Oscar-winning film, designed and crafted in consultation with Paramount Studios. It also featured rickshaw rides, curio stalls manned by Chinese merchants in proto-Disney costume, and children dressed as hungry peasants roaming the streets of an imaginary Chinese city, as depicted in Pearl Buck’s novels.¹⁶

A few blocks away, bounded by Broadway and Castelar, lay the competing vision of a Chinese enclave, New Chinatown. Spearheaded by prominent Chinese community members, the development was architecturally designed to look like Peking’s Forbidden City, with an open-air Central Plaza and two lofty gates facing east and west. Part of the West Gate was made of 150-year-old camphor wood and adorned with an inscription by Chinese Consul General T. K. Chang. As a daughter of Old Chinatown, Anna May understandably preferred to affiliate herself with this community-based project rather than the kitschy Hollywood-made fantasy. At the grand opening of New Chinatown, she had the honor of planting a willow tree named after her. Today, this homage to the star persona, whose name means “Yellow Frosted Willow,” still stands in front of a wishing well, inspired by yet another old China landmark, the Seven Star Caverns in Canton.¹⁷

As the Chinese in Los Angeles were celebrating the reopening of their American stand-in for China, their distant homeland was in shambles. After seizing major cities like Peking, Shanghai, and Nanking, the Japanese army in 1938 was making rapid advances into the Chinese heartland. To stall the enemy’s momentum, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the opening of dikes on the Yellow River in June, flooding a large swath of densely populated area across three provinces and destroying thousands of villages and towns. An estimated four hundred thousand people drowned, and an additional ten million became refugees. Chiang’s desperate measure failed miserably. By October, the Japanese army had begun the siege on Wuhan, forcing the Nationalist government to retreat to the southwestern city of Chungking.

Under the circumstances, China required enormous aid. On October 8, concerned Chinese Los Angelenos turned their annual Moon Festival into a fundraiser. Choosing what remained of Old Chinatown as the venue for the event in order to maximize media exposure, the organizers erected three elaborate gates through which twenty-five thousand visitors would enter. They cordoned off a section of Los Angeles Street, which was decorated with Chinese lanterns and flags and lined with concession stands. Beneath the light of a full moon, the festival kicked off with rituals at the Altar of Blessings to the Moon Goddess, followed by a lantern-and-dragon-boat parade, in which two hundred young women in colorful Chinese gowns carried lanterns and preceded the dragon boat. Using terminology typical of that bygone era, the Los Angeles Times reported: “Pretty Chinese girls rode in a grotesque dragon boat, seeking to appease the wrath of the dragon on the fifteenth day of the eighth moon in the Chinese Calendar.”¹⁸ A precursor of scenes from the postwar Broadway musical Flower Drum Song (1961), the parade also featured a spectacular, high-spirited performance by the Mei Wah Girls Drum Corps. At the climax of the festival, an elongated dragon held up by dozens of athletic men gyrated down the street, while lion dancers dazzled the crowds with their nimble moves, accompanied by cymbals and gongs.¹⁹

Amid the festivities, a highlight of the night involved the famed Daughter of the Dragon. Placed next to a concession stand where a Dr. Edward Lee told fortunes and sold horned nuts, the Anna May Wong booth was filled to capacity by her fans. The crowds were eagerly lining up to get autographs and have their pictures taken with the star, who looked as though she had just stepped out of a movie screen. The nominal fees they paid would go to the United China Relief Fund.²⁰

The full moon being a symbol of reunion, the Moon Festival was usually celebrated by the Chinese as an occasion for family gatherings and thanksgiving. In 1938, Anna May had much to be thankful for but more to be worried about. With the relentless advance of the Japanese forces, her family in southern China was no longer safe. In just a few weeks, the Japanese would capture Canton, forcing millions of people to flee—an Asian forerunner to the exodus from Paris in 1940, when millions fled the city ahead of the Nazi invasion. Even though her father and siblings would make it back safely to the United States in November, all the places she had visited only two years earlier were now engulfed in a fiery cauldron of war. In Shanghai, the Civic Center, where she had once witnessed a mass wedding, had been decimated by the Japanese with precision bombing, leaving only a spectral façade. Sir Victor Sassoon’s posh Cathay Hotel and Palace Hotel were also shattered—albeit accidentally by Chinese bombers—causing the loss of many lives. In Peking, the commander of the Japanese army ordered Mei Lan-fang to perform for them, with a reward of a high-ranking position, but the Chinese maestro refused to sing and chose a life of impoverishment and silence for the duration of the war. In fact, the legendary female impersonator purposefully grew a mustache and feigned toothaches to avoid performing. Similarly coerced and tempted, Cheng Yanqiu, the other opera singer Anna May had befriended, chose a life of disguise and exile, tilling the fields as a peasant in the countryside. Pinkie, her handsome neighbor and accomplice in escapades around the old Imperial City, had become the right-hand man of the Commanding General US Army Forces in the China–Burma–India Theater, Joseph Stilwell. Several years later, Pinkie would march by the side of General “Uncle Joe” in a long, perilous walk out of Burma in 1942.

But now, surrounded by her fans and looking at the sea of humanity down the street that used to be so familiar to her as a child, Anna May recalled images of the past, as she had once described nostalgically in her autobiography: “The narrow streets lined with grimy buildings, the shops where Chinese herbs and drugs were sold, the gambling places where white men and Chinese mingled, the overcrowded tenements where the Chinese lived, sometimes entire families in one room, the gaily painted chop-suey restaurants with their lanterns a soft, many colored blur in the dark.”²¹

At this moment, she had a premonition: As a Chinese icon, no matter what incarnation she assumed—whether as Daughter of the Dragon, Daughter of Shanghai, or “The World’s Most Beautiful Chinese Girl”—the war was going to consume her waking hours and ideological passions. She felt ready for it.