Download Anna May Wong (1905-‐1961) The first Chinese American movie

Anna May Wong (1905-­‐1961) The first Chinese American movie star, Anna May Wong appeared in silent and sound films in the United States, Germany, France, and England in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. She also did some radio work and appeared on a variety of television shows in the 1950s. Wong’s mother, Lee Gon Toy, was born in San Francisco one year before an anti-­‐
Chinese riot and her father, Wong Sam Sing, was born in California’s gold fields in 1860. Born in Los Angeles in 1905,Wong was born into a culture of strict racial segregation. Though smaller than the San Francisco Chinatown, the Los Angeles Chinatown was no less crowded and unhealthy. Nonetheless, Chinatowns, like other ethnic enclaves, functioned as safe places for Chinese Americans in a culture that was hostile to Asian Americans. It is were her family owned a laundry and was relatively financially stable. As a girl Wong delivered laundry for tips, which she spent on movies. In dark movie houses she decided to become an actress. A frequent visitor on Los Angeles movie sets, Wong acquired the moniker CCC or Curious Chinese Child. At age 14 she secured her first acting job, and other small roles followed in such profusion that Wong could not in later life remember them all. Her appearance in Dinty in 1920 earned her favorable reviews. The next year Wong dropped out of school to act full time; however, she had little choice but to play roles that denigrated her ethnicity and sex. Despite the racist nature of these roles, Wong found herself a minor star by age 19. She kept busy in acting supporting roles, functioning as a kind of all-­‐purpose racial “other,” sometimes even playing Native American women. She was also limited to supporting roles because film codes and anti-­‐miscegenation laws did not allow inter-­‐racial kissing; thus, she could not play romantic leading ladies opposite white male actors. Her love life was similarly complicated because California and many other states banned interracial marriage in the eugenic belief that marriage needed to be between people of the same race. Wong spent her life fighting racial stereotypes, but often found herself trapped by racist ideology. For example, she was often called upon to act in “Butterfly” or “Dragon Lady” roles. The “Butterfly” stereotype, so named from the female character in Madame Butterfly (1898), was a self-­‐sacrificing and passive Asian woman, whereas the “Dragon Lady” stereotype cast Asian American women as inappropriately powerful, sexually dangerous and untrustworthy. Tiring of her limited roles in American films, Wong worked in Germany and England in the late 1920s, where she found a wider range of roles open to her. There she met Marlene Deitrich (1901-­‐1992). Rumors swirled around bisexual Dietrich and Wong, casting them as lovers, which may have damaged Wong’s career and embarassed her family. Wong returned to Hollywood in 1930. Along with her film making career, Wong became an advocate for Chinese Americans, but returned to England in the mid-­‐1930s. In 1935 she again returned to the United States, this time hoping to secure the leading role in Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth. White actress Louise Rainer (b. 1910) won the role, and eventually an Oscar for her performance as a Chinese peasant woman. Though today the film is considered an egregious case of casting discrimination, the film’s “Yellow Face” or use of white actors in Asian roles was not unusual in the early decades of film. Wong toured China after losing the Good Earth role, where she was sometimes met with hostility for the the racist roles she played in movies. During World War II Wong made two anti-­‐Japanese propaganda films that encouraged Americans to think of the Chinese as allies. In 1951, Wong starred in a television series as a Chinese art dealer and detective. Though the show aired for only one season, it was the first television show (and still one of the few) to star an Asian American actor. Wong’s health declined in the 1950s, in part because she had been secretly drinking to excess for years. Hospital stays in the 1950s revealed that she suffered from liver and cardiovascular disease. In 1961 Wong died of a heart attack while asleep. Christopher Cumo See Also: Baker, Josephin; Buck, Pearl; Dragon Lady; McDaniel, Hattie; Velez, Lupe Further Reading Chan, Anthony B. Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905-­‐1961). Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2003. Hodges, Graham Russell. Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012. THE NEW DEAL (1933-1938)
The New Deal consisted of a series of economic and social government programs enacted
by President Franklin Roosevelt and his administration as relief for Americans suffering from the
effects of the Great Depression. Begun in 1933, New Deal programs were primarily concerned
with helping male workers, based on the assumption that husbands were primary wage-earners.
Nonetheless, some of the programs did directly or indirectly help working women. Women, like
Francis Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt, also played an important role in the crafting and
execution of New Deal policies.
By the time Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as president in March 1933, an estimated
two million women were unemployed, many of them the sole breadwinners for their families.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in ensuring that New Deal relief efforts covered
female workers and that women be employed in her husband’s administration. Eleanor Roosevelt
was situated to do just that, not only because she was First lady, but because she was part of a
network of female activists trained in the women’s suffrage movement and Progressive reform
efforts of the 1920s. A number of women would rise to unprecedented positions of federal
power as part of the New Deal.
The first major New Deal relief program created by the president was the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) in 1933. FERA was based on the belief that paid work
was more beneficial for unemployed individuals than cash handouts, and so dispersed federal
funds to local governments to create jobs. From the beginning, Eleanor Roosevelt pressured the
president and FERA supervisor Harry Hopkins to create opportunities for unemployed women.
Hopkins created a women’s division within the FERA and appointed Ellen Sullivan Woodward
to run it. Woodward fought to standardize how program officials addressed the needs of
unemployed women both at the federal and state levels. She won Hopkins’ backing to require
each state to appoint a qualified woman to manage the women’s programs. Woodward went on
to work in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and in 1938 President Roosevelt
appointed her as one of three members of the Social Security Board.
In an effort to highlight the unique plight of female workers during the Great Depression,
Eleanor Roosevelt convened a series of high profile meetings at the White House. The first was
a special White House Conference on the Emergency Needs of Unemployed Women on
November 2, 1933, followed by a White House Conference on Camps for Unemployed Women
on April 30, 1934. However, actual progress in hiring female workers remained slow. While, the
Civil Conservation Corps opened some of its forestry jobs to young women and the FERAsupported women employees, the Civilian Works Administration hired only a small percentage
of women (less than 10 percent). Also, national wage codes often set minimum wages for
women lower than those for men.
Not until the establishment of the WPA in 1935, under the leadership of Harry Hopkins
with Ellen Woodward again heading the women’s division, did federal employment
opportunities for women progress significantly. The WPA employed more than 8.5 million
Americans, many men, to build roads, bridges, public buildings, dams and parks. While the
WPA employed approximately 460,000 women by 1936, they represented only 13.5 percent of
overall WPA workers. Furthermore, while wage codes for women were supposed to be the same
as for men, most WPA female employees were assigned to lower-paying jobs such as
educational programs, camp cooking, care for the elderly, sewing and bookbinding. Ellen
Woodward saw that women were included in the WPA’s Writers’, Arts and Theater Projects,
which funded jobs creating murals and sculptures to decorate public buildings or working to
capture and preserve regional and American folk culture. Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale
Hurston had one such job.
Several major reforms of the New Deal benefited women along with male workers.
Signed by President Roosevelt in July 1935, the National Labor Relations Act (also known as the
Wagner Act) guaranteed private sector workers the right to organize into trade unions. By the
end of the 1930s, more than 800,000 women joined labor unions, uniquely situating working
women to be on the forefront of the labor advances that would come in the 1940s. In 1938,
Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set minimum wage and maximum hour
standards; unfortunately for working women, some categories of employment largely dominated
by women, such as domestic and retail clerical work, were not covered by the new law.
Similarly disappointing, the Social Security Act did not cover domestic workers, large
percentages of whom were women.
One of the most visible advancements provided by the New Deal for professional women
was the number of women employed by the federal government. From the start, Eleanor
Roosevelt worked behind the scenes to encourage her husband to appoint qualified women in
high and mid-level administration positions. She was joined by her long-time friend Mary
Dewson, Director of the Women’s Division of the National Democratic Committee’s Women
(and member of the Social Security Board 1937-8), in identifying female leaders for New Deal
agencies. Besides Ellen Woodward at the NERA and WPA, President Roosevelt appointed
Frances Perkins as the Secretary of Labor, the first female cabinet member in the nation’s
history; Josephine Roche as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department; Hilda Smith as
Director of Workers Education within the WPA; Clara Beyer as Associate Director of Labor
Standards; and Mary McLeod Bethune as head of the Division of Negro Affairs within the
National Youth Administration the highest ranking African American in Roosevelt’s
administration. Each of these women would prove to be invaluable role models for women in
ensuing decades.
Kathleen Gronnerud
See Also: Bethune, Mary McLeod; Harlem Renaissance; Hurston, Zora Neale; Perkins, Frances;
Roosevelt, Eleanor; Suffrage Movement
Further Reading
Downey, Kristin. 2009. The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Francis
Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience. Nan A. Talese.
Ware, Susan. 1987. Beyond Suffrage: Women in the New Deal. Harvard University Press.
Smith, Bessie (ca. 1895-1937)
“Empress of the Blues,” Bessie Smith, was one of the earliest recorded female blues
singers in the early twentieth century. Her expressive, subtly nuanced vocal style marked a
transition between the raw delivery of earlier blues singers like Ma Rainey and the more
sophisticated jazz singers of the 1930s and ‘40s. One of her best-known songs, “Backwater Blues”
(1927), which commemorates the flooding of Tennessee’s Cumberland River, is a fine example
of Smith’s ability to place her self, through music, in situations that her audience would have
recognized as universal.
Smith was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee to William and Laura Smith in 1894 -5. At
that time, documentation of births and deaths for black people in the South was somewhat
inconsistent, although Smith listed 1894 as her birth year on her marriage license. The Smith
family, which included seven surviving children (an eighth child died in infancy), lived in
extreme poverty. Both parents had died by the time Smith turned ten, and her oldest sister, Viola,
raised the siblings.
Smith and her brother Andrew worked as street performers to earn money for the family,
and another brother, Clarence, ran away to join the Stokes touring company in 1911. Viola had a
low opinion of entertainment of any kind and often punished Smith by locking her up in the
outhouse for extended periods of time. When the Stokes Company returned to Chattanooga in
1912, Smith joined as a dancer. Ma Rainey, who was already a well-known singer, was also a
member of the company, and she and Smith became close friends, perhaps even lovers. By the
end of World War I, Smith had toured much of the east coast and South with the Silas Green
Show and Pete Werley’s Florida Blossoms. Her singing, dancing, and comedy routines, as well
as her ability to connect with her audiences, ensured a loyal following wherever she performed.
In 1923, Smith moved to Philadelphia, where she met and married Jack Gee, a security
guard. Over the years their marriage was frequently troubled. Gee disliked excessive drinking
and merrymaking, two activities at which Smith excelled. She went to great lengths to keep her
extramarital affairs, with both men and women, hidden from her husband. For his part, Gee
quickly grew fond of his wife’s money and the expensive, lavish gifts she would bestow on him
in order to regain his favor.
The same year she married Gee, Smith also signed her first contract with Columbia
Records. The popularity of Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues”, recorded in 1920, had created a new
demand for blues records, leading to the creation of several independent labels and race divisions
at major companies. According to her contract, Smith (unrelated to Mamie) was guaranteed
$1,500 for the year, and was required to record at least 12 songs, with an option to renew her
contract the following year. Although the contract favored Columbia Records, Smith
nevertheless thought the terms were generous. Her first record, “Down-Hearted Blues,” sold over
500,000 copies in the first year. During her time at Columbia, Smith worked with many wellknown musicians, like Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong, and even collaborated with
Clara Smith, another Columbia artist, on the 1925 hit “My Man Blues.”
In addition to her recording activities, Smith also continued to tour extensively. Her 1924
contract with the Theater Owner’s Booking Association (TOBA), one of the main black
vaudeville circuits, made her the highest paid black performer in the country. By this time,
Smith was so popular that her shows were frequently either sold out, standing room only, or
extended to meet audience demand; sometimes she even performed for exclusively white
audiences. During TOBA’s summer off-season, Smith continued her touring schedule by
playing tent shows. In 1925 her financial success, coupled with increasingly elaborate and wellorganized shows, enabled her to buy a custom Pullman train car to transport cast, crew, and
equipment from one town to another.
Besides a taste for expensive clothes, Smith’s personality and demeanor were mostly
unchanged by her artistic and financial success. She still preferred homemade liquor and home
cooking, but also had a reputation for a violent temper, worsened during bouts of heavy drinking.
Despite her popularity and great financial success, she paid her workers poorly, although they
benefitted from good working conditions and experience performing with a famous star. She
was also very protective, and treated both her company and her family with a great deal of
generosity. She supported many of her siblings, including Viola, and employed several family
members, including her brother Clarence, who became her touring manager. In 1926 she
adopted a son, “Snooks,” whom she renamed Jack Gee, Jr., from a young chorus girl.
By 1930, with the onset of the Great Depression, the demise of the TOBA circuit, and the
increased popularity of “talkies,” Smith’s career and finances had declined somewhat. The
music industry’s interest in blues music had shifted to male country blues singers, who were
cheaper to record, and more refined female jazz artists, like Ethel Waters and Josephine Baker,
whose appeal to white audiences made them more profitable. In 1931, Columbia ended Smith’s
contract on account of financial troubles, and she refocused her energy on touring shows. Smith
had already undertaken a transformation, phasing out blues songs and trading in her extravagant
costumes for understated, elegant gowns. Her 1933 recordings with John Hammond reveal a
hybrid between blues and popular styles, and as she modernized her repertoire, she once again
began to see success.
Smith’s career was cut short in 1937 when she died in a car accident. Thousands of fans
attended her funeral, and her records have inspired countless blues and jazz artists over the years,
including Billie Holiday.
Devora Geller
See also: Holiday, Billie; Rainey, “Ma”
Further Reading
Albertson, Chris. 2003. Bessie. London: Yale University Press.
Davis, Angela Y. 1998. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie
Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Pantheon Books.