DURING WWII, Hollywood film makers produced dozens of films based on that conflict. Many were worthy attempts to support the war effort against Hitler and a few are anti-fascist classics, like the outstanding None Shall Escape the Judgement made in 1944  which envisages a court in Warsaw trying a Nazi for his part in the Holocaust. This was years before the actual Nuremberg Trial.

Most films dealt with the war in Europe, with very few on the war in China where the Japanese invaders slaughtered over 20 million men, women and children.

Some films dealing with the war in China either used the usual racist stereotypes or actors in “yellow face” when depicting Chinese people. But one film, Lady From Chungking is an anti-imperialist classic without said stereotypes.

Anna May Wong (real name Wong Liu Tsong) portrays the lady of the film’s title. She is not only a member of the resistance in an area occupied by the Japanese, but is in fact the group’s leader. She wisely directs their efforts to resist and plays a major personal role, sacrificing her life for the cause of freedom.

Her final defiant words before a firing squad says after her death, that many more will follow in her place, leading to peace and a China free from the invaders.

This was one of Wong’s many films made between 1919 and 1960. Born in Los Angeles of Chinese parents in 1905, her talent enabled her to star aged just 17 in Hollywood’s first technicolour production, but still silent, Toll of the Sea.

She appeared in a number of classic silent films, The Thief of Bagdad (next to Douglas Fairbanks) and Peter Pan but restricted to stereotypical role.

Wong travelled to Europe in 1928 were she had starring roles in films in Germany and Britain in particular in the outstanding Piccadilly made in the latter country and directed by directed by EA Dupont. It’s available via Amazon Prime.

Returning to the US she co-starred with Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express and then went back to Britain where she toured with her own stage act as well as making more films.

In 1936 Wong, aware of the problems faced by China, especially after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the real threat of their further incursion into her parents’ country of birth, visited that country.

She used the opportunity to positively publicise the people and culture, using a Chinese documentary film crew to portray her people. She kept a journal, travelling the country that was published by numerous newspapers in the US and on her return continued to campaign on those issues.

On a personal level, she was distraught when having been approached to play the lead in the big film of 1937, The Good Earth, set in China, she was passed over for a European actress, Louise Rainer, made up to look Chinese who won Best actress Oscar for her role.

It was reported at the time that she said to MGM: “If you let me play O-Lan, 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.”

Elsewhere she commented: “How should we be, with a civilisation that’s so many times older than that of the West. We have our own virtues. We have our rigid code of behaviour, of honour. Why do they never show these on the screen? Why should we always scheme, rob, kill?”

Recovering from this setback, Wong threw herself into publicising the Japanese invasion of China and continued this once the US entered the war in 1941. She toured raising money for the war effort, always highlighting the struggle of the Chinese people against Japanese invaders.

When Soong Mei-ling, the wife of the then leader of China Chiang Kai Shek, arrived in the US in 1943 to promote her husband, she gave awards to many celebrities, but Wong — the one person who had done the most to campaign for China over the years — was ignored.

Weary after years of travelling to promote the Chinese people, she took a break before returning to films in 1949 and two years later starred in her own television series, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, which unfortunately was cancelled after just 13 episodes. No episodes of the series survive today.

Her last film appearance was in 1960 in the murder mystery Portrait in Black, in which she played a maid to the film’s star, Lana Turner. Wong died of a heart attack aged just 56 .

Wong was the first Chinese American film star, a pioneer in a Hollywood that portrayed racist stereotypes for many decades. Despite this, her beauty, dignity and supreme talent won through.

She will also be remembered as an early champion of the Chinese people in the US both before, during and after WWII. Appropriately she’s been immortalised in 1960 with her own star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame at at 1708 Vine Street.
 
Anna May Wong: The Art of Reinvention is at the British Film Institute until October 8 2025. For more information visit the BFI website