A Hollywood TRAILBLAZER

THE SILVER SCREEN'S FIRST CHINESE-AMERICAN STAR REFUSED TO PLAY SECOND-CLASS ROLES

- Fortune Benatar

Hollywood’s earliest filmmakers often used colorful real locations, like the streets around Los Angeles’ Chinatown n, in their movies. Watching them as a child, Anna May Wong, a third-generation Chinese American, became fascinated. “She saw people making movies in the streets,” says Katie Gee Salisbury, author of Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong. “Her dad ran a laundry business, so she and her older sister were often walking around making deliveries or picking things up from costumers. That was her first brush with moviemaking.”