Asian Americans were superstars in Hollywood – a century ago

By Gil Asakawa

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have often been virtually invisible in Hollywood, but it’s getting better. Most people probably will recognize actors such as John Cho or Lucy Liu, and AAPI actors are much more common today on TV. But Asian American are still seldom in lead movie roles, and each year there are controversies over Hollywood studios casting white actors to play Asian roles, a practice known as “ whitewashing.”

Older movie fans can probably remember the 1950s and ‘60s, when actors like James Shigeta, the Hawaii-born Japanese American who’s best remembered for his role in the 1961 musical “Flower Drum Song,” or Miyoshi Umeki, the Japanese actress who won an Oscar for “Sayonara” in 1957 and also starred in “Flower Drum Song” (and later, on the hit TV series “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”).

Going back even farther, to the early days of the film industry, a couple of Asian Americans were huge stars – but to moviegoers today they’re largely forgotten.

The first male matinee idol of the silent film era before Rudolph Valentino was Sessue Hayakawa, a smoldering sexy actor who was born in Japan. His 1915 film, “The Cheat,” directed by Cecil B. DeMille, made him a Hollywood star who became known for extravagant parties and a gold-plated Pierce-Arrow car. His career continued for decades – his best-known film today is the 1957 movie “The Bridge Over the River Kwai.” Although he was as popular in his day as Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, he was usually typecast as a cunning evil Asian, and sadly, he isn’t remembered by many.

Anna May Wong is similarly forgotten, but she was the first Chinese American Hollywood star, whose stardom reached across boundaries to international acclaim. The Los Angeles-born Wong starred in one of the first movies to be shot in color, “The Toll of the Sea” in 1922, and also acted alongside Douglas Fairbanks in the 1924 hit “The Thief of Baghdad.”

Beginning early in her career, Wong fought for roles for herself and other Asian American actors that weren’t racial stereotypes but often had to play those roles anyway. In the 1920s and ‘30s she spent much of her career in Europe because she was frustrated with the lower-level supporting roles that were available in Hollywood, and maintained her international reputation as a star.

Despite her fame and popularity, Wong was turned down in 1935 for starring role of O-Lan in the film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s “The Good Earth.” The studio cast a white actress, Luise Rainier and taped her eyes back to look Asian – an early example of whitewashing.

She continued to act in a variety of lesser-known films for the rest of her career, and in 1951 she became the first Asian American to star in a TV series, “ The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong,” in which she played an art dealer who was also a detective.

She was cast to return to movie stardom in 1961 but died before the filming of “Flower Drum Song.”

Asian American actors’ continuing quest for Hollywood roles is a hot topic today, but it’s a struggle that’s been going on for a century. Let’s hope for some progress in the near future.