Welcome to the tweet trends podcast. Hey, what's trending today? Hey, I mean, hey girl And you are tuned in to try is the quickest way to find out what's trending today Today's women's history spotlight is on Anna May Wong. Let's get started Welcome back.
We are still celebrating women's history month and as I was doing my research I saw lots of women that were promising us like oh, maybe I'll talk about her Maybe I'll talk about her and then I ran across a Chinese American actress and I'm like, you know what? This is the route that we're going today. Her name at birth was Wong Lu Song But professionally she's better known as Anna May Wong. Now Anna May Wong was best known as the first Asian American actor to work in Hollywood She did everything from silent films to talkies, you know, and they started talking from the stage to television She could do it all and she did now She did all of that while navigating the blatant racism and tight casting in the industry that ultimately restricted her from reaching her fullest potential So let's go ahead and dive into some more about Anna May Wong story So ever since she was a young child anime was just taken by the movies to the point where if she worked had her dad's Laundromat then any little bit of money she would make she would use it to go to the movies to watch whatever's out She would cut school to go to Chinatown to then watch the the films being filmed there in Chinatown And would even go as far as to beg the directors to let her be in a movie and sometimes they did she was even known by directors in that area as the Curious Chinese child because she was always there So as she got older then she began to go out for actual roles and she was actually cast in some But it they weren't the ones that you would think that she would receive if it was a movie about an Asian woman You would think she would be a shoe in right?
Well, no They would get maybe a Caucasian woman and put her in yellow face and then from there Then she would be the Asian person and then anime would be somebody in the background or you know a friend of the friend or something But they even got to the point where in some cases they said she was too Chinese too Asian and it's kind of like really I Don't understand that but anyway, so all throughout this time. She's having to deal with all of these different hurdles Excuse me One was that most audiences wanted to see Asian women playing either the passive young woman that they refer to as butterflies or The murderous villainous which would be the dragon ladies another issue that was really serious that it goes along with the fact that the Caucasian women were playing the Asian women in the movies because Across the country there were anti-misigination laws now Let's back up and let's see about this SAT word real quick misengine nation Basically means that you're not going to represent people from different races kissing each other or being in a relationship with each other doing anything together that that's not happening and so because of that she would not get cast in those lead roles where the love interest is a Caucasian male because she would not be able to kiss him Legally I guess you could say legally because that was against the laws and the rules in filmmaking So I don't know that's kind of hurtful to even think about that that there even situations where they said that she was too Asian How can I be too Asian if I'm Asian? Animated everything she could try to fit into Hollywood's vision of what an Asian woman should look like it was even a situation where somebody Criticized her accent and they referred to it as some Yankee something or other and it was just so absurd that I just didn't even commit it to memory but She went to school to then try to work on her accent and the thing is she was Chinese American She was born in Los Angeles and so people would be confused as to well How was it that you can write English so well and you speak English so well and she's like I went to public school in LA Like I'm not supposed to be able to do that whereas at home She still talked to her parents in Chinese, but even they looked at it as speaking Chinese with an American accent so all of that and Then kind of like when we talked about the women in jazz and how they weren't getting respected here in the United States So they left the country well anime won't do the same thing She ended up going overseas to like Germany and other places over there and began She she got a greater She was received better there you go. He was received better over there Although when they would talk about her they would not refer to her as Chinese American They would just refer to her as being Chinese, but then the Chinese people they felt some type of way about her because they felt like she They felt like she was dishonoring their people by trying to be so Americanized that You couldn't find the the Chinese in or anymore or she's she's putting on an accent to make it seem like she's Chinese when in reality You know, she's an American girl like everybody else So the unfortunate thing is you know She went over there She had like a total of 50 or 60 movies that she was in and you can even go on YouTube and find some of her movies there They're black and white and as you know, some of them.
There's no sound and then some of them are talkies but I just felt like like she was someone really good to highlight because I don't know I'm not Chinese So I don't know how often Asian women Asian children Asian families get to celebrate somebody and I think anime Wong is probably The right one Thank you for joining me for today's episode where we highlighted Chinese American film star Anna May Wong I hope you learned something maybe you've never heard of her before and who knows go when you have some free time Go check out YouTube and you can pull up some for movies and see what all the buzz was about why she was a really great Actress she just did not get the breaks that she should have for her level of talent. Alright, hit me up on Twitter and Facebook YouTube at hey that's at a T Y E D E T T or just look at hashtag tweet trends I would love to know who else we should highlight before the month of March is over. Okay, have a great weekend And I'll see you guys back here on Tuesday