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How Anna May Wong, the 1st Chinese-American Film Star, Became a Hollywood Trailblazer


Thief of Baghdad’s Anna May Wong was the first Chinese-American film star, and she eventually became a Hollywood trailblazer after starting out as an extra.

“She saw people making movies in the streets,” Katie Gee Salisbury, author of Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong, exclusively tells Closer. Recognizing that the world was bigger than Hollywood, Anna May began taking theater and film jobs in London, Paris and Vienna. A year later, Hollywood tried to make amends by casting her as the heroine in Daughter of Shanghai, a film costarring Korean-American actor Philip Ahn.

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