A Fur Coat Doesn't Tick
the actress as comedienne, working on her material
T. S. Eliot said that April is the cruelest month. But perhaps he never met January, February, or March. This month’s newsletter is a grab bag of sorts due to the fact that writing this book has really been kicking my ass. The latest word count stands at 67,307 words. And that’s not including endnotes.
The first few months of 2022 seemed to evaporate before my very eyes as I spent most days writing feverishly towards my self-imposed July deadline. In March, after getting back from my whirlwind London trip, I started on what I thought was a new chapter. But as I neared the 12,000-word mark (yet again), I realized it was really two chapters in one. All’s fair in love and the writing life.
So to conserve my energy for the final countdown to crunch time, instead of the usual essay, I offer you a fun little roundup of Anna May Wong’s cleverest quips and cocktail party anecdotes.
Not many people know this, but Anna May Wong had a great sense of humor, which doesn’t always come through in her films or the stories that are told about her today. Her charming manner made her a sought-after guest among intellectual and artistic social circles. She always had something interesting to say—whether it was a funny story she’d been told by a friend or a wry observation of her own on the absurdities of being famous.
When she returned to the U.S. in 1934, for example, after making a second tour of Europe and starring in several British films, she was accosted by a flock of American reporters at the train station. One plucky reporter asked her how she found Europe. She replied: “Well, it seems to be holding up. I’ve heard four very funny stories during the past two years.”
One evening at a 16-guest dinner at the Dragon’s Den Cafe in Chinatown, she regaled friends with a tidbit from her recent travels in China. “While I was the guest of friends in Pekin, I greatly admired a painting hanging across one side of the room. It was a Chinese scene with various figures; exceedingly colorful, there was a sense of philosophic calm in every brush stroke,” she explained. “When I asked my host about it, he replied: ‘It was painted by a friend of mine, who spent 10 years thinking about it and 10 minutes painting it.’”
Her year-long trip to China in 1936, in fact, provided some of her best dinner party fodder. At age 31, she had grown weary of the marriage question. So when it came up again, as she knew it would, she responded off-handedly: “I told them I was going to wed my art. Of course, I thought that that bromide had reached the East years ago, but to my surprise, it had not.”
“Next day,” Anna May continued, “I was amazed to see headlines stating, ‘Miss Anna May Wong to wed wealthy Cantonese merchant named Art!’ Would you believe it?”
On another occasion when she was asked about having once said she would only marry a Chinese man, her answer was rather spicy: “If I were asked such a stupid question I might be pardoned for making a stupid reply. The only basis for marriage is mental companionship and that has no race or color.”
In truth, AMW often had to rely on her wit to defuse and rebuff the widespread prejudices and misconceptions of her time. Case in point, she shared this amusing anecdote from Wellington Koo, China’s Ambassador to the United States, with reporter friend Grace Wilcox. At some state function or other, an American diplomat seated next to Ambassador Koo turned to him during dinner and asked, “You likee soupee?”
According to the story as AMW told it to Wilcox: “Politely, the Chinese ambassador nodded and smiled. Immediately afterward, he was called on for a speech, which he delivered in his usual brilliant English. As he sat down, he turned to the American diplomat and inquired, without smiling: ‘You likee speechee?’”
AMW’s sense of humor apparently extended to impersonations too. In another one of her “Hollywood Reporter” columns, Wilcox revealed that “Anna May Wong likes nothing better than to imitate someone who bores her. She has a repertoire of three of the colony’s most celebrated stars which would do justice to Ruth Draper. Incidentally, this particular trio would bore anyone except someone as affected as they are.” Gee, wouldn’t we like to know which three Hollywood personalities she’s referring too—and to see her impressions of them to boot!
In a sketch at the end of Elstree Calling (1930), a British film filled with variety show performances, AMW got the rare opportunity to show off her comedic talents. The scene was intended to poke fun at Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford’s talkie version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. It was the first and only film the couple ever made together and was a total flop. It probably didn’t help that their marriage was already on the fritz. In Elstree’s parody, Petruchio, played by Donald Calthrop, goes to woo Katherine, his would-be lover, and finds a deranged Anna May Wong, dressed in her exotic dancing costume from Piccadilly, throwing cream pies at everyone in the palace courtyard. I only wish AMW had more opportunities to channel her natural flair for slapstick.
The quip that lives on and is most oft repeated can be found in the New York Times’s obituary for AMW. In the early days of her career, it notes, she modeled fur coats for a local furrier and even got her picture in an ad in one of the Los Angeles newspapers.
“My father was so impressed by my elegance that he cut the picture out and sent it to my half-brother in China,” she explained. “My brother wrote back, ‘Tsong is indeed very beautiful, but please send me the dollar watch printed on the other side.’”
Her brother, whose family was supported by the industrious Wong clan in America, couldn’t focus on something more than two seconds before thinking of his own wants. Anna May, of course, got the last word: “The moral of the story is—a fur coat doesn’t tick.”
Anna May Wong Everywhere All at Once
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Anna May Wong! In case you missed the news, Gemma Chan, of Crazy Rich Asians fame, recently made a big announcement. Chan plans to develop and star in a biopic about AMW, with Nina Yang Bongiovi and Working Title Films producing. Anna Wong, AMW’s niece, will consult, and award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang will adapt the screenplay. Somehow all our dreams are coming true!
The U.S. Mint’s commemorative American Women Quarters also shipped last week, featuring Anna May Wong, along with Maya Angelou, Sally Ride, Wilma Mankiller, and Nina Otero-Warren, on U.S. quarters. You can snag your set here.
If you haven’t already seen it, Everything Everywhere All at Once starring Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan (yes, he’s the guy who played Short Round and Data in your favorite 80s flicks) is a must see! I hope to write more about this film in the near future, but suffice it to say: I laughed. I cried. I swooned. And this interview clip with Michelle Yeoh—who has had a long storied career, playing Bond girls and doing kungfu with Jackie Chan—really touched me.
Feels kind of like she took the words right out of Anna May Wong’s mouth. Asian Americans are making huge strides in Hollywood right now, but it’s still not enough. 加油！
My recollection is that there is an ending to it that was snipped out-Alfred Hitchcock tapped Anna May on the shoulder, and clobbers her with a cream pie in the face.
That might have put her career on another trajectory. Then, again, maybe not.🤔🤣
Well done. Your essays are always fun to read. I think for anyone interested in American history or culture. As the used to say about Sinatra, “It’s Anna May Wong’s world; we just live in it.”