Making Headlines 100 Years Ago
what I found in the Los Angeles Examiner archives
Lately, I’ve been indulging in a familiar hobby: newspaper clipping. While I was working on Not Your China Doll, I spent many an evening pulling relevant newspaper articles while Nick and I decompressed on the couch after dinner with a few hours of mindless TV. Of course, my version of “clipping” doesn’t actually involve scissors or cutting out articles from physical newspapers and magazines. It’s the twentieth-first century after all. I do all my clipping in digital databases like Newspapers.com, the British Newspaper Archive, etc.
Recently, when I started pulling clips again, Nick turned to me and asked what I was researching. I turned to him a bit sheepishly and had to admit that I was still pulling articles on Anna May Wong! The archive on her is literally endless. Being a bit of a completionist, I decided that I should finish collecting all the Los Angeles Examiner articles mentioning AMW from the 1920s until her death in 1961—even though my biography on the actress has long been finished.
I only dipped a toe into the Los Angeles Examiner archives while I was still in the thick of my research, focusing on pieces that added to the book’s narrative in a significant way or that included juicy updates from famous Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons. Now that I’ve had some downtime from the book tour, I thought I’d make another foray into the archive. So far I’ve worked my way up to 1937, which is right when things heat up again for Anna May following her return from China. I’ve found some interesting photos and tidbits, especially from her early career in the 1920s. As a special end-of-the-year treat, I thought I’d share some of the most fascinating ones.
Flappers of Chinatown in short skirts, oh my!
I squealed when I came across this clipping from May 1922. It’s a style piece commenting on how the flapper trend of the 1920s spread to Chinatown, to this reporter’s surprise. What makes this article so fun is seeing Anna May Wong held up as the Chinese flapper par excellence, which she certainly was. AMW was quite successful in using her flapper persona to subvert people’s expectations of her as a Chinese American woman.
The reporter unfortunately falls into the same old traps of the China doll stereotype, describing the young women of Chinatown as “demure, soft-voiced young things” who “flitted hither and yon, on the hinter side of gorgeous screens, on noiseless feet,” until they were transformed by the counterculture movement of flapperdom.
The reporter gets one thing right, though. Being a flapper was about pushing the boundaries. The new liberties they carved out for themselves, essentially going places on their own whenever they wanted, may seem ordinary to us. But for these women, they were truly radical: “She wants—and is getting—the freedom of the chop suey palaces, the movies, the jazz cabarets and the shops where are displayed the fabrics to seduce the flappish eye.”
Commenting on their outré fashions, Anna May told the reporter: “Trousers? Pouf! Give us fringed skirts, preferably plaid!” Her sense of style even then was uncanny. AMW still looks hip in her flapper outfits a hundred years later. Those retro round glasses and dainty analog wristwatch are the perfect accessories for any Brooklyn hipster today. By the way, did you catch that half-smoked cigarette dangled expertly between her fingers? Her practiced air of ennui?
How do you like the scantily-clad image they chose of AMW to juxtapose against that headline? In 1924, following her breakout role in The Thief of Bagdad, a shyster producer named Forrest B. Creighton convinced AMW to sign with him to create Anna May Wong Productions; he promised to raise $400,000 to fund starring vehicles for her. The money and stated projects never materialized. Meanwhile, Creighton started racking up debts in AMW’s name. Hence the lawsuit against Creighton noted here.
Because of this legal entanglement (which I write about in the book) AMW wasn’t able to sign movie contracts with any other film studios for most of 1925. Never one to sit idle, while she was unable to take film roles, she joined a kooky troupe of young movie star hopefuls on a countrywide personal appearance tour backed by the Cosmic Production Company.
Some of the troupe seen here, Carl Miller, Ruth Stonehouse, Ena Gregory, Katherine McGuire, Bryant Washburn, Helen Holmes, and our girl Anna May Wong, gathered for a few unusual publicity shots before their train journey commenced.
Like many fans and researchers, I’d seen versions of these photos in archives and floating around the internet. I assumed they were related to the Cosmic tour but these clippings finally give us the missing context. Apparently, when their rented train car arrived from Chicago it was in bad shape, so the actors decided to roll up their sleeves and clean the car themselves.
“Supervised by railway officials and cheered by an audience of Pullman porters, baggagemen and tourists, a dozen film celebrities yesterday gave a thorough cleaning to one of the Southern Pacific Pullman cars. Brushes, brooms and rags were wielded by men and women stars whose names are familiar throughout the country.”
And they got a nice bit of publicity out of it, too. The 20-year-old Anna May donned what looks like a maid’s costume for the occasion. You can see her balancing on a ladder while ringing out a wet sponge into a bucket, a good-natured smile on her face.
By the day of the Cosmic troupe’s departure, the group reappeared in their traveling coats, fresh-faced and cheery as they posed for one more photo-op on the train’s balcony. Anna May, second from the right, wore a luxurious fur-trimmed coat and cloche hat.
You can tell this gang was going to have fun on the road together by the gleeful grins on their faces. But the necessity of cleaning their own train car should have been a red flag signaling that all was not well with Cosmic Productions. Ultimately, the tour was under promoted, ticket sales were not as brisk as they hoped (think: showing up to giant ballrooms with hundreds of empty seats), and on one occasion the production company forgot to pay for the troupe’s hotel bills, which landed many of them in jail, AMW included! You can read more about this wild episode in my book.
You may recall that Anna May Wong was one of the dignitaries asked to preside over the groundbreaking for Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in 1926—she handed Norma Talmadge the gilded shovel that would turn over the first heap of soil. But did you know that AMW also drove the first rivet into the steel trusses that would support the building? Here she is, in her factory girl’s finest, getting to work at the McClintic-Marshall steel plant. Rosie the Riveter, look out!
I touched on the above incident in a previous post on the Wong family dynasty based on a Los Angeles Times article, but this Los Angeles Examiner clipping offers a fuller picture of the minor courtroom drama. In the summer of 1926, James, one of AMW’s younger brothers, was arrested for “illegally transporting firecrackers.” I’m no expert on fireworks laws from the 1920s, but taking a few sparklers and fountains to set off at the beach in celebration of a national holiday hardly seems like a valid offense. Unless you consider “celebrating the 4th of July while Chinese” a crime.
Lucky for James, AMW was willing to lean on her star power and vouch for him in front of the judge: “He’s really not bad, Judge.” You can tell the reporter got a rise out of this story. They liken Anna May to Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, a character who crossdresses to impersonate a lawyer and defend her lover’s friend. In this case, the stakes were much lower. Softened by AMW’s pleas, the judge still found James guilty but suspended the $50 penalty (about $891 in today’s dollars).
Newspapers really had fun picking headlines back in the day. WAX STARS WILL SHINE. SCREEN GIRLS GIVE SHOPPERS ‘VACANT’ STARE. I’d love to shake the hand of the gal who wrote that one. This article fascinates me on so many levels. First of all, I had no idea Anna May Wong had a wax figure double made of her. Can you imagine if it’s still around, moldering in some abandoned warehouse somewhere?
Apparently, before the widespread use of mannequins, clothing shops used wax models to display their fashions in store windows. Sounds like a liability for hot weather locales. According to the article, AMW’s wax figure was fabricated at the L. E. Oates Wax Studio in Los Angeles, the country’s biggest supplier of wax models at the time. The reporter describes the scene at the studio like it’s something out of a horror film:
“Myriad arms and legs dangle from wires . . . . Tiers of what appear to be mummies are arranged along the walls. Torsos lie about the floors or liter up the workbenches. Only the scent of melting wax and fresh paints tend to drive away the feeling that one has entered, instead of a factory, the den of a Bluebeard.”
Despite this grotesque backdrop, the image of Anna May posing next to her wax double makes for a pretty picture, and an amusing one, too. For a second, we’re left wondering: Which one is flesh and blood? Which one wax? The writer was on to something when they hinted at the wax figures’ “vacant” stares.
The other interesting detail about AMW’s wax figure is that it models a stunning dress she wore in one of her famous portraits taken by photographer Edward Curtis in 1923. Along with AMW’s model, L. E. Oates Wax Studio made wax figures of a handful of other Hollywood starlets. What I wouldn’t give to see the wax doubles made of Colleen Moore, Mae Murray, and Aileen Pringle. Together, the wax ladies were sent on a tour of the country via train, which culminated in a fashion show at the Gimbel Brothers department store in New York City.
On my list of things that I hope will one day materialize, Anna May Wong’s wax figure is number three, right behind her personal love letters and the original tapes for The Gallery of Madame Liu Tsong!
Goodbye, 2024!
2024, Year of the Wood Dragon, was unequivocally Anna May Wong’s year. And I was the lucky gal who got to ride along on her coattails. Or should I say dragon’s tail? The experience of publishing Not Your China Doll and watching it go out into the world to find its readers has been everything I hoped it would be and so much more.
Over the course of this year (which honestly feels like several lifetimes), I did 36 book events, both virtual and in-person, including 8 film screenings, 3 exhibitions, and even a burlesque show. I traveled to 15 cities in the U.S. and Canada, including Vancouver, Seattle, Honolulu, Portland, San Francisco, New York, and multiple trips to Los Angeles. I met a lot of new people and kindred spirits: film buffs, academics, Anna May Wong fans, and Substack subscribers. I was blessed with an excuse to reunite with cherished friends, family, and mentors, from high school teachers and friends I hadn’t seen since middle school, to authors I’d previously only corresponded with from afar.
Not Your China Doll got plenty of press coverage, too. It was featured or reviewed in the Times of London, CNN.com, the Guardian, SF Chronicle, the Telegraph, Entertainment Weekly, the Independent, BBC Radio 4, and elsewhere. Anne Helen Petersen described the book as “really fucking good.” If that’s not high praise, I don’t know what is. And readers like you nominated NYCD for a Goodreads Choice Award in History & Biography.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting me every step of the way. I got my flowers and then some. Here’s to 2024—and all that’s in store for 2025. See you next year!
p.s. Stay tuned for an end-of-year reader survey, coming to your inbox in the next few days . . .
Upcoming Events
January 8, 7-9 pm - AAPI Westport Book Club
Westport Museum of History and Culture, Westport, CT
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Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN
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January 16, 6-8 pm - Screening of The Toll of the Sea with Virtual Q&A
Chinese American Museum of Los Angeles, Pico House, Los Angeles, CA
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Great work! Waiting for the second, expanded and revised, edition of the book. 😉.
The movies keep being rediscovered, too. In one year, two of her late 1920s German movies, "Song" and "Großstadtschmetterling" are finally readily available, wonderfully restored.
It's clear the next few years will lead us to a still fuller understanding of Anna May Wong. I'm sure she's delighted.
Tenacity is your strong suit. Go with it.
Prosit!
I always enjoy reading about your research and I’m thrilled to know that it has not ended!