The Brightest Star: A Historical Novel Based on the True Story of Anna May Wong

Dedication

For my family,

past and present

Epigraph

I have nothing more; I’ve given my all. What they’ll never understand was how alike we all are, not the butterflies or dragons they made me out to be.

—Anna May Wong

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Contents

Prologue

Part One

Bits of Life

Part Two

A Circle of Chalk

Part Three

Motherland

Daughter of Shanghai

A Hollywood Star

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

A Note on the Cover

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

Santa Monica, California

1961

In my dreams I hear their voices, those young boys who were already cruel when they chased me through the schoolyard yelling, Chink, Chink, Chinabug. It’s no wonder that so many of them have grown up to be the kind of men they are. Their voices may have deepened, their hair thinned or turned gray, their bellies softened and grown larger, but their hearts and minds remain as hard as stone, impenetrable. They are still those small-minded boys who tormented me. To them, I’ll always be foreign—a porcelain China doll, or a fire-breathing dragon lady, neither of which belongs in their world. I had such high hopes for them. I thought they might know better as grown-ups and realize that there are more ways than one to view the world. Even so, I tried to make a difference. And I can’t help but find some peace in knowing that I did. Hollywood certainly never saw anyone like me. I am Anna May Wong, a real Chinese-American girl who acted, sang, and danced into the hearts of movie fans around the world. I was once young and tenacious, always reaching for the brightest star. And for one brief moment in time, it glowed brilliant and beautiful in the palm of my hand.

Part One

Outside of our home, we were thoroughly American in dress, action, speech, and thought. Right and left we were smashing the traditions of our forebears.

—Anna May Wong

Los Angeles, California

1960

June. Already hot and dry. A different kind of heat from that of my childhood when I stood in the back room of my father’s laundry with my older sister, Lulu, washing and ironing, my damp hair pressed against my forehead. That moist, muggy heat had risen from the steaming vats of hot water, simmering like ma ma’s boiling soups. The dripping clothes that hung from the racks left the floor wet and slippery. The air then had felt so thick, I could hold it in my hands, but this is a dry heat, the wily kind that sneaks up and attacks you from behind.

Walking from the taxicab to the entrance of the train station has me sweaty under the collar, my silk blouse sticky against my back. I look up at the palm trees lining the walkway, just another Hollywood illusion of a paradise that is anything but. Still, Hollywood hasn’t completely forgotten me. Four months ago, I was awarded a star on the newly inaugurated Hollywood Walk of Fame, the first Chinese-American actress to receive the honor. My name, ANNA MAY WONG, gleams in shiny gold letters encased in a star on the 1700 block of Vine Street for the world to see. Nevertheless, it’s easy to see the irony of it too. I’ve been stepped on so often during my career, why not be immortalized on a sidewalk.

I can hear Lulu scolding me yet again. It’s a great honor, she’d say, shaking her head. You should be thankful.

Lulu, the oldest, has always watched over all the siblings, becoming our surrogate mother after ma ma died. She followed all the rules I broke when we were young. If she was here walking with me now, I would tell her that I do appreciate the recognition, while adding I also worked like hell and suffered through years of prejudice and discrimination for that star. And then I’d be off on a rant, reminding her once again that the real Hollywood isn’t the magic that fans see on the big screen. It isn’t what I dreamed about as a young girl, bursting with so much hope and ambition. I was naive to all the prejudice and politics that ran rampant behind the scenes, along with the Hays Code, and all the rules and regulations made by those close-minded, cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking studio heads, who wouldn’t know a real Chinese if they saw one. It’s the other side of the coin, which isn’t always as bright and shiny as my star embedded in the sidewalk. No one gets away untarnished.

I can hear Lulu sigh. Without hearing a word, I know what she’d be thinking. It’s hard to be completely disillusioned by a life that has put me up on the big screen, brought me fame, a small fortune, and a legion of fans from around the world, even if it all came with stipulations.

I am thankful, I whisper to myself, pulling open the glass door.

I’m even more thankful stepping into the beautifully cool, cavernous train station with its tall, majestic, brass-adorned windows, art deco chandeliers, polished marble floors, and hand-painted mission tiles, all providing an immediate respite from the heat.

Waiting at Track 5 is my train for Sacramento, where I’m scheduled to switch trains and continue to Chicago’s Union Station for my first interview during the three-hour layover. From Chicago, the last leg of the trip takes me to New York’s Penn Station, where my dearest friends, photographer and writer Carl Van Vechten and his wife, actress Fania Marinoff, will be waiting for me five days from now. I’m excited to see them, to be in New York and back on the road again on my first big press tour in years for a highly anticipated Hollywood movie, Portrait in Black, starring Lana Turner and Anthony Quinn. I had a small part, procured through Tony, whom I’ve known since we made Daughter of Shanghai together in 1937. I was the big star back then, when he was young and up and coming. How the tables have turned. Tony’s reached leading man status now, and while I can’t be considered up and coming at the age of fifty-five, I’ve made something of a comeback in the past year: a flurry of television appearances, the star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and this small role in Ross Hunter’s Portrait in Black. (If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s how to make a small role expand on the screen.) And, the best is yet to come; I have another movie, a musical, with Ross on the horizon, playing Auntie Liang, one of the leads in his next big project, Flower Drum Song. Rarer still, it has a largely Oriental cast. Singing and dancing, right up my alley, if not four decades too late.

The day has finally arrived, and I’m happy to be working again. I used to think that making a comeback meant taking one last, labored breath before you were going and gone. Now, I’m not so sure. I feel as if I’ve been resuscitated from a long and restless sleep. Maybe that’s why I’ve been given this publicity tour, getting my name back out there and prepping for the next movie. Ross, or someone else at the studio, must have decided my story isn’t quite over yet.

I hand my suitcase to a porter with a smile and a generous tip. I’ve booked a private compartment on the train for the overnight trip that’s scheduled to arrive in Sacramento early tomorrow morning. For a moment, I stand clutching my handbag, feeling lost on the hot, oily-aired platform, alone among crowds of people hurrying about their lives at a dizzying pace. My younger brother Richard offered to come with me, but I declined. He needs to stay and promote his Oriental novel decor shop, as christened by the local papers. I don’t need a babysitter, not this time.

A young man rushes past me, his bag bumping against my leg. Without a word of apology, he hurries on. There was a time I would have been instantly recognized, surrounded, and gushed over by men and women, young and old, asking for my autograph. You couldn’t miss me: my smiling face and dark round eyes framed by my short hair and my trademark Chinese virgin-child bangs—worn only by unmarried girls in China—had been displayed on posters, billboards, and movie magazines all over the world during the twenties and thirties. By the mid-forties and fifties, my career had dried up, shadowed by my chronic health problems and the dark moods that threatened to overtake me. Years have slipped by, erasing that eager young girl who once graced all those movie magazine covers.

I feel all but invisible as I walk toward my train car. I’m dying for a cigarette, just one to hold between my fingers, press between my lips. I know I’m reaching for the old security blanket again. Dr. Bloom, my doctor for the past nine years, has warned me off both cigarettes and alcohol. At least I’m making an effort with the cigarettes, though it’s the latter that’s done most of the damage. I saw him just a few days ago for a checkup before the trip, and I can still hear his stern, disapproving voice.

This is serious, Anna May; Laennec’s cirrhosis of the liver is not to be taken lightly. It’s not going away. Do you want to have another relapse? he asked, as if I were a child.

He’s too serious for someone just barely forty, with his full head of dark, curly hair that springs every which way. He always appears a bit disheveled, as if caught in a windstorm. Some things can’t be tamed into place, no matter how hard you try. It’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed with Dr. Bloom, his unruly hair. The other is that he doesn’t pull any punches; he tells me like it is. I, on the other hand, am meticulous to a fault. Appearance is everything, right down to my trademark long and tapered fingernails. I was often said to have the most beautiful hands in Hollywood, even as I was unraveling on the inside.

I politely answered, No, I do not want to have another relapse.

It’s the truth; I don’t. When I suffered an internal hemorrhage seven years ago, I ended up in the hospital and felt as if I was being squeezed dry by the terrible stomach pains. Nausea and fatigue, along with a lack of appetite, kept me hooked up to clear bags of fluids and bedridden for weeks. In the past few years, I’ve had to convalesce more times than I’d care to admit.

My response drew a quick smile and nod from Dr. Bloom.

Good then, he said, as if my scarred liver will somehow make a miraculous recovery if I play by the rules—something I’ve never been very good at. It’s up to you to keep it in check. I can’t do it for you. He has told me this more than once.

Nothing new there, it has always been up to me. But I won’t let my illness disrupt the happiness I feel at this moment. I’m back on my feet and buoyed by this trip.

Once on the train, I settle into my small, efficient cabin, my luggage stowed away, and I sit by the window to watch the last-minute passengers hurrying toward their cars. I could have flown to New York, it’s what the studio had originally planned, but I wanted to take my time and leave a week earlier than scheduled. Although I’ve taken trains for much of my life, I’ve actually seen little of the places I passed through, always rushing from one location to another, scripts in hand to memorize my lines, working to keep my movie career afloat.

So I specifically planned this longer train route, taking me north from Los Angeles to Sacramento, and eastward along the route of the first transcontinental railroad through the Sierras, Nevada, Utah, and then on through Colorado, Nebraska, and Iowa to Chicago. Now that I’ve been given this opportunity, I want to see the America that I was always made to feel I didn’t belong in. I want to ride along the same tracks that were first laid down by Chinese laborers who were brought over to do the most treacherous, most unforgiving work. Many came from my ancestral province of Taishan, yet were never accepted as citizens by the country they helped to build.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for citizenship. Ten years later, the Geary Act of 1892 upheld the law for ten more years and declared that every Chinese, including Chinese Americans, had to carry identity papers to prove they were American citizens allowed to be traveling in and out of the United States. I flush with anger to think I carried those papers with me until 1943, when the law was finally repealed. Now I want to see the blazing sunsets as well as the mountains and tunnels where the Chinese laborers worked and died so far from home. This time, I want to pay more attention.

I’m also considering a new project: writing my autobiography. Once I was thrown into semiretirement, I found myself with more time on my hands, coupled with new money worries. I waited for the next audition call for a new movie or play, which never came. Instead, I sold my beloved property on San Vicente Boulevard, moved to a smaller house, and spent those years finally slowing down, using my free time to read, to garden, and to cook more elaborate Chinese dinners for old Hollywood friends I invited over: Edith Head; Tony Quinn and his wife, Katherine DeMille; the Victors; Laskys; and Knopfs. My brother Richard is never far away and neither is a game of poker at my place, or mah-jongg, and a few laughs and drinks down at The Dragon’s Den in Chinatown with childhood friends. It isn’t Hollywood’s bright lights, but I’ve been happy enough.

In between, there have been trips to New York to see Carl and Fania, Kitty Clements, Hazel Stockton, and other old and dear New York friends, including Bennett Cerf, who’s the big-time publisher at Random House. Over the years, he has sent me books that I’ve read eagerly, and since my semiretirement, he has been nudging me to write my autobiography.

Who would want to read about my life? I asked.

He smiled, cradling his pipe in the palm of his hand, and said, You should ask yourself, who wouldn’t?

I’ve never forgotten the way he looked at me that day in his office, tall and bespectacled, always dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, his eyebrows raised as if to say, Don’t play coy with me, you know your life has been anything but ordinary.

"Write about the allure of Hollywood, and your experience of Orientalism, which unfortunately hasn’t gone away, he added. Think of it as your chance to tell future generations what it’s like to live in that kind of racist, small-minded world."

But I never even finished high school, I said.

You’re one of the smartest people I know, Bennett said, putting his pipe down and choosing a stack of books from his shelves. I don’t know anyone else in the movie business who sang and spoke in three different languages for the same film.

It was true, I did learn to speak German and French well enough back in the day. I’ll think about it.

You should, he said. Do you think I’d ask this of just anyone? I have a reputation to keep!

I laughed, and shook my head. I’ll try not to ruin your reputation, I told him, reaching for the books he passed to me.

The truth—although I’ve never told anyone, not even Lulu or Richard—is that I’ve already written down my story in three composition notebooks I bought at a local drugstore. What else was I going to do during my forced retirement? I smile to think they’re the same kind of notebooks I used in high school, black-and-white hardboard covers with lined pages and stitched binding. Unfortunately, my story includes others, and there are family and friends to consider. I can’t imagine what Lulu will say of me parading our family secrets in public. Haven’t I caused enough uproar to last a lifetime? But Bennett has planted the seed on purpose, knowing I can’t ignore a challenge. I’ve written articles over the years for Hollywood and European film magazines, and volumes of letters and postcards, birthday and Christmas cards to family and friends around the world. I’ve also written down these significant events in my life so they wouldn’t be lost in the fog of old age. I’ve brought the notebooks along on this trip. They’re in my bag on the seat next to me now. The thought of resurrecting my past terrifies me, as if I’m taking two steps back, just so I can move one step forward.

But as Bennett tells me, I have the power to change the discrepancies, tell my real story as I’ve lived it, if you have the strength, he adds.

I have the strength, but I’m not sure I have the courage.

And yet, I’ve convinced myself it’s time to face my fears. This train trip will give me the peace and quiet to read through the notebooks, to determine if I have a story worth telling. If so, maybe Bennett will get his book after all. And if not, no one will be the wiser.

All aboard! a voice cries out from the platform.

A horn blasts twice.

I sit back as the train trembles to a start before moving slowly out of the station, gradually picking up speed. Only when we’re at the outskirts of the city do I finally look away from the window, pick up the first notebook, and turn to the opening page.

We are defined by our history, my father always told us. If so, I’ll always be that little girl who was tormented at school. It remains one of my clearest memories, the first of many times I would be bullied into realizing what I’d have to do all my life: fight to prove that I was as American as everyone else.

Bits of Life

1913–1928

Chinabug

California Street Elementary School—1913

Where you going, Chink?

I walked faster, glancing back to see the small group of boys following close behind, their voices nasal and nasty.

Chink, Chink, Chinabug! they taunted. Go back where you belong!

Where was I supposed to go back to? I was born here in Los Angeles eight years ago, just like them. My parents were born in California too. My father, Wong Sam Sing, started the Sam Kee Laundry a few blocks from Chinatown, where I was born on Flower Street. My grandparents came over during the Gold Rush back in 1855 and never left. We were Americans, no matter how they tried to exclude us.

"I belong here!" I yelled back at them.

But they wouldn’t leave me alone. Go back to China, Chinabug!

My older sister, Lew Ying, called Lulu, was usually waiting for me outside after school, but this afternoon she was nowhere in sight. We used to go to school in Chinatown before my father moved the Sam Kee Laundry to North Figueroa Street, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chinatown where people of all different nationalities lived, so we could attend a public elementary school and adapt to others outside of the Chinese community.

This is America! Study hard and get good grades. Education will take you far, my father repeated to me and Lulu so often I’d stopped listening. The move had been hard for both of us. We were the only Chinese family on the block, and it felt very far away from my friends at our old school in Chinatown. Lulu, who was in fifth grade, also suffered through the name-calling, the pushing and bullying, but she was three years older, her body solid and strong compared to my thinner, more fragile build, which made me the easier target. We both tried to tough it out, saying nothing to our mother or father about the constant harassment. They were busy enough with our younger brothers and sister, and there was also the laundry to run.

Only when I was at school did I wish I were back working at the laundry, even with the piles of clothes we had to iron and fold and the steamy heat that flattened my hair. The reddish singe mark on the back of my hand was a constant reminder of the burn I suffered the past weekend while ironing. I couldn’t wait until the ugly mark faded and my skin was smooth and spotless again. Ma ma said I was too vain, that working hands were a sign of character. I have a lot of character, I told her, though I wasn’t sure what it meant. I knew I could never be like my sister, Lulu. She was a natural at washing clothes and pushing that heavy iron back and forth, while I always preferred to work up at the front counter, or to deliver the parcels of clean laundry to the houses and apartments throughout the neighborhood. I learned early on that if I said all the right things, Your dress is so pretty, or Something smells so good in there, batted my eyelashes innocently, and smiled, I’d receive a bigger tip.

But every morning, there was still school. My stomach began to hurt as soon as I stepped onto the schoolyard, anxiously waiting for what was going to happen next. There were only a handful of Chinese kids at the school, and I was the only one in my class. I was afraid my teacher wouldn’t like me if I complained about the boys and their bullying. What I’d learned growing up was that Chinese shouldn’t complain, shouldn’t draw attention to themselves, so I remained silent in the chalk-dust air of the crowded classroom. I endured the boy who sat behind me pulling on my pigtails or jabbing me in the back with a sharp pin, just hard enough to poke me but not draw blood. I didn’t make a sound. When the teacher wasn’t watching, I quickly turned around and swatted at him, but he leaned back just out of reach. Each morning my mother looked at me questioningly, mumbling, Too hot, in English, but I only shook my head when, even on a warm fall day I wore two layers of sweaters and on top of them, my thick, wool coat as protection against those pinpricks.

After school, when I saw the boys headed in my direction, I didn’t wait for Lulu. I ran across the schoolyard where I liked to play tag or kickball at recess and had just made it to the gate and out to the sidewalk when a hard tug on one of my pigtails jerked my head back. Where you going, Chinabug? one of the boys asked, shoving me hard against the fence.

My cheek stung as it scraped against the rough wood. It hurt, but I refused to cry in front of them. Instead, I clenched both my hands into fists, turned around, and swung hard, hitting the boy who pushed me into the fence in the stomach. He folded over, red faced with surprise. Just as I stepped back, ready to swing again, I heard Lulu calling my name. I looked up to see my sister running across the yard toward me, closing the distance, swinging her book bag in the air.

The boys scattered like ants in all different directions.

Lulu, breathing hard, dropped her book bag and gripped me by the shoulders, her dark piercing eyes scrutinizing the scrape on my cheek. Are you okay? she asked, and then pulled me closer to her.

I nodded, and breathed in the scent of mothballs and Tiger Balm on my ma ma’s old blouse that Lulu was wearing. Every time my sister outgrew a blouse, another appeared from our mother’s old wooden chest. Other orphaned clothing also appeared from the laundry my parents owned, shirts and pants abandoned by customers like forgotten pets. My ma ma was a magician; she cut them down to size and sewed them to fit her three daughters and two sons. I pressed closer to the comforting scent and finally began to cry, more out of anger and relief than fear. I wanted to tell Lulu how furious I was, how awful those boys had been to me the past two months, but I couldn’t find the words through my tears.

I know, Lulu said, rubbing my back. They don’t know anything. It’ll be okay, Liu-Tsong, it’ll be okay, she added, using my Chinese name, which meant Willow Frost, to comfort me just as ma ma would. "Tonight we’re going to tell baba how terrible it is at this school."

I pulled away from Lulu and nodded, wiping my tears with my sleeve. Lulu rarely used my Chinese name except when we were at home where ma ma almost always spoke to us in the Taishanese dialect of her ancestors from Southern China. Out in public, among our new German, Irish, and Mexican neighbors, we kids always used our English names—Lulu, Anna, James, Frank, and Mary—given to each of us by our parents at birth so that we’d always know that we were Chinese Americans. I looked at Lulu and put on a brave face, once again reminded that this was just as much home for us as it was for those boys.

The Silver Screen

Nickelodeon Movie Theater—1914

Names scrolled up the flickering screen in fancy black letters followed by the last of the movie credits before the screen blinked and faded into white, the silent movie over, the spell broken. I hated every time a movie ended. It felt like a candle had been suddenly blown out, leaving me alone in the dark. The electric piano music continued to play as the lights slowly rose, illuminating the shabby, sticky-floored, bare-walled theater below. There was a stale, greasy smell in the air. Mesmerized by the movie, I stayed seated on the hard wooden chair up in the first row of the balcony where