Pictures and the Picturegoer (Jan-Dec 1925)

FEBRUARY 1925 Pictures and Pictvrepuer 13 Does she, chameleon like, become as thoroughly Chinese when among her own people? Are her Americanisms merely part of a clever pose? That she is an exceptionally clever actress one cannot doubt. She may merely wander through a corner of the picture, but she'H register a hit, every time. Witness the delightful flashes of her in Lilies of the Field. Which is the real Arma May Wong? The Chinese maiden or the American one? I sought her out not long ago, endeavouring to find an answer. She had just returned from a sojourn among the peaks of the Canadian Rockies, where, with Thomas Meighan, Estelle Taylor and other famous Players Lasky talent, she did her bit toward giving The Alaskan to a waiting film world. She was. she declared, when we became settled in her dressing-room, feeling low. " Maybe the altitude up there affected me," she said ; " but say, do vou ever wonder what Life's all about, anyway?" I agreed that occasionally I did. "Sometimes it hardly seems worth while to go on living," she continued, moodily regarding the toe of her smart white kid slipper. "Why worry?" I remarked. She's all Oriental when in her native background, but with Americans she becomes one of them immediately. "(^\h, I don't know," Anna May sighed restlessly. ^'Tm pretty tall for a Chinese girl, you know," she added. " It always seems to hand a director a shock when he sees me for the first time. They all have the idea I should be about four feet tall. I guess most of them don't know that the people from the North of China aren't small." Anna's parents came from there. She was born, though, in Los Angeles. " But not in Chinatown," she told me. " I never lived down there. My father has a laundry. I'm not ashamed of thaf. He sold it once, but bought it back again. He said he'd die inside a year if he didn't have something to occupy his mind, so he might as well have his laundry, I guess." " Do your parents dislike having you work in the studios?" " Oh, they didn't like it at first," said Anna May. " But my father has given up trying to rule me, now. A Chinese man does absolutely rule his family, you know. Sometimes I wonder how my mother can stand it to ' yes ' my father all the time. Believe me — nothing like that for me ! " Funny — the way I got into pictures. I'd always been crazy about them, ever since I was a little kid. Used to go to movie shows every chance I got. My father told my teachers to punish me every time they caught me doing it, but that didn't stop me. I remember following a Ruth Roland serial once. I guess I got whipped after each instalment. "One day a friend took me out to one of the studios. Marshal! Neilan was making Dinty. He asked me to come to work the next day. Can you beat it?" queried Anna. " It was just like a story. I've worked in pictures ever since." " You're happiest in the studio environment, among Americans?" I asked her. " I — I couldn't give up my work, to live the life of an average Chinese woman, if that's what you mean," she said. " I couldn't be happy married to a man who'd make me do that. Not long ago I visited some Chinese friends in San Francisco. Say, the women didn't do anything but sit around and talk about their husbands and babies, and their housework. I couldn't live such a narrow life." I was satisfied. Anna May Wong is as American as she appears to be. Keen, ambitious and abreast of the times. H.C. o s II <: N ▲f V> Anna May declares she will never give up her work and live the life of an^rdinary Chinese woman.