Anna May Wong

For me the best thing about Piccadilly was Anna May Wong as Shosho. In the film she is radiant and so beautiful. She had me captivated and I guess wanting to find out more. So many of the pictures just transfix you. She is startling and so divine. To me she is an old world beauty that modern actresses can never measure up to. I found that she became fixed in mind so I thought I might share with you some more that I found out about her.

Anna May Wong was the first notable Chinese American Actress. She was born in January 3 1905. Her first role was in the silent film Red Lantern (1919) as an un-credited extra. Her ethnicity prevented her from getting many choice roles during much of her career. When MGM was casting for The Good Earth (1937), she was offered the part of Lotus, but Wong refused to be the only Chinese American playing the only negative character, stating: "...I won't play the part. If you let me play O-lan, I'll be very glad. But you're asking me - with Chinese blood - to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters."

Despite the racists attitudes at the time she still manged to have a number of significant films roles. In Piccadilly she plays Shosho, the scullery maid who becomes a dancing marvel and an object of desire for impresario Valentine. In the film she displays the cold ambition and manipulative sexuality of the classic femme fatale. Yet she also has vulnerability that gives her character a sense of depth.

Piccadilly's publicity made much of Wong's exotic beauty: one picture used for promotion featured her topless and many more convey her brilliant sexuality. It would have been unthinkable to portray a white actress in this way however Wong, being exotic and Chinese was seen as the ‘other’.

Just as she was the femme fatale in the film she was in life. Wong never married, largely because of the Chinese custom of the time for a wife to stay at home, coupled with miscegnation laws, though she reportedly was a mistress to a number of men. Anna became know for her fluid grace and languid sexuality and even had her own televsion show.