Word: actorisms
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...Wong may have broken through the Hollywood race barrier, but her success didn't help others; no studio boss told his casting director, "Get me another Anna May Wong!" It didn't even help her. When Hollywood made movies about Chinese people, it simply put white actors in "yellowface." The term is a misnomer. Whereas a white actor playing a black was obliged to dab cork to darken the visage, a white playing an "Oriental" character didn't change face color but applied spirit gum to give the eyes a higher slant...
...theatrical tradition of white actors in "yellowface" precedes movies, and the innate realism of films didn't discourage early actors. In 1919, the year Richard Barthelmess played the sensitive "chink" in Broken Blossoms, the Danish actor Warner Oland played his first Chinese in The Lightning Raider. Oland looked no more Chinese than, say, Bob Keeshan, yet he was cast "yellow" dozens of times, including in four films with Wong, and culminating in 16 Charlie Chan movies. When Oland died, in 1938, Missouri-born Sidney Toler was tabbed to replace him; he played the sleuth in 22 films, until his death...
...Daughter of Shanghai she again stars with an Asian, the Korean actor Philip Ahn (though he was billed 10th). She's the daughter of an antique dealer who is threatened, and killed, by a smuggling ring he is trying to expose. In an early scene, smugglers are shown flying aliens into the country; when the Feds close in on them, they jettison their human payload. (An identical scene appears two years later in Secret Service of the Air, the first in Ronald Reagan's Brass Bancroft series.) Wong turns globe-trotting sleuth to learn the identity of the smugglers...
...films. Now he was the famous name and she the filler. (Also in 1960, Quinn starred as an Inuit in Nicholas Ray's The Savage Innocents - opposite another actress, Marie Yang, who in this film was billed as Anna May Wong! It may be the only instance of an actor appearing with two actresses of the same name in the same year...
...Actor Michael Douglas, who is married to Zeta-Jones, received the Man of the Year Award in 1992. Four years later, actress Susan Sarandon, who has been in a relationship with Robbins since 1988, was named the Woman of the Year...