Word: hollywoodism
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...that limited her emotional range. She rarely giggled or shrieked; her voice suggested that she was either disdainful or incapable of severe highs and lows. She wasn't one to spit out rapid-fire dialogue, a vocal reticence that would have limited her roles even in a color-blind Hollywood. Saucy comedy, of the sort Jean Harlow personified, was out, as was the scalding, wiseacre melodrama, Barbara Stanwyck-style. Wong could flash a regal hauteur and, when called for, that sensuality. She could have played grand-dame roles of the sort essayed by Garbo - she certainly could match the Swede...
...poles of Wong's screen appeal were that she was nonchalantly sexual (in many films the slim-chested actress wears no bra, thus allowing viewers to ogle at what Sanney Leung on the invaluable Hong Kong Entertainment News in Review website refers to as "two points") and vaguely forbidding. Hollywood couldn't ignore her allure, and had taken notice of her stardom in Europe. Finally, in 1931, at 26, she got top billing in her first American talkie, director Lloyd Corrigan's Daughter of the Dragon - which, in its unabashed melodramatic excess, its rampaging ethnic stereotypes and the opportunity...
...villainess, she is just getting started. Revealing her mission to Ronald, she tells him she plans to kill Joan - "Because you must have a thousand bitter tastes of death before you die." (The ripe dialogue is by Hollywood neophyte Sidney Buchman, whose distinguished list of credits would include Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Here Comes Mr Jordan and The Talk of the Town.) She soon ascends on a geyser of madness as she decides on a new torture: "My vengeance is inspired tonight. You will first have the torture of seeing her beauty eaten slowly away by this hungry acid...
...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...
...Hollywood's rationale, put baldly, went like this: 1. East Asians look just like "us," only their eyes go up funny, so they can be played by European Americans with the help of spirit gum. And 2. Asian-American actors don't have the training or star power to sell a movie character or a movie ticket...