CATCH A CLASSIC
Star of the Month: Anna May Wong
TCM, Beginning at 7 p.m.
Turner Classic Movies’ monthlong Thursday night celebration of pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong continues this evening with three of her films, followed by an encore presentation of the 2019 documentary Yellowface: Asian Whitewashing and Racism in Hollywood. The film lineup begins with Daughter of Shanghai (pictured) (1937), a crime drama prepared specifically as a starring vehicle for Wong and one of her few films where she has top
billing. It’s also a film that is unique for its time in that it features two prominent Asian American actors as leads. Wong plays Lan Ying Lin, a woman who turns detective to track down the human traffickers who killed her father, joined in the process by government agent Kim Lee (portrayed by Philip Ahn, a pioneer among Korean American actors in Hollywood). The thriller was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2006. After that is a film featuring a much smaller role for Wong: 1933’s A Study in Scarlet, a mystery led by Reginald Owen as Sherlock Holmes. Wong, despite her second billing in the film, gets about 10 minutes of screen time here as Mrs. Pyke, one of the suspects in a series of murders among members of a secret society. The final film airing before the documentary encore is When Were You Born (1938), another murder mystery. Wong plays an astrologer who, to clear her name, uses her zodiacal skills
to help police catch a killer after the man whose death she predicted is indeed found dead under suspicious circumstances the next day.