Anna May Wong

She was an American, born in Los Angeles. But under the Chinese Exclusion laws an American “of the Chinese race” who meant to travel had to prove her citizenship before she went, or risk not being let back in. On 6 April she swore to an immigration inspector that she was born at 351 South Flower Street on 3 January 1905, that she was “with Paramount Pictures”, and that she would sail “From San Pedro on the ‘Matsonia’ May 4, 1939”. The form was approved a week later.

On a Paramount set she told Lon Jones, the Sydney Morning Herald’s man in Hollywood, why she was going.

She had joined the Canadian-Australasian liner Aorangi at Honolulu on 17 May, with fourteen American acts for the same Tivoli bill. The ship reached Auckland with five passengers recovering from chickenpox, and bad weather after Suva had put her a day behind: Sydney on Sunday, not Saturday. The Consul-General for China, Dr C. J. Pao, and Madame Pao called off the welcome they had planned for her at Point Piper.

She landed on Sunday morning at No. 5 Darling Harbour. Dr and Madame Pao and many of Sydney’s Chinese community met the ship, and the Consul-General’s secretary, Mrs L. Young, greeted her on board. Babe Didrikson and the Vienna Mozart Boys’ Choir came off the same ship. Cinesound and Fox Movietone filmed her coming down the gangway in her fur coat; Fox’s 47 seconds, in which she thanks the Paos, are at the National Film and Sound Archive.

She called on Dr Pao that afternoon and took the Melbourne express that night.

Revealed in 1945: a detective working with Military Intelligence went aboard with the Cinesound cameraman who had come for pictures of her. Off Garden Island he saw a Japanese passenger photographing the warships with a telephoto Leica, and had the cameraman film him doing it. By that account it was Military Intelligence’s first contact with Japanese espionage in Australia, three months before the war.

The Spirit of Progress brought her into Spencer Street at 11.30 with her pianist, Merrill La Fontaine. At midday hundreds met her in the Tivoli’s vestibule, the lunch-hour crowd filled Bourke Street, and 3KZ broadcast an interview twice. The Age began with Melbourne’s own Rose Quong, who had played with her in London ten years before.

At Lady Latham’s gala for the Children’s Hospital she sat in a stage box with Sir John and Lady Latham, the Lord Mayor and Larry Adler, and was given an ovation when she appeared.

Melbourne’s Chinese community gave her a reception and dance at Menzies’ Hotel, the Young Chinese League’s president, F. A. Chinn, in the chair. She wore orange crepe trimmed with jade green.

At rehearsals the company heard what sounded like a machine gun, and found her calmly watching a bundle of firecrackers go off in her dressing-room.

Frank Neil’s all-American bill opened on Monday 12 June, twice a day, with her at the top of it in the second half: a Chinese song, a French one, a send-up of “the Australian girl”, and Noël Coward’s “Half-Caste Woman”, in Chinese costume before a Chinese set. With her were Betty Burgess and Sonny Lamont, the Andrini Brothers, “Bugs” Wilson, who was the voice of Grumpy in Snow White, the Athrillos and the Tivoli Ballet. She had called her act “a pot-pourri of elocution, a little singing and perhaps a mad venture into dramatics”. Most critics were charmed. The Bulletin was not.

That morning, at the last rehearsal before the first matinee, she showed The Sun News-Pictorial’s Jonathan Swift the shoe she kept as her mascot. It is the lucky shoe of the book’s title (below).

Between Tivoli shows she appeared in person at the Capitol, where her new Paramount picture, King of Chinatown, was showing: “See her in the foyer.”

Table Talk’s interviewer saw King of Chinatown, then met her in her dressing-room at the Tivoli.

Foy’s advertised that she would lunch in its Radio Hall on Friday and then shop in its departments. The Argus caught her in the shoe department with a shoe in her lap: the only photograph of her with shoes in the Australian papers.

On Sunday George Fitzwater of Neal’s Motors drove her to Healesville, her first sight of the bush, for the Grand Hotel and the Sir Colin MacKenzie Sanctuary. A month later she told a Sydney columnist she had no intention of paying “the traditional visit to see the koalas”.

In silver fox over a vermilion and gold Chinese gown, she heard the Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence’s first Melbourne recital. When Lawrence sang “Danny Boy” she whispered to the columnist beside her that her make-up was ruined.

Lady Latham, the Chancellor’s wife, gave a luncheon for her in the Union House at the University of Melbourne; Professor G. S. Browne showed her round, and she met students before she left. Seventy-one years later, students at the same university made her shoes.

A new sketch went into her act, “based on an actual incident in the Eastern situation”: the Japanese blockade of the British concession at Tientsin. She played a young Chinese girl defying an enemy general. It was probably the first dramatic sketch by the Tivoli’s gag-writer, Fred Parsons.

At the Grand National Steeplechase she was the one the social pages wrote down.

The Melbourne season closed on Saturday 15 July, after five weeks. She went to Sydney by the overnight express the next night.

Deputations from the New South Wales Chinese Women’s Relief Fund and the Young Chinese League met her at Central Station. Mrs Mane gave her red roses for the China Women’s Relief Fund Committee, and the crowd cheered. She was asked about the war in China.

To the Herald’s Jack Meander she joked about all the wongs in Australian place names.

The welcome called off in June: dinner in her honour at the Consul-General’s house at Point Piper, with red candles and camellias, a pailou of sugar, and Chinese silk mats more than a hundred years old.

The show opened in Sydney on Thursday 20 July, twice a day, to a “vociferous welcome”, with the Paos in a box. Sydney saw “At the Barricade”, and its critics called it propaganda.

On opening night she spent forty-five minutes on her make-up. Her act was number 13 on the call sheet; firecrackers and joss sticks sat on her dressing-table.

She had acquired a collie since coming to Sydney, and had him measured for a rug at David Jones’s.

The Daily Telegraph printed an article under her name about the war in China.

In the morning she met thirty workers of the Young Chinese Relief Movement at the Wentworth to plan a ball in her name. In the afternoon the International Society entertained her with the Consul-General for Poland, Dr L. de Noskowski, and she gave him a buttonhole. Five weeks later Germany invaded Poland.

Brisbane’s Truth asked about a rumoured romance with an Englishman. Her answer was one word, and then a few more.

The August number of The Home printed five portraits of her by the Melbourne photographer Athol Shmith. Max Dupain photographed her for the same magazine, and in July the Sydney photographer John Lee made the portrait he printed two years later.

The Australian Women’s Weekly asked famous people for their most memorable meal. Hers was in Shanghai.

After her Tivoli performance she went on to a ball in her name at the Wentworth, given by the Young Chinese Relief Movement for an ambulance unit in China. Her name was spelt out in sweet peas over the official table, guests wore “lucky portrait buttons” of her, and she sold signed photographs. It raised £35 13s 10d.

The Tivoli advertised her last four days: a cable had offered her a part in a new film, and Frank Neil had released her five days early. Her last night was a “Gala Farewell” on Thursday 17 August. In her last days she was “out” to every caller, and one night two hundred people waited for her at the stage door in vain.

The Matson liner Monterey sailed at 11 from No. 1A Darling Harbour with Artur Schnabel, Charlotte Greenwood and Adolph Zukor aboard and about five thousand people on the wharf. Her cabin held Australian beer, 150 skeins of wool, rugs, toy koalas, and seeds of waratah, boronia, desert pea and Christmas bush. She signed a boomerang, and sent a message to a meeting to boycott Japanese goods.

The Monterey called at Auckland, Suva and Pago Pago and reached Honolulu on 30 August, where the immigration service stamped her form: “Shore leave granted”.

On 3 September Britain, and then Australia, declared war on Germany. Her papers have her readmitted at San Pedro that day: “Readmitted at San Pedro, California. SS President Taft Sept. 3, 1939”, on the receipt she signed for them, though the stamp on her form says the 4th and the papers here had her sailing all the way in the Monterey. The Australian papers record nothing she said about the war in Europe. Her last words here had been about China.