The late Hollywood star Anna Could Wong would be the first Asian-American featured on U.S. foreign money when the U.S. Mint ships out quarters that includes her likeness, starting subsequent week.
Wong was an actress throughout Hollywood’s silent-film period and was the primary Asian American to have a star on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame. The coin’s “tails” aspect will function Wong surrounded by marquee lights to emphasise her star energy, in line with the press launch from the U.S. Mint.
“This quarter is designed to mirror the breadth and depth of accomplishments by Anna Could Wong, who overcame challenges and obstacles she confronted throughout her lifetime,” mentioned Mint Director Ventris C. Gibson.
The actress, who was born in Los Angeles in 1905 and died in 1961, appeared in additional than 60 films, together with one of many first made in Technicolor.
Whereas profitable, Wong was usually pigeonholed into roles that performed to racial stereotypes, together with the maid, the slave or the antagonist.
“Why is it that the display Chinese language is sort of all the time the villain of the piece, and so merciless a villain — murderous, treacherous, a snake within the grass,” she advised the Los Angeles Occasions in 1933. “We aren’t like that.”
The actress moved to Europe for a time and starred in roles throughout the continent.
She additionally was severely underpaid in comparison with her co-stars.
A 2005 article in Time reported that her top-billed function in “Daughter of the Dragon” solely earned $6,000. Co-star Warner Oland, alternatively, earned $12,000 for 23 minutes of display time.
She earned the identical quantity for her third-billed function in “Shanghai Specific,” whereas co-star Marlene Dietrich was paid greater than $78,000.
Wong is the fifth installment within the Mint’s American Girl Quarters sequence.
The opposite girls featured to this point are poet Maya Angelou, astronaut Sally Journey, suffragist Nina Otero-Warren, and the Cherokee Nation’s first feminine principal chief, Wilma Mankiller.
Wong‘s coin will enter circulation on Monday.
