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Born Jan. 3, 1905, in Los Angeles' Chinatown, Wong played the lead role in the first Technicolor feature, The Toll of the Sea, in 1922, when she was just 17. By 19 she was intriguing against the movies' top action star, Douglas Fairbanks, in his super-production The Thief of Bagdad. At 23 she went to Europe, where she starred in a half-dozen A pictures - including her best one, E.A. Dupont's Piccadilly - and, when sound films arrived, performing roles in three languages: English, German and French.

She returned to the U.S. to share top billing with Hayakawa in a Fu Manchu melodrama, Daughter of the Dragon, and, a year later, was Marlene Dietrich's companion in Shanghai Express. After starring in three films in England, she anchored a series of B pictures at Paramount, a major studio, then starred in two more for a Poverty Row outfit.

Wong's eclat spread beyond the big screen. In 1929 and 1930 she starred in plays in London (The Circle of Chalk, with the young Laurence Olivier), Vienna (the title role in Tschun Tschi) and New York (the Broadway melodrama On the Spot, which she would film at Paramount as Dangerous to Know). Her cabaret act, which included songs in Cantonese, French, English, German, Danish, Swedish and other languages, took her from the U.S. to Europe to Australia.

She was a figure of exotic fashion around the world, feted by high society in London, Berlin and elsewhere. (You can see her glamour and stature in a Jan. In 1938, Look magazine named her the "world's most beautiful Chinese girl."

Visit Frosted Yellow Willoes - The Life and Times of Anna May Wong