American Women Quarters - Actress Anna May Wong
WillieBoyd2
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This month the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable channel has been showing films starring Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong.
Before showing the 1949 film "Impact" Turner's host Ben Mankiewicz gave a short biography of the actress and noted that:
"This year, Wong will appear on the face of the quarter as part of a special collection from the U.S. Mint honoring five pioneering women who changed American history".
Anna May Wong's quarter is part of the 2022 American Women Quarters Program and her coin is scheduled to be issued in October 2022.
The CoinNews.Net site has an article about the coins with a drawing of the Anna May Wong quarter:
https://www.coinnews.net/2022/01/28/2022-american-women-quarter-images-and-release-dates
Anna May Wong's last film appearance was in the 1960 film "Portrait in Black".
"Portrait in Black" - Anna May Wong and friend
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TCM was showing some of hers early motion pictures yesterday.
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Exactly how did Anna May Wong 'change (d) American history'??? I know she was an actress, though I do not recall seeing any movie she was in. However, that, IMO, is not a history changing activity. Cheers, RickO
Personal or professional achievement, particularly as an American minority in the 50's and 60's, warrants recognition.
@derryb.... Certainly. However, I am looking at the verbiage 'changed American history'.... and I do not consider acting to be a qualifier for such a significant category. Cheers, RickO
She's not being recognized for just being an actress, she's being recognized for being the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood. If you take a look at the other four honorees, it is the fact that they were leaders in their profession that earned them recognition.
I googled her and she was in the movie Shanghai Express in 1932, among others.
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"Wong's image and career have left a notable legacy. Through her films, public appearances and prominent magazine features, she helped to humanize Chinese Americans to mainstream American audiences during a period of intense racism and discrimination. Chinese Americans had been viewed as perpetually foreign in U.S. society, but Wong's films and public image established her as a Chinese-American citizen at a time when laws discriminated against Chinese immigration and citizenship. Wong's hybrid image dispelled contemporary notions that the East and West were inherently different." (Wikipedia)
Did her actual movies change American history, per se? Not really. But that fact that she was in them when she was in them is historically significant. Just like no single game played by Jackie Robinson is by itself earth-shattering, but that fact that he played ball when he played ball changed the course of American history.
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I watched TCM the night Ben M. gave the introduction to the Wong movie. I thought the part about her changing American history was just over the top. Then I watched the movie. It was so lame that it was just downright silly......good for a few laughs. She was a detective that solved crimes by knowing the Birth Signs of the people involved. Like those old SiFi movies from the 50's that were so bad they were actually funny.......Corny.......Changing American history?....Yea, right.......one sign of the Zodiac at a time.😵
If it had been up to me to pick an actress to put on a coin, I would go with Veronica Lake. She actually did have an impact on American history. She played a very significant role in the Rosie The Riveter story.
And She was an inspiration for the Boys doing the fighting..
Talk about A Face That Could Launch 1000 Ships!
Oooh La La!
I watched the film about Astrology, "When were you born".
It was a comedy and not meant to be serious.
Possibly Anna May Wong introduced other Hollywood people, some well known, to Astrology.
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Willie, when I first read your post, I thought, o.k., I'm wrong.....it was a comedy. I'm wrong lots of times! It WAS funny......so yeah, it was a comedy..........THEN.......I looked it up. Reviews on the movie......
1) Turner Classic Movies....... Suspense/Thriller
2) Imdb......Mystery/Romance
3) Wikipedia..... Mystery
4) Rotten Tomatoes....... Mystery/Thriller
Bottom Line.......I agree with you Willie. That Anna May Wong movie was definitely a comedy. I don't care what anyone else says about it. Just that movie alone makes her the perfect person to put on a quarter.
I admit it. I'm A little different. When I think of "Pioneering Women in American History," for some wierd reason this comes to mind.......
And not this......
Oh, Well. That's just me.
I see both sides of the above argument, so I won't add anything there.
But, if I were to choose an actress who had a DEFINITE impact on history, I'd go with Hedy Lamarr, who (among other inventions) drew up plans for "frequency hopping" on a napkin, with the goal of helping the Allies defeat the Nazis. An interesting read below: ........
_Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr, “the Angelina Jolie of her day,” was also an avid inventor and the person behind advances in communication technology in the 1940s that led to today’s Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth. People thought she was way too dazzlingly beautiful to have come up with the brilliant idea of ”frequency hopping” : a way of jumping around on radio frequencies in order to avoid a third party jamming your signal. Lamarr invented it in the 1940s for use as a secret wartime communication system that could keep the enemy from interfering with a ship’s torpedoes. She got a patent for it in August 1942, and then donated it to the U.S. military to help fight the Nazis.
When she gave it to them, the Navy said, “What do you want to do, put a player piano inside a torpedo? Get out of here!” And so they didn’t use it during WW2. It was afterwards that it emerged as a way of secretly communicating on all the gadgets that we use today. It took decades for Lamarr to receive any recognition for her incredible invention. Finally, in 1997, she was honored by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (and Army, Navy, & Air Force), but, by that time, late in her life, she’d become a recluse.
During her heyday, Lamarr was considered the most beautiful woman in the world. Her face was the inspiration for Disney’s Snow White and for Catwoman. She was a famous Hollywood star who would finish performing on set with Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, and Spencer Tracy, and then go back to her trailer and work on her inventions. _
Another of Anna May Wong's films that TCM showed was a 1942 film titled "Lady from Chungking" where Wong played the leader of a Chinese resistance group fighting the Japanese invaders.
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I had never heard of her before and initially confused her with Barbara Jean Wong, who was, among other things, the lead in "The Cinnamon Bear". https://otrcat.com/p/barbara-jean-wong
Unfortunately there is another series scheduled to follow right after this one. I believe it was sports themed.
Just out of curiosity, has there been a surge in interest/collecting created by these new quarters? Our prior Whitman blue folders are filled, and I started looking on-line for the new "Washington Crossing the Delaware & American Women" folder #4950, and virtually everyone is out-of-stock or back-ordered, with one or 2 stating they don't know "if or when" they might again be available.......... That surprised me. Or is it a supply chain issue, as they appear to come from China?
I really like the Anna May Wong quarter, I have 1 slabbed.
And the women's silver set.
My current registry sets:
20th Century Type Set
Virtual DANSCO 7070
Slabbed IHC set - Missing the Anacs Slabbed coins
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I got mine about a month ago, names only go through 2022. They'll probably make another one when all names are known.
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Nothing against Anna Mae and what she did/meant, but she does seem like a comparatively obscure choice to be on the quarter.
I think a lot may dependent on perspective. The fact that Chinese people in this country were so very poorly treated might change your outlook if you were Chinese and possibly ANY iconic figure that might bring pride to the community would take on a significance.
Well, just Love coins, period.
This debate is interesting, folks! I am enjoying reading this and learning something. I never knew a thing about Anna May Wong.
I just read her biography on IMDB, and it's amazing what she went through. The prejudicial laws against Chinese-Americans in the early 1900s was amazing. Aside from Chinese parts being played by Caucasian women dressed in "yellow face", Wong was Chinese in a country that excluded (by law) Chinese from emigrating to the US, that forbade (by law) Chinese from marrying Caucasians and that generally excluded (by law or otherwise) Chinese from the culture at large, except for bit roles as heavies in the national consciousness.
I thought the same about Millard Fillmore on a dollar coin.
Chinese were brought to the US to work in the gold fields in California, they would work long days for little pay and didn't complain, go on strike etc. When the Central Pacific - later Southern Pacific was short of workers for the Transcontinental Railroad in California and Nevada, Charles Crocker, one of the Big Four suggested hiring Chinese and soon they became a driving force in the blasting through the Sierra Nevada. Curiously they didn't take many sick days like their Caucasian counterparts - they boiled all the water they made their tea with and didn't get digestive maladies that the Caucasian workers did.
When the construction was done they were quickly marginalized in society and banned from living in many locales.
If any hollywood actress should be featured, I would have preferred to see Josephine Baker then Wong. She's so historical, it's mind boggling.
Justine Johnstone is another. Silent Film actress turned research scientist. She contributed to the treatment for syphilis at the time, helped discover what all the colors of urine mean, she helped advance skin cancer research, and oh yeah, she was part of the team that developed the modern intravenous drip technique.
She also had no college education, she learned from books. And she had a laboratory built into her own home. And yet, this women is forgotten today. Even her granddaughter didn't know what she contributed till adulthood and she herself is a hospice nurse.
I agree! I needed one of these new quarters for my Type Set, so I thought I bought the Sally Ride one. After reading all of the above, was it the wong one that I bought?
My collecting “Pride & Joy” is my PCGS Registry Dansco 7070 Set:
https://www.pcgs.com/setregistry/type-sets/design-type-sets/complete-dansco-7070-modified-type-set-1796-date/publishedset/213996
Yes, it was. You should get 2 Wongs, but you need to realize that 2 Wongs don't make a Ride.