I Don’t Belong to You: Autobiography in Anna May Wong’s Pavement Butterfly

| Ben Jarman |

Pavement Butterfly plays with a live accompaniment at the Trylon Cinema from Sunday, November 10th, through Tuesday, November 12th. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information.


In 1928, Anna May Wong said “No!” to Hollywood. Before leaving Tinseltown, she made an unmistakable name for herself, taking on supporting roles that would often overshadow the lead actors and actresses. With that fame, Wong received constant attention from the press for her effortless flapper style, cementing her as a Hollywood icon. Unfortunately, Hollywood did not elevate her into leading roles because having a Chinese love interest in a movie was considered forbidden to the public. Tired of this status, Wong jumped at the chance to work outside of the United States, where roles she obtained often mirrored many lessons and aspects of her life in Hollywood. With this move, an always independent Wong shed any sense of ownership Hollywood had over her.

In the film, Pavement Butterfly, Wong is cast as Mah, a dancer at a circus. Early in the film, Mah charms the circus audience exactly like Wong did with her theater audience. Look at Wong receiving her first big break from Douglas Fairbanks, casting her in the successful 1924 film The Thief of Bagdad. Fairbanks went to a screening of The Toll of the Sea, a film made by scientists to test out a new two-color film process. Wong was in the film and caught Fairbanks’s attention. In a new biography titled Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong, author Katie Gee Salisbury writes, “The delicate, pink-hued face of Anna May Wong, only seventeen and virtually unknown at the time, framed in dramatic chiaroscuro, her eyes glistening pools of feeling, proved unforgettable” (15).1 This “unforgettable” image that Wong carried from film to film—and even in public—radiates in this opening scene of Pavement Butterfly; men and women alike appear to be hypnotized by her presence. Here, the circus stands in ironically as a symbol of the films she made in Hollywood.

Mah eventually needs to escape from circus life. This is her first escape from ownership in the film. Anna May Wong never needed to flee America because she was framed for murder like Mah, but she did leave the country for other serious reasons. After the success of The Thief from Bagdad, Wong wanted to break away from Chinese stereotypes that were so common in Hollywood cinema. She often had to play supporting characters in films starring lesser-known white actresses in yellowface. Again, Salisbury explains, “Anna May Wong was fed up. Hollywood couldn’t get past her race and what it dictated for her gender in screen” (98). This racism forced her into roles in which she was the villain and/or killed off before she had a chance to find true love. “Happy endings could not be permitted to someone like Anna May Wong, a woman of color” (98). She tried to play along with the casting, film by film, but Wong was conscious of her place as a fashionable star all while maintaining her Chinese heritage; she refused to compromise either. At this point though, she had enough attention from the German film industry to leave the grasp of the United States behind. 

After her escape from the circus, Mah from Pavement Butterfly finds safety with a starving artist. The two obsess over one another and help each other achieve their dreams; this bond eventually leads to the first sale of the artist’s work. The painting is a portrait of Mah which is sold to a wealthy socialite just after he sees her dancing in the street. Duplicating the image of Mah and selling it to another man makes Mah a transactional item between two men from different social spectrums. The same was true for Anna May Wong, quickly becoming an international sensation. “She made damned well certain they saw she was no shrinking lotus, but everything one had come to expect of an American “It” girl,” writes Salisbury (81). The artist and the socialite, infatuated with Mah in Pavement Butterfly, influence her life like Wong is influenced by the film industry. Wong knew she needed to stay strong to carve her path as producers and showmen attempted to dictate her every move.

Though she received artistic freedom like never before in Europe, Anna May Wong would find herself back home because her mother was ill. Before she left Europe, Wong encountered much of the same racism she experienced in America when completing films in which she was finally the lead. Salisbury explains, “The British Board of Film Censors had made it their business to issue an edict on the occurrence of interracial romance in The Flame of Love. A kiss between Anna May and John Longden’s characters had been written in the script. In the British censor’s opinion, it was ‘unseemly for English eyes to watch a kiss between an English actor and an actress whose skin is not white’” (153). For all the open-mindedness in Europe, racism still lingered even for a star of Wong’s status. 

Mah in Pavement Butterfly is not a star like Anna May Wong, but she is the focus of attention of many men. The adoration is intoxicating at first, but Mah realizes that she is losing herself for the people who think of her as an item to own. Unlike Mah, Wong, early on, realized her identity was in flux; she saw no difference between herself and her white classmates until they attacked her. As her star elevated, she needed to become fashionable to the public, but Wong enjoyed the lifestyle of a star. “Outside of the fame and money that came with success, Anna May was having a grand ol’ time. She was nineteen, beautiful, and whip-smart despite never having completed high school. She had a quip or comeback for everything, and that made her amusing fare at cocktail hour” Salisbury suggests (59). Parallel to this, Wong never wavered away from her Chinese identity. In an interview, Wong says, “I’ll explain the best I can how it feels to be an America-born Chinese girl—proud of her parents and of her race, yet so thoroughly Americanized as to demand independence, a career, a life her own” (83). Nobody owned her identity, but like Mah in Pavement Butterfly, people tried to make her their own. 

Hollywood producers were then and still now are on the hunt for the most fashionable trends to display in their films. These trends fill seats in movie theaters but aren’t always the most thoughtful reflection of our society or of the talents bringing films to life. By the end of Pavement Butterfly, Mah realizes she does not belong to anyone. Anna May Wong knew this too and was aware of Hollywood’s attempts to own her. Wong was an actress audiences adored when portraying certain roles and Hollywood producers capitalized on her popularity. Both Mah and Wong are powerful enough to force institutions to disown them and that is what they want; lives and careers to call their own. The movies Wong made in Europe track this phenomenon—one that not only put her at the very top of the opening credits, but also showed her character learning to be her own person, not belonging to anyone.


Footnotes

1  Salisbury, K. G. (2024). Not your China doll: The wild and shimmering life of Anna May Wong. Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.


Edited by Olga Tchepikova-Treon

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