Anna May Wong Steps into the Spotlight

August 7, 1889. In Liverpool's St. George's Hall, an American woman named Florence Maybrick stands behind iron bars, dressed in mourning black… for the husband she's accused of murdering. The evidence against her is thin: James Maybrick was a longtime arsenic addict who bought th ...  Show more

Listen to all 20 episodes of World War II with Tom Hanks wherever you get your podcasts!The war is over, and the Allies are triumphant. The United States and the Soviet Union initially work together to establish a new world order, but over the course of the next four years these ...  Show more

Anna May Wong wasn't supposed to be in the movies. Her laundryman father was dead set against it. And Hollywood preferred white actors in "yellow face" for Asian characters. But Wong knew what she wanted. With her talent, beauty and tenacity, she ran a gauntlet of social and lega ...  Show more

Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theatre, radio, and American television. Born in Los Angeles, yet with her US citizenship scrutinised due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong—a defiant ...  Show more

We're joined today by Katie Gee Salisbury, author of the new Anna May Wong biography Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong. Katie helps guide us through a discussion of Anna May Wong's life from childhood through Hollywood and European stardom, her tr ...  Show more

The trailblazing Chinese actress reflects on childhood stardom in China, coming to America and starting from scratch, building a career in films like 'The Last Emperor' and 'Heaven & Earth' and, decades later, garnering some of the best reviews of her career — and Oscar buzz — fo ...  Show more