Six months soon after she was immortalized with a U.S. quarter, Asian American Hollywood trailblazer Anna Might Wong has acquired a further accolade affirming her icon standing — her have Barbie.
Mattel announced Monday the release of an Anna May Wong doll for Asian American and Pacific Islanders Heritage Thirty day period.
The figure has her trademark bangs, eyebrows and properly-manicured nails. The doll is dressed in a pink gown with a shiny golden dragon style and design and cape, motivated by her overall look in the 1934 film “Limehouse Blues.”
Wong’s niece, Anna Wong, gave her blessing and worked closely with the manufacturer to create the Barbie’s search.
“I did not wait at all. It was this sort of an honor and so interesting,” Wong explained to The Connected Press in an e-mail. “I needed to make guaranteed they obtained her facial capabilities and apparel suitable. And they did!”
As a youngster, Anna Wong owned a Barbie and Skipper doll (Barbie’s little sister) and a Barbie aspiration home and automobile. She enjoys the strategy that Asian kids will now have a doll who seems to be like them.
The doll is portion of the Barbie “Inspiring Women” sequence, which functions dolls in the likeness of revolutionary gals. Earlier inspirations include things like aviator Amelia Earhart and artist Frida Kahlo.
“As the initially Asian American actor to direct a U.S. television exhibit, whose perseverance broke down boundaries for her gender and AAPI community in movie and Tv, Anna May perhaps Wong is the ideal in shape for our Barbie Inspiring Gals Sequence,” Lisa McKnight, an executive vice president at Mattel, said in a assertion.
Born in Los Angeles, the Chinese American actor is deemed the to start with important Asian American movie star. She started out throughout the silent movie era in the 1920s and gained worldwide observe in films like “The Thief of Bagdad” as very well as for her vogue perception. In the ’30s, Anna May Wong was acting opposite actors like Marlene Dietrich in “Shanghai Specific.” But in 1937, she dropped the direct job of a Chinese villager in “The Superior Earth” to Luise Rainer, a white actor who went on to earn a ideal actress Oscar.
In the ensuing many years, Anna May perhaps Wong went to Europe to act. But she afterwards returned to the U.S. In In 1951, she led her individual tv present, “The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong.” The brief-lived mystery series was thought to be the initially with an Asian American guide.
In yet another to start with, she was the initial Asian American female to get a star on the Hollywood Wander of Fame for acting in 1960. She died a year afterwards at age 56.
