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In the 1961 movie musical “Flower Drum Song,” Nancy Kwan lit up the screen singing “I Enjoy Being a Girl.”
In the years that followed, however, Kwan – like many Asian actors – found herself dealing with something far less enjoyable: being marginalized.
“Hollywood Chinese,” an “American Masters” offering at 9 p.m. Wednesday on PBS, reviews a century of Chinese-American movie history, reaching back to such sensational and blatantly racist silent shorts such as “Massacre of the Christians by the Chinese” (1900) and “The Heathen Chinese and the Sunday School Teachers” (1904).
In addition to Kwan, filmmaker Arthur Dong’s 90-minute documentary features actors B.D. Wong (“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”) and Joan Chen (“The Last Emperor”), directors Wayne Wang (“The Joy Luck Club”) and Ang Lee (“Brokeback Mountain”), and writers Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang sharing their perspectives on how Chinese characters are represented by Hollywood.
Kwan grew up in Hong Kong, where a thriving film industry provided her with strong Chinese characters and stories, so the movies coming out of Hollywood – even the ones that featured white actors wearing “yellowface” makeup to play Chinese roles – didn’t ruffle her feathers.
“I didn’t become aware of (yellowface) when I was growing up in terms of seeing something that offended me,” recalls Kwan, 70. “I just thought that was something they did in Hollywood. There still really aren’t enough good roles for an Asian-American actor to sustain a career in Hollywood films. Look at television. It’s extremely rare when a great role for an Asian-American actor comes along.
“Where are the strong leading roles for Asian actors, in either movies or television?”
