User:Castieditor3/Marion E. Wong
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Marion E. Wong (1895-1969) was a Chinese-American filmmaker.[1] She wrote, produced, directed, and acted in the Curse of Quon Gwon, one of the only films that featured Chinese-Americans in a non-stereotypical view.[1] After making Curse of Quon Gwon, she became bankrupt and stopped filmmaking. Her film became lost except for 2 tins, which were recently discovered.[1]
Early life:[change | change source]
Wong was born in San Francisco, but then moved to Oakland when she was little.[1] She got schooling until she moved, but since she was the youngest of a big family, she probably got homeschooled.[1] Her family owned a cafe, which she spent a lot of time at as a child.[1] When she was 15, she and her brothers went to China to find spouses.[1] At that time, there was an act called the Geary Act, which made it so that Chinese immigrants couldn’t easily come to the US.[1] Because of that, Wong and her brothers could only stay in China for one year before they couldn’t come back to the US.[1] In China, one of her brothers died of smallpox.[1] The other brother found a good wife named Violet, who Wong became very good friends with.[1] Meanwhile, Wong found a husband, but rejected him and came back to America without a husband.[1]
Career[change | change source]
When she came back, she started writing the screenplay for her first movie.[1] Charlie Chaplin filmed part of his movie near Wong’s family’s cafe.[1] She had the idea to hire one of his people to work the camera.[1] This cost a lot of money.[1] Her rich uncle supported her.[1] She started her own film company.[1] This company was called Mandarin Film Company.[1] Her movie was much better than most movies made by beginner directors because of the good person working the camera.[1] She directed and produced her movie.[1] This movie starred Violet (her sister-in-law), her mom, Violet’s daughter, and a professional actor, Harvey Soo Hoo.[1] Her movie was different from other movies of that time.[1] Other movies did not represent Chinese-Americans well.[1] The other movies that had Chinese-Americans in them at that time were all very stereotyped.[1] “I had never seen any Chinese movies,” said Wong, “so I decided to introduce them to the world.”[1] In the first screenings of her movie, people loved it.[1] Because her movie didn’t have stereotypes that were common at that time, distributors wouldn’t buy it.[1] Wong couldn’t pay back her uncle.[1] Her uncle became broke.[1] She was really sad about her failure.[1] She decided to not be a filmmaker.[1] She “asked the family to never speak of her film again”.[1]
The revival of The Curse of Quon Gwon[change | change source]
Years later, in 1969, Violet told her grandson Gregory Mark about a canister containing the rolls of The Curse of Quon Gwon. She told him to “do something with it.” In 2004 an Asian-American filmmaker Arthur Dong discovered the film rolls Violet’s family possessed and took it to the Academy Film Archive to restore the film. In December of 2006 the film was recognized as an important historical and cultural film by the National Film Registry. Out of the 8 reels of the film only 2 are saved as of now and you can see them in the Oakland Museum of California.