Scarce vintage 8x10-inch black and white portrait, boldly signed and inscribed in black fountain pen signature in both western and Chinese characters in the 1930s. In good condition. Lovely, iconic Anna May Wong was the first Chinese-American movie star.  After bit parts in a handful of forgettable silents, she landed the more substantial roles of the slave girl in Douglas Fairbanks' lavish The Thief of Baghdad (1924) and Tiger Lily in the first movie version of Peter Pan (1924).  She was thereafter increasingly featured in major films, including Mr. Wu (1927) with Lon Chaney, the Charlie Chan flick The Chinese Parrot (1927), Streets of Shanghai (1927), Piccadilly (1929), Daughter of the Dragon (1931), Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932), the Sherlock Holmes opus A Study in Scarlet (1933), Dangerous to Know (1937), Daughter of Shanghai (1937), and King of Chinatown (1939).  Suffering from cirrhosis and weary of the stereotypical exotic Asian roles to which she was almost invariably assigned, Wong retired from Hollywood in 1942, thereafter making only occasional stage appearances. In 1961, she died of heart failure, related to her long bout with liver disease, aged only 56 years.

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