Soo Yong: Hollywood Actress and Asian Diaspora Cosmopolitan

This paper is adapted from my biography of Soo Yong (ca.1903-1984), which reintroduces her vibrant career (1920s-1980s) as an actress and monologist. She appeared in six Broadway productions, twenty-three major Hollywood pictures, and eight TV programs. It recaptures Yong’s unique saga from Jim Crow and Chinese Exclusion eras. The biography explores how her advanced American education under John Dewey and transpacific connections with Chinese diplomats, intellectuals, and artists such as "King of Peking opera" Mei Lanfang nurtured her ethnic dignity and artistic talent. Such a highly intellectual, glamourous, yet asexual image of an Asian woman on screen and stage broke down dominant stereotypical images of Dragon Lady and Lotus Blossom/China Doll, defying and diversifying conventional narratives on Asian Americans. Yong’s legacy shines brightly as a positive media pioneer for Chinese Americans. At a time when being Chinese was associated with marginalization, ignorance and servitude, she instead showed a cosmopolitan “Chinese woman at her best.”

My presentation focuses on Yong’s journey to the highest level of Hollywood stardom allowed for a non-white actress. Enrolled in a doctoral program at University of Southern California, Yong cultivated a unique public persona “to be a great actress with a Ph.D" to distinguish herself from regular entertainers and Chinese immigrants. Yong exemplified her desire to present a strong authentic Chinese woman in a campaign endorsed by the Chinese government for the lead role in the 1937 classic hit The Good Earth, still the most influential Hollywood film on China. She stated: “So I am eager to play O-Lan... I want to play her as an intelligent, respectful Chinese wife, not a stupid woman who takes her husband’s blows without complaint. I want to make her the great kind woman I knew in my own village–the Chinese woman unknown to the American screen.”