For a Chinese actor, making a career in Golden Age Hollywood was no easy task, but Beal Wong (1906-62) gave it a good go.He made his debut in an uncredited walk-on in MGM’s Stage Mother, and was still working almost thirty years later, with a final appearance in a Dean Martin comedy, Who’s Got the Action? (1962).
Wong’s work could be niche, as suggested by the titles of some of the pictures he appeared in: The Mysterious Mr Wong (1934), Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935), China Passage (1937), Think Fast, Mr Moto (1937), Torchy Blane in Chinatown (1939), Escape from Hong Kong (1942), East of Chinatown (1942).
He also had to be ‘ethnically flexible’. During the Second World War, there were plenty of roles as long as he was prepared to play a Japanese.
But Wong did manage to get work in a better class of picture from time to time: Preston Sturges’s Christmas in July (1940); Across the Pacific (1942); Lady of Burlesque (1943); The Keys of the Kingdom (1944); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947); and Experiment in Terror (1962).
In addition to Stage Mother, Wong appeared in two other MGM musicals, Student Tour and Lady Be Good.
