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Daughter of a Chinese laundryman named Sam Sing Tsong, Anna May Wong's real name is Wong Liu Tsong (Frosted Yellow Willows). She grew up on Flower Street in Los Angeles' chop-suey section, attended Los Angeles Central High School. Her ambition to become an actress sprouted when she caught sight of the late Alma Rubens in an elevator. Sam Sing Tsong objected when his daughter got extra jobs on location scenes in Chinatown. Was it not true that every time a picture is taken, its subject loses part of his soul? Nonetheless, Anna May Wong carried a tea tray for Sessue Hayakawa, did a bit in a Lon Chancy picture, played in a Hal Roach two-reeler, acted with Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad. She got an even better chance to exhibit her ability in a German picture called—but not in her honor—Tsong, Tsong (1928) was widely successful, made Anna May Wong a celebrity in Europe and especially in London where her social prestige still exceeds that of any other cinema performer.
Criticized for her U. S. accent, Anna May Wrong paid an Oxford tutor £200 to teach her his. Her vogue in London made her a featured player when she returned to the U. S. in 1930. Since then she has acted in a Broadway play, performed in Daughter of the Dragon, and Shanghai Express, sung in a London night club, made three British pictures, toured the British Isles in a song revue. Now in Hollywood, her next picture will be Limehouse Nights.
The Richest Girl in the World (RKO). Dorothy Hunter (Miriam Hopkins) is a girl of fabulous wealth whose upbringing has been so secluded that no newspaper morgue contains a picture of her since infancy. This makes it easy for her to insure her privacy by impersonating her private secretary (Fay Wray), having her secretary impersonate Dorothy Hunter. When the young man Dorothy loves (Joel McCrea) appears, one deception leads to another. To make sure that the young man cares for her and not the Hunter fortune, Dorothy encourages him to make love to the secretary. Equipped with more common sense than perspicacity, he does so until the combination of a week-end in the Adirondacks, a bowl of hot punch and the secretary's husband prod him into a proper proposal of marriage.
Eighteen years ago, Mary Pickford made her admirers weep with Poor Little Rich Girl. The Richest Girl in the World, an adult variation of the same theme, keeps its tongue in its cheek. It is a charming, energetic comedy, which should please the majority of cinemaddicts and offend no one except the Huttons and Prince Mdivani.
The Last Gentleman (Twentieth Century). For crotchety old Cabot Barr (George Arliss) life in his Barrville manor house is not all beer and skittles. His collection of 106 clocks, his fancy for stuffed peacocks on his lawn, annoy his son Judd (Donald Meek), a small, bald, middle-aged lowlife. The Barrs—son, daughter, two daughters-in-law, granddaughter and adopted grandson—are introduced in The Last Gentleman at a family memorial service for a deceased niece which Cabot Barr arranges because he is not, he says, "the sort of man who gives Christmas parties." They reassemble at Cabot Barrs summer camp, where he hopes his granddaughter and adopted grandson will reach an understanding.