The popular perception that "people will only remember first" may not be as accurate in some ways.
When it comes to the stars in China's showbiz circle who "broke into" Hollywood, most people's first thought is the well-known "big names" such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi. But who has the impression of the first Chinese star who entered Hollywood? Let me tell you about this legendary woman who, along with Dorothy Dandridge, Doles Delio, May West and Marilyn Monroe, is known as the "Hollywood Silver Cast Four Lady's Belvestere", Yellow Willow Cream.
Huang Liushuang was born in Chinatown, The United States on January 3, 1905, her ancestral home is taishan city, Guangdong Province, her grandfather was one of the earliest Chinese workers to catch up with the "gold rush" in the United States, and settled in the United States, which can be described as a proper "three generations of moving to the United States". Her parents ran a laundromat in Los Angeles, and the family had eight children (one of whom later died prematurely), and Huang Liushuang was the second oldest.
Yellow warbler (left) Yellow willow cream (right)
After Huang Liushuang was born, he moved several times, and finally settled in the fringe area of Chinatown. It was a very diverse area, and only the Huang family was Chinese family. Unlike the "bachelor" society that seeks a livelihood in Chinatown, the children of the Huang family, although living in a traditional family, are partially influenced by the family estate and come into contact with people who are different from them every day. As a child, Huang Liushuang realized that getting along with different groups of people inevitably had bumps. Although she has always regarded herself as a Chinese, the personality honed in such a mixed area is somewhat "Americanized".
When he was very young, Huang Liushuang began to help the family's laundromat. Once, Huang Liushuang got a relatively generous tip, and she used this money to watch the first movie of her life with curiosity, and since then she has been fascinated by movies. When she was 9 years old, Huang Liushuang often went to the street filming scene to watch the film shooting, and the idea of acting in the film herself began to germinate at this time.
The following year, when Huang Liushuang was 10 years old, a leather merchant noticed her beauty and invited her to become a top model. The photograph of Huang Liushuang wearing a mink top left a good impression on her father. The work she did for the fur merchant taught her fashion and made her love of fur coats all her life.
At the age of 12, Huang Liushuang already had a stable job, working as a model for a department store called "Paris". Her father found a secretarial job for her and had to run a long way to work. Later, in her biography, she said that "she was not at all upset when she was fired for poor shorthand skills".
Huang Liushuang's obsession with movies is all around him, but he has never had a chance. Finally, when the 1919 film The Red Lantern released the supporting role demand recruitment, the opportunity was seen. The 14-year-old Huang Liushuang played a small role with a lantern in the middle of her father's introduction through the introduction of her father's friends. Later, her father learned about it and tried to dissuade his daughter from showing up on the big screen, believing that white pastimes did not require yellow faces.
The experience of this appearance made Huang Liushuang have a strong sense of belonging, and she realized that her national story can be played out. After all, the father's authority could not cover his daughter's persistence, and Huang Liushuang still insisted on taking the road of staging a movie.
A few years later, when Huang Liushuang was 16 years old, she officially gave up her studies and devoted herself to the film industry. At the age of 17, Huang Liushuang starred in the Chinese girl Lotus in Hollywood's first color movie "The Sea Passed", and the blessing of talent made her highly praised by the media. Start to enter the mainstream vision.
It was also because of the outstanding performance of "The Death of the Sea" that two years later he was invited to play a charming Mongolian slave girl in "The Thief of Baghdad". With this film, she won the US box office championship that year, which greatly enhanced the global popularity of Huang Liushuang, but some people of the Huang family's feudal tradition did not agree with her achievements. Huang Liushuang took the initiative to move away and began to pretend to be herself.
At that time, due to the racial discrimination of Americans, although Huang Liushuang was very talented and very hardworking, he could only receive film invitations from supporting roles. In 1928, in order to get rid of Hollywood's stereotype of his Chinese identity, Huang Liushuang decided to turn to the European show business. The excellent performance of the first two works made her famous in Europe, which allowed her to participate in many major roles in films and operas. During this time, she starred in five films, all of which starred. The pursuit and praise of the European film media have also made this twenty-something flower girl more determined by her own actor path.
In 1929, the British film "Dream of Prosperity in Chinatown" starring Huang Liushuang was released in Europe, which was also the finale of the silent film film of her career. The film was popular in large and small entertainment venues in London, England at that time, and was widely promoted in Asia; Huang Liushuang was invited to attend various grand banquets with her performances in the film.
After several years of experience in Europe, the famous Paramount Pictures in the United States invited Huang Liushuang to return to Hollywood to play "Dragon Girl", but the role she played made many Chinese people not understand, and major domestic film magazines also blamed her.
In 1935, Huang Liushuang was introduced to Mei Lanfang and Hu Die, and began to find his roots.
In 1942, when Song Meiling visited the United States, Hollywood held a tea party for her. Huang Liushuang was asked not to participate because the impression left on the Chinese people by the previous movie was too bad.
After struggling in Hollywood for so many years but in exchange for endless insults and ridicule, Huang Liushuang was extremely painful, and the ups and downs in her career coupled with the unhappiness of her feelings and affection, Huang Liushuang decided to stay away from everything and live alone.
On February 2, 1961, the 56-year-old Huang Liushuang died of a heart attack in her apartment and was buried next to her mother's grave, and there is no record of her identity or life trajectory on the tombstone. A legendary woman who has swept the world has been fighting discrimination all her life, and finally ended up in such a situation, which can't help but make people sigh and appear helpless.
The "Oriental Doll" that once amazed the Western world died in the tide of the times.