Marion E. Wong (1895-1969) was an American filmmaker of Chinese descent.[1] She is one of a few known female directors of movies.[2] Wong created the first known Asian American-made movie.[2][1][3] She wrote, produced, directed and acted in the Curse of Quon Gwon.[1][3] Wong also made the scenery and costumes.[3] It was one of the only movies that featured Chinese Americans in a non-stereotypical view.[4] After making Curse of Quon Gwon, she became bankrupt and stopped filmmaking. Her movie became lost except for 2 tins, which were recently discovered.[5]
Wong was born in San Francisco. She moved to Oakland when she was young.[5] She went to until she moved. Because she was the youngest of a big family, she probably got homeschooled after moving.[5] Her family owned a cafe. As a child, she spent a lot of time at the cafe.[5] When she was 15, she and her brothers went to China to find spouses.[3] At that time, there was an act called the Geary Act. It made it hard for Chinese immigrants to come to the United States.[5] Because of that, Wong and her brothers could only stay in China for one year.[5] If they stayed longer, they could not return to the United States.[5] In China, one of her brothers died of smallpox.[5] The other brother found a good wife named Violet.[5] Violet and Wong became good friends.[5] Meanwhile, Wong found a someone to be her husband. She rejected him and went back to the United States without a husband.[5]
After returning to the United States, Wong started writing the screenplay for her first movie.[5] Charlie Chaplin filmed part of his movie, One Night Out, near Wong’s family’s cafe.[5] She led her to creating a movie from the screenplay. She hired one of Chaplin's people to be the cameraman for the movie.[5] This cost a whole lot of money.[5] She got support from her uncle who was very wealthy.[3] She started her own movie company.[5] This company was called Mandarin Film Company.[5] Her movies was much better than most movies made by beginner directors.This is partly because of the good person working the camera.[5] She directed and produced her own movie.[5] This movie starred Violet (her sister-in-law), her mother, Violet’s daughter and a professional actor, Harvey Soo Hoo.[1][3] Her movie was different from other movies of that time.[5] Other movies did not represent Chinese-Americans well.[2] The other movies that had Chinese-Americans in them at that time were all very stereotyped.[2] “I had never seen any Chinese movies,” said Wong, “so I decided to introduce them to the world.”[5] In the first screenings of her movie, people loved it.[5] Because her movie didn’t have stereotypes that were common at that time, distributors wouldn’t buy it.[4] Wong couldn’t pay back her uncle.[5] Her uncle became broke.[5] She was really sad about her failure.[5] She decided to not be a filmmaker.[5] She asked the family to "never speak of her film again”.[5]
In 1969, Violet told her grandson Gregory Mark about a canister containing the rolls of The Curse of Quon Gwon. She told him to “do something with it.”[6] In 2004 an Asian-American filmmaker Arthur Dong discovered the film rolls and took the to the Academy Film Archive to restore the film.[7][8] In December of 2006 the film was recognized as an important historical and cultural film by the National Film Registry.[9] Out of the 8 reels of the film only 2 are saved as of now and you can see them in the Oakland Museum of California.[10]