Marion E. Wong
After returning to the United States, Wong started writing the screenplay for her first movie. Charlie Chaplin filmed part of his movie, One Night Out, near Wong’s family’s cafe. She led her to creating a movie from the screenplay. She hired one of Chaplin's people to be the cameraman for the movie.. This cost a lot of money. She got support from her uncle who was wealthy. She started her own movie company. This company was called Mandarin Film Company. Her movie was much better than most movies made by beginner directors.This is partly because of the good person working the camera. She directed and produced her movie. This movie starred Violet (her sister-in-law), her mother, Violet’s daughter and a professional actor, Harvey Soo Hoo. Her movie was different from other movies of that time. Other movies did not represent Chinese-Americans well. The other movies that had Chinese-Americans in them at that time were all very stereotyped. “I had never seen any Chinese movies,” said Wong, “so I decided to introduce them to the world.” In the first screenings of her movie, people loved it. Because her movie didn’t have stereotypes that were common at that time, distributors wouldn’t buy it. Wong couldn’t pay back her uncle. Her uncle became broke. She was really sad about her failure. She decided to not be a filmmaker. She “asked the family to never speak of her film again”.