0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:03

a production of iHeartRadio.

0:12

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

0:14

Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

0:17

Not long ago, we did a topic

0:19

because I had it on my list two times,

0:22

and I said, we might have another episode about

0:24

somebody who was somehow on my short

0:26

list two times, and here

0:29

it is today. This is about artist

0:31

Tyrus Wong, who was born

0:33

in China and brought to the United States

0:36

as a child at a time when immigration

0:38

to the United States from China was

0:40

banned under the Chinese Exclusion

0:43

Act. Then, over the course

0:45

of just an extraordinarily long

0:47

career, he worked across a range

0:49

of media in a whole collection

0:51

of industries. There was animation and

0:54

live action film, commercial art,

0:56

public art, greeting cards,

0:59

and in the last years of his life, kite

1:01

making in his personal workshop.

1:04

He went by a few different names over

1:06

the course of his life for some reasons we will

1:08

get to, but as an adult he was pretty

1:10

much known as Tyros. His friends,

1:13

a lot of them called him Thai, and

1:15

that's how he was typically credited on the

1:17

films that he worked on, and it was Tyros

1:19

Wang was how he signed his artwork. That is

1:22

the name that we will stick with today. Tyros

1:25

Wang was born wuan Ganyo on October

1:27

twenty fifth, nineteen ten, in the village

1:30

of Titian in the Guangdong Province

1:32

of China. His parents

1:34

were named Saipo and Li Si, and

1:37

he was born during a tumultuous time in

1:39

China. This was just a year before the

1:41

start of the Chinese Revolution of nineteen

1:43

eleven. This revolution

1:46

led to the end of the Qing dynasty, which was China's

1:48

last imperial dynasty. This

1:51

uprising had grown out of ongoing

1:53

issues of instability, including the

1:55

Opium Wars of the mid nineteenth century,

1:58

the First Sino Japanese War at the end of

2:00

the nineteenth century, and the Russo Japanese

2:02

War of the early twentieth century,

2:05

matt gave Japan control over what had

2:07

been Chinese territory in Manchuria.

2:10

As an adult, Tyrus described

2:12

his father as well educated, a

2:15

man who knew a lot about things like poetry

2:17

and literature and calligraphy, but

2:20

their family was living in poverty,

2:22

and eventually his parents decided

2:25

that Tyrus's father would take him to the

2:27

United States, where they thought he would

2:29

have better opportunities. They

2:31

kept in touch through letters after this, but

2:34

Tyrus never saw his mother or his sister

2:36

again. He left aboard the

2:38

SS China in either nineteen nineteen

2:40

or nineteen twenty. There were sources

2:42

used in this episode that had each of

2:45

those years. At this point,

2:47

immigration to the US from China

2:50

was outlawed under the Chinese Exclusion

2:52

Act, which also made it illegal for

2:54

Chinese people to become US citizens.

2:57

The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law

2:59

that played major restrictions on who

3:01

could enter the United States. It

3:04

was originally written as a ten year ban,

3:06

but then it was extended and then made permanent

3:09

in nineteen oh two. The

3:11

only exceptions to the Chinese Exclusion

3:13

Acts immigration band were people like diplomatic

3:16

official, students, and teachers

3:18

traveling with certification from the Chinese

3:20

government, as well as people who had already

3:22

been in the United States prior to

3:24

November seventeenth, eighteen eighty.

3:27

However, a couple of things happened

3:29

after the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed

3:32

in eighteen eighty two that shifted

3:34

how it could be enforced. One

3:37

was the US Supreme Court's decision in

3:39

United States versus wangkim Arc

3:41

in eighteen ninety eight. That's another topic

3:44

that's been on my episode list for a

3:46

long time. Wangkim

3:48

Arc had been born in San Francisco

3:50

to Chinese parents, and he was denied

3:53

re entry into the United States after

3:55

a trip abroad. The

3:57

Supreme Court in his case decided

3:59

that the birthright citizenship

4:01

provisions of the fourteenth Amendment

4:04

to the Constitution, which was passed

4:06

in the wake of the US Civil War, also

4:08

applied to people born on US

4:11

soil to Chinese parents. The

4:14

other was the nineteen oh six San Francisco

4:16

earthquake and fire, which we talked about on the

4:18

show in November of twenty nineteen, and

4:21

we just ran it as a Saturday Classic.

4:23

San Francisco City Hall was destroyed

4:26

along with all the records it contained, and

4:28

this made it possible for people to say that

4:31

they had been born in the US but could no longer

4:33

prove it because their records

4:35

had been destroyed in that fire. Children

4:37

of US citizens who are born abroad are

4:39

also eligible for citizenships, So this

4:42

meant that, for example, a Chinese

4:44

man could return to China and say

4:46

his wife had given birth there, creating

4:48

a paper trail for a child, who could

4:50

then enter the US, whether it

4:53

was really his own child or someone else's

4:55

child using that identity. Of

4:57

course, people had tried to immigrate from

5:00

China to the United States using false

5:02

identities long before this nineteen

5:04

oh six earthquake, but the destruction

5:07

of all those records led to

5:09

an enormous increase in these

5:11

kinds of entries into the country. It

5:14

also sparked a trade in identities

5:16

and papers as people tried to reunite

5:19

with family members or help people

5:21

they knew get into the United States. Chinese

5:25

people being brought to the US under

5:27

this kind of paper trail became known

5:29

as paper sons or less often

5:31

paper daughters. In response

5:34

to this surgeon illegal entries into the

5:36

country, the United States built an immigration

5:38

station at Angel Island in San Francisco

5:41

Bay, intended to identify

5:43

and deport paper sons and other

5:46

Chinese people who didn't meet the legal criteria

5:48

for entry. While people from

5:50

other nations also entered the United States

5:53

through Angel Island, most were Chinese,

5:56

and immigration inspectors were

5:58

intentionally looking for reasons to keep

6:00

Chinese people out. Arrivals

6:03

from China to Angel Island were separated

6:05

by sex and subjected to degrading

6:08

medical exams before undergoing

6:10

extensive questioning about their

6:13

family history and their life in China.

6:16

Their purported family members in the United

6:18

States were then similarly questioned

6:20

with those two sets of answers

6:22

compared to see whether they

6:24

matched. These were questions like

6:27

what direction does your house face, how

6:29

many windows does it have, how many

6:32

stairs are there? What's the floor

6:34

made of? What were the names of all your

6:36

neighbors? Did any of them have pigs?

6:39

How many pigs? Questions

6:42

that were really detailed, really

6:44

specific, and not necessarily

6:46

something a typical person

6:48

would actually know or remember. If

6:51

you ask me how many windows my neighbor's

6:53

house has, even

6:56

visualizing it in my head, I don't know.

6:58

I wouldn't pass this test. They were are meant

7:00

to be unpassable as much as possible.

7:03

Word about these interrogations quickly

7:05

spread within the Chinese community, and people

7:08

trying to enter the US would carefully

7:10

memorize answers to prepare for them,

7:13

and people also had to keep their memories

7:15

of all the answers fresh because

7:18

this process would be repeated if

7:20

a Chinese person ever traveled outside

7:22

the US and tried to return, or

7:24

if their immigration status was questioned

7:26

for some reason while they were in the

7:29

US. This happened to Tyris

7:31

Wong at one point when he crossed the border into

7:33

Mexico to visit Tijuana as a young

7:35

man, and then was stranded there for about a month.

7:38

When Tyros was brought to the United States,

7:41

his father traveled under the name look

7:43

Get and Tyrs was documented

7:46

as Luktai Yau. When they

7:48

arrived at Angel Islands, officials

7:50

immediately separated the two of them from

7:52

one another. Tyros's father

7:54

had been in the US before, and he was

7:56

processed and released. But for

7:59

about the next ten year

8:01

old Tyros was the only child

8:03

at Angel Island. He had no idea

8:05

where his father was or whether

8:08

he would ever see him again. A

8:10

month is such a long time

8:12

for a child to be without a parent, especially

8:15

in this kind of environment, but a

8:18

lot of people who were detained at Angel

8:20

Island were held for a lot longer.

8:23

Tyris was housed in a small barracks

8:26

like building with triple bunk beds.

8:28

He was assigned to a top bunk where it

8:30

was always hot. He also just

8:32

had nothing to do. At one

8:35

point, a guard gave him some chewing gum

8:37

and showed him how to chew it, and Tyros

8:39

chewed it until it ran out of flavor, and

8:41

then put it on top of the radiator, let

8:44

it melt, caught it on a piece of paper

8:46

when it slid to the bottom, and then put it

8:48

on top again, over and over, just

8:50

to try to pass time. In

8:52

a documentary made later in his life, he

8:55

said that Angel Island was miserable and

8:57

that he hated it there. Ultimately,

9:00

Tyrus and his father passed their interrogations

9:02

and they were reunited For

9:04

a while. His father worked for a

9:06

cobbler in Sacramento, and then, for

9:09

reasons that aren't entirely clear, he

9:11

went to Los Angeles for work and he

9:14

left Tyros behind. It

9:16

was during this period that Tyrus started

9:18

going by the name Tyros Wong.

9:21

A teacher anglicized the name Tyros

9:23

from his paper son name of Tai Yao,

9:26

and he kept his original family

9:28

name of Wong. Tyros

9:31

seems to have started out trying to follow

9:33

his father's instructions to behave himself,

9:36

but after a while he started taking a day

9:38

off school every week to go fishing, and

9:40

then that progressed to skipping more days

9:43

and then more than a month of just not

9:45

going to school at all. He also

9:47

got into various boyhood mischief, and

9:50

after his school sent a report card to

9:52

his father in Los Angeles. Soon

9:54

Tyris got a letter with money for a train

9:56

ticket and instructions to come to

9:58

La immediately. As

10:01

an adult, Tyros said that once he arrived,

10:03

his father slapped him in the face for the way he

10:05

had been behaving. That probably

10:07

sounds horrifying, I know. When I

10:10

heard him tell this story in a documentary,

10:12

I was like, Oh, no, your relationship with your father must

10:14

have been horrible. It wasn't.

10:16

As an adult, Tyros had a lot of fond

10:18

memories of his father, describing him as

10:20

very strict, but also as recognizing

10:23

and encouraging Tyrus's interest

10:25

in and aptitude for art.

10:28

By this point, art was really the only

10:31

thing that Tyros was interested in, the only

10:33

thing he liked to do. His father

10:35

taught him calligraphy and had him practice

10:37

every night, using a paintbrush

10:40

dipped in water to write on pieces

10:42

of old newspaper because they couldn't

10:44

afford paper or ink. When

10:46

Tyrus's father found him playing baseball

10:49

with some neighborhood boys, he made him stop

10:51

because if Tyrs hurt one of his hands

10:53

that could interfere with his ability to become

10:56

an artist.

10:57

And the idea that Tyros might study

10:59

art or even become a professional artist

11:02

was almost unbelievable within their

11:04

community. Overwhelmingly,

11:06

Chinese people in the United States were working

11:08

as manual laborers or in restaurants

11:11

or laundries, because those are the only

11:13

jobs that were really open to them.

11:16

When one of Tyros's middle school teachers

11:18

brought up the possibility of getting a scholarship

11:20

so that he could study at Otis Art Institute,

11:23

his father was working at a gambling den

11:25

and they were living in a boarding house.

11:28

Tyros did get that scholarship, though,

11:30

and when it ran out, he really didn't

11:33

want to go back to a typical school,

11:35

so his father decided to borrow money

11:38

to cover the cost of his tuition for the next

11:40

term, insisting that Tyros

11:42

had to work hard and apply himself to

11:44

his study of art so that his father would

11:46

know that this expense.

11:48

Was worth it. Tyros worked

11:50

as a janitor to help pay for his time

11:52

at Otis Art Institute, which was

11:54

the first professional school of the arts established

11:56

in Los Angeles. In addition

11:59

to studying the work of European masters.

12:01

He spent a lot of time at the library

12:03

studying Chinese art. He

12:05

was particularly interested in the art of

12:07

the Song Dynasty, which spanned from about

12:10

nine sixty to twelve seventy nine.

12:13

Landscapes were particularly important

12:15

in Song Dynasty art, often portraying

12:17

sweeping views of the natural world, with

12:20

mountains and vistas overwhelming any

12:22

people or built elements in the scene.

12:25

Many of these works also used calligraphy

12:28

like brushwork in an evocative way

12:30

to suggest the details that were

12:32

part of the scene. Shortly

12:34

before Tyrus finished his courses at Otis

12:37

Art Institute, his father got sick. When

12:40

his father died in nineteen thirty five, Tyros

12:42

was twenty five and at that point really

12:44

on his own. We'll talk more about

12:46

that after a sponsor break. While

12:58

tyrs Bang was studying at Otis

13:00

Art Institute, he was also starting

13:02

to exhibit his artwork alongside other

13:05

artists, especially other Asian

13:07

artists. These included Hideo

13:09

Date, who had been born in Japan, and

13:12

Benji Okubo, who was born in California

13:14

to Japanese parents. Today,

13:17

the term Orientalist is more

13:19

often used to describe artwork by

13:22

Western artists that's been inspired

13:24

by Asian art and culture, but at

13:27

the time these young artists

13:29

were known as the California Orientalists

13:32

or the Los Angeles Orientalists.

13:35

Together, Tyrus Wong and Benji

13:37

Okubo founded the Oriental Artists

13:39

group.

13:40

Of Los Angeles. Throughout

13:42

the nineteen thirties, these and other

13:44

Asian and Asian American artists in

13:46

California were really developing

13:48

a full artistic movement. Wong's

13:51

work during this period included murals

13:54

on the walls and menu art

13:56

for the Dragon's Den restaurant in Chinatown,

13:59

which Eddie had opened in the basement

14:01

of his Antiques tour. Benjiokubo

14:04

and Hideo Date were part of this as well,

14:06

and The Dragon's Den became famous for its

14:08

decor and its food, and

14:10

it became a popular hangout for Hollywood

14:12

actors. Wong's artwork

14:15

also appeared in exhibits at the

14:17

Art Institute of Chicago, including

14:20

the first official International Exhibition

14:22

of Etching and Engraving in nineteen thirty

14:24

two and the International Exhibition

14:26

of Contemporary Prints for a Century

14:28

of Progress in nineteen thirty four. Other

14:32

artists in these exhibitions

14:34

included people like Henri Matisse, Marie

14:36

Lawrensa, Pablo Picasso, and

14:39

Vasily Kandinski, but in

14:41

the nineteen thirty two catalog, Wong

14:43

was listed only as tyrists,

14:45

with no mention of his country of origin.

14:49

Some of Wong's work during the nineteen thirties

14:51

was for the government as part of the Works Progress

14:54

Administration Federal Art Project.

14:57

This program was part of the collection of legislation,

14:59

relief efforts, and other initiatives known

15:01

as the New Deal, spearheaded by

15:03

President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his administration

15:06

as the US tried to recover from the Great

15:09

Depression. At its peak

15:11

in nineteen thirty six, this program

15:13

employed more than five thousand artists.

15:16

Wang created two paintings a month for

15:18

exhibition in government buildings, along

15:20

with some murals. In nineteen

15:23

thirty seven, his work was included among the pieces

15:25

that the US government sent to represent

15:27

this federal project at the Paris Exhibition.

15:30

But at some point Wang lost

15:33

his position in the program when it

15:35

was discovered that he was not a US

15:37

citizen, and at that point

15:39

it was also not legal for him to

15:41

become one. On June twenty

15:43

seventh of that same year, which was nineteen

15:45

thirty seven, Tyrus Wang got

15:48

married to Ruth Kim, something he later

15:50

described as the most joyous moment

15:52

of his life. Ruth had been born

15:54

in California to Chinese parents, and

15:57

she and Tyros had met at the dragons Den

15:59

while she was working there as a waitress.

16:01

In nineteen thirty eight, they had their first

16:03

of three daughters, who they named Kay.

16:06

Ruth played a huge part in Tyrus's

16:09

career as an artist, including recommending

16:11

that he worked for Walt Disney after their daughter

16:13

was born. While Tyros

16:16

was making some money through art commissions,

16:18

he really wanted and really needed a

16:20

steady job once he was married and had

16:22

a child. In nineteen thirty eight,

16:24

he was hired as an in betweener working

16:26

on Mickey Mouse shorts. Most

16:29

people hired to work as animators

16:31

for Disney started out in the in betweener

16:33

pool. This was considered to

16:35

be the best way to learn to be an animator

16:37

and specifically how to do it for Disney

16:39

animation, but a lot

16:41

of artists found and probably

16:44

still find this to be a tedious

16:46

and repetitive job. More

16:48

senior animators would draw the key

16:51

frames marking the beginning and the

16:53

end of a character's motion, and then the

16:55

in betweeners would draw all those frames

16:58

that it took for the character to me smoothly

17:00

from one key frame to the next.

17:03

It's this very similar

17:06

thing drawn over and over

17:08

again. Yeah, little variation.

17:11

Tyrus Wong really did not like this

17:13

job. But

17:17

then he heard that Disney was working on an

17:19

adaptation of Bambie A Life in

17:21

the Woods by Felix Salton, and

17:23

this novel tells the story of a fawn named

17:25

Bambi growing up in the forest, and it is

17:28

interpreted as both an early environmentalist

17:31

novel and as an allegory about

17:33

the persecution of Jews and the rise

17:35

of anti Semitism in Europe. The

17:37

Nazis banned it as a Jewish propaganda

17:40

in nineteen thirty five. Disney

17:43

had started working on its adaptation of

17:45

Bambie shortly after their first animated

17:47

feature film, which was Snow White,

17:50

came out in nineteen thirty seven, and from

17:52

an artistic point of view, Disney

17:54

was kind of struggling with it.

17:56

These realistic, detailed

17:58

backgrounds that had been part of Snow White

18:01

just weren't working for a story

18:03

that took place entirely in

18:05

the forest with animal characters.

18:09

Wong read the book and he liked it, and even

18:11

though he'd only been at Disney for a couple of months,

18:14

he thought that he'd be a better fit for Bambi

18:16

than for the in Betweener Pool. On

18:19

his own time, he made a set of small

18:21

forest paintings, drawing on his

18:23

own experience as a landscape painter

18:25

and his study of song dynasty art,

18:27

along with other influences, and

18:29

then he took these paintings to Tom Codrick,

18:32

art director on Bambie.

18:34

While the backgrounds and snow white had been

18:36

really detailed, Wong's examples

18:39

for Bambi were a lot softer. They

18:41

used calligraphy like brushstrokes

18:44

to suggest things like leaves

18:46

and the branches of trees, rather than tightly

18:49

defining all of them. The

18:51

characters that were drawn separately

18:54

on animation cells stood

18:56

out against this background. Wong's

18:58

backgrounds also gave the forest

19:01

around the characters a more evocative

19:03

and almost mysterious atmosphere.

19:07

His approach to this background

19:09

art wound up influencing everything

19:12

else about the film, including things

19:14

like the dialogue and the score. Although

19:17

Wong's work was used as an example

19:19

all across the teams of people who were working

19:21

on this film and played a huge

19:23

part in how the final product looked and felt.

19:26

In the three and a half years he was there,

19:28

Wong was never actually introduced to Walt

19:31

Disney. He also didn't get into

19:33

a lot of specifics, but he did later say

19:35

that he felt like some of the other people working

19:37

at Disney treated him differently from

19:39

everyone else, whether that was because

19:41

of racism, professional jealousy,

19:44

or a combination of the two, or some

19:46

other thing. In May of

19:49

nineteen forty one, while Bambi was still

19:51

in production, unionized

19:53

animators that Walt Disney productions went

19:55

on strike. So this strike

19:58

and the labor movement within the animation

20:00

industry are really a whole other

20:03

story, but the process

20:05

of organizing a union and the

20:07

decision to go on strike had been incredibly

20:11

divisive among Disney artists.

20:14

Some of the artists were deeply loyal

20:16

to Disney and specifically to Walt

20:18

or they felt like they were artists,

20:21

not the type of workers who should form

20:23

a trade union. Others,

20:26

though, were fighting for a lot of the same

20:28

things that have led workers in other

20:30

industries to unionize, things like

20:32

job security, more equitable

20:35

pay structures, and reasonable working

20:37

hours. Artists who

20:39

weren't receiving on screen credit

20:42

also wanted credit for their work, and a

20:44

lot of people were really angry that they

20:46

had never received long expected

20:48

profit sharing. After the success

20:51

of Snow White, Disney

20:53

workers who wanted to unionize joined

20:55

the Screen Cartoonists Guild, while

20:58

Disney also had its own company

21:00

union, called the Federation of Screen

21:03

Cartoonists. Tensions

21:05

escalated between these two groups of workers,

21:08

and between the Screen Cartoonist Guild and

21:10

Disney management. Art Babbitt,

21:12

who was Disney's highest paid animator,

21:14

left his position as president of the Disney

21:17

Company Guild to join the Screen

21:19

Cartoonist Guild and continue to work

21:21

on organizing the other animators.

21:24

Disney fired Babbitt along with a group

21:26

of other employees who had joined the union,

21:28

and the nineteen forty one Disney Animator

21:30

strike started a few days later. This

21:33

strike went on for five weeks, with President

21:36

Roosevelt sending a federal mediator

21:38

to try to negotiate.

21:40

Ultimately, Disney did.

21:42

Recognize the Screen Cartoonists Guild

21:44

and signed a collective bargaining agreement

21:46

with the union. Disney

21:49

was also forced to rehire Babbitt

21:51

and some of the other animators who had been fired

21:54

over their organizing efforts, but

21:56

a lot of animators either quit

21:58

or lost their jobs all of this,

22:01

and one of them was Tyrus Wong, who

22:03

was fired before production wrapped

22:05

on Bambi, even though he hadn't

22:07

participated in this strike. I

22:10

am not sure of the details of why specifically

22:13

he was fired, but it's described

22:15

as having been in connection to all of this,

22:18

even though he didn't participate. When

22:20

Bambi was released in theaters,

22:23

he was credited as backgrounds

22:25

on a slide with nine other names.

22:28

There was nothing in those credits to suggest

22:30

how influential he had been on this

22:32

film. A couple of months after

22:34

the Disney strike ended, Japan attacked

22:36

the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, drawing

22:39

the United States into World War II. On

22:42

February nineteenth, nineteen forty two,

22:45

President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued

22:47

Executive Order in ninety sixty six,

22:50

ordering people of Japanese ancestry,

22:52

including Japanese American citizens

22:54

born in the US, to be imprisoned

22:57

at concentration camps located

22:59

away from the West Coast. We have

23:01

a two part episode on Executive Order

23:03

ninety sixty six that came out in February

23:06

of twenty seventeen.

23:08

The people who.

23:08

Were imprisoned under this executive order

23:11

included Tyres Wang's artistic

23:13

colleagues Benji Okubo and Hideo Date.

23:16

Both of them were incarcerated at Heart

23:18

Mountain Relocation Center. Executive

23:21

Order ninety sixty six didn't apply

23:23

to Wong since he was Chinese

23:25

not Japanese, but he and

23:28

other people who were from China or other

23:30

parts of Asia outside of Japan, was

23:32

faced with the possibility of being

23:35

mistaken for a Japanese person and

23:37

imprisoned. He started wearing

23:39

a button on his lapel to identify

23:41

himself as Chinese. World

23:44

War two and the mass incarceration of

23:46

Japanese immigrants and their children disrupted

23:48

the Asian art movement that had been developing

23:51

in California over the previous decades.

23:53

The artists who had been working and exhibiting together

23:56

before the war really never came

23:58

together in the same way again after

24:00

the war ended and people were

24:02

eventually released from the camps. We

24:05

will get some more of Wang's work during

24:07

and after the war. After a sponsor break.

24:19

After being fired from Disney, Tyrus

24:21

Wong was contacted by Warner Brothers

24:24

Pictures about coming to work for them, but

24:26

this wasn't to do animation work.

24:29

It was for live action films. He

24:32

was reluctant to do this at first because he did

24:34

not have any experience working

24:36

for live action movies at all. He

24:39

took this job though, and he worked with

24:41

Warner Brothers until nineteen sixty eight.

24:44

He did a lot of concept art

24:46

and pre production illustration work

24:48

in this role, so he really helped

24:50

to set the visual look and feel

24:53

for a lot of movies. These

24:55

included Rebel Without a Cause, The

24:57

Wild Bunch, Sans of Yajima,

25:00

and Anti Mame, along with many

25:02

others. According to a profile

25:05

of him at the Angel Island Immigration Station

25:07

Foundation, he also participated

25:10

in a strike of Warner Brothers

25:12

artists and wound up being jailed

25:15

overnight at one point during this strike.

25:18

This wasn't his only job. He

25:20

also started hand painting dinnerware

25:23

for the Winfield Pottery Company in the late

25:25

nineteen forties. This was connected

25:27

to a rise in popularity of a style

25:29

of home decor known as Chinese

25:31

Modern, and he painted porcelain pieces

25:34

with things like birds, flowers, and bamboo.

25:37

There were no do overs in this hand

25:40

painted dinnerware, so each design

25:42

he created had to be done correctly

25:44

on the first try, with no way

25:46

to make adjustments or corrections afterward.

25:49

In the nineteen fifties, Dick Kelsey,

25:51

who he'd worked with at Disney, suggested

25:54

he start designing greeting cards,

25:57

specifically Christmas cards

26:00

was something else he didn't really know much about. He

26:02

had not been raised as a Christian, he'd

26:04

not really celebrated Christmas. But

26:07

his wife, Ruth, was a Presbyterian

26:09

and had been a Sunday school teacher, and

26:11

she had also studied literature

26:14

at UCLA. So while Tyrs

26:16

created the artwork, Ruth

26:18

suggested themes and motifs

26:20

and wrote inscriptions for the insides

26:23

of the cards. The production

26:25

schedule for greeting cards meant that

26:27

he spent a lot of his time in the summers

26:30

listening to Christmas music to set the mood,

26:32

because every year's designs

26:34

were due by the autumn of the previous

26:37

year. Tyris Wong's

26:39

Christmas cards became very popular

26:41

and sought after, and they were also clearly

26:44

identified as his designs. He

26:46

signed each of them, and his contracts

26:48

with greeting card companies specified that

26:51

those signatures could not be removed.

26:54

A lot of his earlier greeting card work was with

26:56

regional publishers in California, and

26:58

one of these publishers, Fiforgnia Artists,

27:01

named Wong its Artist of the Year in nineteen

27:03

fifty five. Some of these

27:05

publishers also distributed cards through

27:07

Hallmark, and by the nineteen sixties

27:10

Wong was working with Hallmark directly.

27:13

Greeting card companies also released

27:15

display albums of his work with a brief

27:17

biography, both as a sales

27:19

tool and for collectors of his

27:21

work. These Christmas cards

27:23

continued to feature the evocative

27:25

brushwork and Chinese style that

27:28

had been part of his work on Bambi. Some

27:30

of these designs were relatively secular,

27:33

images of things like decorated tree

27:35

boughs or a kitten playing with

27:37

some string next to a sprig of holly,

27:40

or some wintry scenes or

27:42

fruit. Others were more

27:44

explicitly religious, like angels

27:46

or one that was one of his daughters praying

27:49

by a lit candle, or marry

27:51

Joseph and the infant Jesus together in

27:54

a cave like grotto. Sometimes

27:56

particularly popular cards would influence

27:59

the themes of his future designs, like

28:01

in nineteen fifty four, one of

28:03

his cards depicted a shepherd and

28:05

a flock of sheep under a tree that had

28:08

just bright pink bows. I

28:10

love them, they are very striking. Also

28:13

on this as a very starry sky. This

28:16

one card sold more than a million

28:18

copies, and it led to additional

28:20

bright pink foliage in subsequent

28:23

years. He later said the

28:25

greeting cards were the work that he was the

28:27

proudest of. By

28:29

the time Wong started working on the Christmas

28:31

cards, things had changed somewhat for

28:33

Chinese immigrants to the United States.

28:36

China was allied with the United States

28:38

during World War II, and in nineteen forty

28:40

three, as the war was ongoing, Congress

28:43

repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act

28:45

and other laws that banned immigration from

28:48

China and restricted the rights of Chinese

28:50

people in the United States. The

28:52

US still tightly limited the number

28:55

of people allowed to immigrate to the US

28:57

from China, but it became possible

28:59

for Chinese people already in the US

29:01

to seek citizenship. Tyris

29:03

Wong became a US citizen three years

29:06

later in nineteen forty six.

29:08

It had also been illegal for Chinese

29:10

people and people from some other nations

29:13

to buy property in parts of the United

29:15

States. A number of states

29:18

had passed so called alien land

29:20

laws, mainly starting after the end

29:22

of World War One. These banned

29:25

people who were not eligible for citizenship

29:28

from owning.

29:28

Or leasing property.

29:30

In many areas, land deeds

29:33

also included racially restrictive

29:35

covenants, which banned the sale of

29:37

a property to people of a specific

29:40

race, and a lot of the US,

29:42

racially restrictive covenants prevented

29:45

property from being sold to black

29:47

people, but in places with the

29:49

larger population of other racial

29:51

or ethnic groups, sometimes religious

29:54

groups, these covenants often targeted

29:56

them instead. The

29:58

US Supreme Court struck down racially

30:01

restrictive covenants as unconstitutional

30:04

in Shelby versus Kramer in nineteen

30:06

forty eight, and it did the same with alien

30:08

land laws in Fuji versus California

30:11

in nineteen fifty two. Once

30:14

they were legally able to, the Wong family

30:16

bought a house in Sunland, California,

30:19

which is today considered part of Los Angeles.

30:22

Even though the laws and covenants that had

30:24

made it impossible for them to buy a house

30:26

before had been ruled unconstitutional,

30:29

finding one was still a difficult process

30:31

for them. The family would find

30:33

a suitable home, only to be told

30:35

that it had already been sold, but then

30:38

still see that it was on the market weeks

30:40

later. Wong said that

30:42

when they finally chose a house to buy, they

30:44

made sure a neighbor would be okay with

30:46

their living there before they even made

30:48

an offer. In the nineteen seventies,

30:51

Tyrus Wang retired from his work

30:53

in commercial art. He had developed

30:56

a shakiness in his hands that made

30:58

painting more difficult. Instead,

31:01

he started spending a lot of his time making

31:03

kites, building on things he had learned

31:05

from his late father while he was still a child.

31:08

He used materials like bamboo, ritan,

31:11

paper, and silk to make beautifully

31:13

decorated, intricate kites, and

31:15

then he would take them to Santa Monica Beach

31:17

to fly. Once a month, he was oft

31:20

in there with a whole collection of

31:22

these kites, like flocks of birds

31:24

or butterflies, or fish in different

31:26

colors, or long centipedes,

31:30

like one hundred different segments

31:32

of centipede body, each of the

31:34

segments made from a separate panel,

31:36

and all of them separately constructed

31:39

and balanced and decorated. In

31:42

nineteen seventy eight, he and Ruth went

31:44

on a trip to China, and after

31:46

they returned, Ruth had a series of strokes,

31:49

and after that she developed dementia. For

31:52

about fifteen years, Tyros stepped away

31:54

from public life almost entirely to

31:56

take care of her. She died

31:58

in January of nineteen ninety five, and their

32:00

friends really wondered how Tyris would

32:02

go on. He gradually

32:04

returned to the public eye, though, and

32:07

in the last years of his life, Tyrs Wong started

32:09

getting some recognition for his earlier

32:12

work. He had worked in

32:14

so many different media, some of which

32:16

we have not even touched on in this

32:18

episode, like sculpture and

32:20

scarf painting and book illustrations.

32:23

For example, he illustrated a book

32:25

called Footprints of the Dragon, a Story

32:28

of the Chinese and the Pacific Railways

32:30

by Vanya Oaks in nineteen forty nine.

32:33

He and his work had come to be seen as

32:35

kind of a bridge between different generations

32:38

of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans,

32:40

as well as between the Chinese community

32:43

and the greater communities of California

32:45

and the United States.

32:47

In two thousand and one, he was named a Disney Legend

32:50

and recognized for his extensive contributions

32:52

to the movie Bambie. In two thousand

32:54

and six, he received the Windsor Mackay Award

32:56

at the Annie Awards. That's an industry award

32:59

by the Internationally Animated Film Association

33:01

Hollywood. Windsor McKay, which

33:04

we have talked about on the show, was a cartoonist and

33:06

animator. We covered him in a two part episode

33:08

in May of twenty eighteen. In

33:11

twenty thirteen and twenty fourteen, the Walt

33:13

Disney Family Museum hosted a retrospective

33:15

exhibition of his work called Water to Paper,

33:18

Paint to Sky, The Art of Tyriswong.

33:21

He attended this exhibition at the age of

33:23

more than one hundred.

33:25

Tyros Wong died at home on December

33:27

thirtieth, twenty sixteen, at the age of

33:29

one hundred and six. Toward the

33:31

very end of his life, he had participated

33:33

in the making of a documentary about

33:36

his life called Tyris. This

33:38

was finished in twenty fifteen and

33:40

nationally broadcast on PBS

33:42

American Masters in twenty seventeen. In

33:45

twenty eighteen, he was honored with a Google

33:47

doodle on his birthday. Clicking

33:49

the kite in the corner of the doodle brings

33:52

up a short animation about his life.

33:54

There's also a forthcoming book about him

33:56

called background Artist, The Life

33:59

and Work of Tyros, which is planned

34:01

for release in October. I

34:03

thought about putting this episode off

34:05

when I learned this book was on the way,

34:08

But I've worked on this podcast for

34:11

more than a decade, and at this point I

34:13

know that when I try to do that,

34:15

what really happens is the episode

34:18

just never gets done. Yeah

34:21

before anyone since suggestions, Yes,

34:23

I've tried all kinds of list making

34:26

and reminder setting and various

34:28

strategies to keep this pattern

34:30

from happening. I've learned

34:33

what really needs to happen is to

34:35

just go ahead and do the episode and not

34:38

delay it for a future eventuality.

34:42

That is Tyrus Wong, who

34:44

I love. Of course he's

34:46

lovable. Do you also

34:48

have lovable listener mail? I do, I

34:51

have listener mail? So

34:53

this listener mail.

34:54

We've gotten a couple of notes on this

34:56

topic, and I'm just going to read one of them, which

34:58

is from Elaine. Elaine

35:00

said, Hi, Holly and Tracy. You mentioned

35:03

not being able to find an episode

35:05

or remember doing one on the War of Jenkins

35:07

Eer, but I thought I remembered hearing about

35:09

it and it would have been from stuff

35:12

you missed in history class. Please see attached

35:14

screenshot. I found a four minute episode,

35:16

so that must be a very old one with previous

35:18

hosts. I'm surprised I remember a four

35:20

minute episode just sharing.

35:23

I'm thinking maybe it also came up

35:25

in another episode alas I

35:27

don't have a pet. Next time I write in,

35:29

I'll get a photo of my friends rabbits.

35:32

Thank you love the show, Elaine, So thank

35:34

you Elaine, and to the couple

35:36

other folks who sent

35:39

us a note about this very old episode

35:42

about the War of Jenkins Ear. I

35:45

cannot remember exactly where this came up.

35:47

It was in a past episode, and I was like, I feel

35:49

like we have talked about this, and I can find no record

35:52

of it that there is indeed

35:55

a very old, four minute long

35:57

episode of the show from the very very early

36:00

days the show called why did England

36:02

and Spain Fight over an Ear?

36:05

That is not the episode. I

36:07

could not remember though, because

36:09

what I kept thinking was no, like, it's a thing that I

36:12

worked on, and Holly

36:14

and I were not involved in the show in

36:16

any way until

36:18

our names start showing.

36:20

Up at the beginning of it.

36:22

So if you're hearing

36:24

an episode that says that starts off

36:26

something like I Am Candace

36:29

and I am Jane,

36:32

we were not involved in the show production

36:34

at that point. I think what I'm actually remembering

36:38

is that for a while, in addition to doing

36:41

this podcast, I attempted to do

36:43

a whole additional podcast

36:45

called This Day in History Class that

36:48

was a day by day, approximately

36:50

five minutes every day, episode

36:53

on something that happened in history that day. There's

36:55

definitely a jenkins Ear episode

36:58

of This Day in History Class that I definitely

37:00

worked on, and I think that is what I am remembering.

37:05

So thanks to everyone who sent notes

37:07

about this extremely old episode. The mystery

37:10

is solved, question mark. I think it's solved

37:12

anyway, So

37:15

yes, thank you so much, Elaine, thank you to everyone

37:17

else. If you would like to send us a note or

37:19

at History podcastiheartradio

37:21

dot.

37:21

Com, and you can subscribe

37:24

to our show on the iHeartRadio

37:26

app or wherever else you'd like to get your podcasts.

37:34

Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of

37:36

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37:39

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