Barbara Jean Wong 100th Birthday Part I: OTR Child Star of the Month - March 2024

Barbara Jean Wong around age 9, from Radio Mirror July 1936. From Media History Digital Library

It was hard to decide on the Old Time Radio (OTR) Child Star of the Month, until I realized a very special star was born 100 years ago this month. 

Born 100 years ago today was Barbara Jean Wong (March 3, 1924- November 13, 1999) talented dancer, actress, singer drum majorette, acrobat, and later a public school teacher. She was known as "The Chinese Shirley Temple" and radio's "Chinese Wonder" as a child. Her specialty was as a voice chameleon who portrayed children of all races on the radio well into her adulthood.

Of all her roles from the Golden Age of Radio the most enduring today was the voice of Judy, one of the Barton Twins, on The Cinnamon Bear (1937), a captivating Christmas serial that is still broadcast on many stations today, and on The Amos 'n' Andy Show as Amos’ daughter Arbadella. She memorably played Arbadella Jones on the Annual Christmas annually from 1940 to 1960. 

Barbara Jean Wong was born in Los Angeles on March 3, 1924, to parents Thomas and Maye Wong. In the early 1930s for station KFAC she was a cast member of the “Whoa Bill” Club and acted in the radio skit “Billy and Betty” with actor Dorian Thompson. From these early broadcasts Wong is believed to have been the first Asian American to act in an American radio comedy or drama. 

She was cast was Asian, White, and Black children, girls and boys on many programs for the next 2 decades On Strange as it Seems, a radio program based on John Hix' comic strip which was similar to Ripley's Believe It of Not, she portrayed Alice (of Wonderland), even once portrayed George Washington as a boy which made national headlines

Radio was the theater of the imagination, and for Barbara Jean Wong there was no color or race, nor age. In the new medium of television, a 30-year-old Wong once commented that she found herself typecast as Asian women. She had appeared in several movies in the 1930s and 1940s always as Asian girls or women. One of her last film roles was in The Man From Button Willow (1965), an animated tale in which she played a little Asian girl, and a possible first introduction to Wong for those unfamiliar with radio's golden age,

Barbara Jean Wong Lee passed away November 13, 1999 at the age of 75. Today via radio and film collections on the internet her talented voice performances can easily be rediscovered. 

To Be Continued........For the month of March, I want to follow up this post with highlight for her childhood performances, and her performances as children.