History Main / Yellowface

Sometimes it is used simply out of a reluctance to cast genuine Asian actors. A prominent example was Creator/AnnaMayWong being passed over for the lead female role of O-Lan in the 1937 film version of ''Literature/TheGoodEarth'' in favour of white actress Luise Rainer. Miss Wong was told she "was not beautiful enough". The excuse given was that MediaNotes/TheHaysCode would have prohibited the film from showing Wong kissing her leading man as "miscegenation", because he was the white actor Paul Muni, despite their both playing Chinese characters.[[note]]MGM also [[WhatCouldHaveBeen missed out]] by not allowing Creator/SessueHayakawa to play Wang Lung; despite his status as the first great Hollywood sex symbol, predating even Creator/RudolfValentino, Creator/DouglasFairbanks or Creator/RonaldColman. MGM had a very white-only attitude compared to the other studios Hayakawa had worked with.[[/note]]

->''Some people call it "yellowface," but I say "the practice of blackface employed on Asians," because it’s more evocative.''
-->-- '''Creator/ConstanceWu''', “[[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/asian-american-actresses-discuss-ghost-885890 Asian-American Actresses Discuss ‘Ghost in the Shell,’ Oscars Controversies]]”

* In Barry Eisler's ''John Rain'' series, the title character is a half-white, half-Japanese American who uses plastic surgery and hair dye to look fully Asian.

Sometimes it is used simply out of a reluctance to cast genuine Asian actors. A prominent example was Creator/AnnaMayWong being passed over for the lead female role of O-Lan in the 1937 film version of ''Literature/TheGoodEarth'' in favour of white actress Luise Rainer. Miss Wong was told she "was not beautiful enough". The excuse given was that UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode would have prohibited the film from showing Wong kissing her leading man as "miscegenation", because he was the white actor Paul Muni, despite their both playing Chinese characters.[[note]]MGM also [[WhatCouldHaveBeen missed out]] by not allowing Creator/SessueHayakawa to play Wang Lung; despite his status as the first great Hollywood sex symbol, predating even Creator/RudolfValentino, Creator/DouglasFairbanks or Creator/RonaldColman. MGM had a very white-only attitude compared to the other studios Hayakawa had worked with.[[/note]]

[[caption-width-right:320:Yes, that's really '''''Creator/MickeyRooney''''' under the buck teeth and Hirohito glasses.]]

See also {{Blackface}} and {{Brownface}}. InterchangeableAsianCultures is a related trope in which works play fast and loose with Asian cultures and ethnicities.

* FakeNationality: Yellowface is a subtrope of FakeNationality in which the actor uses make-up to appear East Asian.

* ''The Adventures of Marco Polo'' stars Creator/GaryCooper as the title character who travels to China had no actual Asian actors in the cast.

* [[http://www.cracked.com/article_19743_7-outrageous-hoaxes-that-actually-worked_p2.html Robert Fortune]] was a white Scottish man who disguised himself as a Chinese man to learn the secrets of Chinese tea. He explained [[NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent his Scottish accent]] by claiming to be from a faraway province. As different regions of China have different accents and even different languages, this worked.

* WWE superstar Lord Tensai is a weird half-and-half example. Most older fans recognize him at Matthew Bloom, who wrestled for a while as Albert/A-Train, but after leaving, he became very popular in Japanese promotions. They continually bring this up, and his gimmick involves wearing Japanese garb, with Japanese (fake) kanji tattoos on his face and a few real ones on the back of his head, and even having a manager dressed all in black almost like a kuroko. He also speaks Japanese (although his pronunciation is with an American accent.) It's still a little hazy whether or not they're trying to pretend he's actually Japanese. Considering they have an actual Japanese wrestler in Yoshi Tatsu who's nowhere near as stereotypical, it's just strange.

* Depending on who you ask, a non-Asian person [[{{Cosplay}} cosplaying]] as Japanese {{Anime}} character can be accused of this.

* ''Film/FiftyFiveDaysAtPeking'': Practically every Chinese character with any lines in this 1963 film is played by a white actor. The rare exception is Teresa, who's half Chinese and half American and was played by Lynne Sue Moon, an Anglo-Chinese actress; and Colonel Shiba of the Japanese delegation was played by Juzo Itami. A large number of East Asian ''extras'' were hired, of course, to provide the {{mooks}} for the white heroes to mow down.

* Played with in the novel ''{{Literature/Yellowface}}'' by Creator/RebeccaFKuang. June Hayward, who is white, steals an unpublished first draft from her frenemy Athena Liu after Athena's death in a freak accident, and passes it off as her own. To quash possible concerns about the book's authenticity, she publishes it as "Juniper Song", with an author photo that makes her appear ethnically ambiguous. While Song is her actual middle name (ostensibly she's using it as her penname to honor her mother) and she never outright ''claims'' to be Asian, June and her publishers are still very obviously attempting to mislead the casual reader into making some...incorrect assumptions...about her ethnicity. Which quickly turns out to be a ''really'' bad idea.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs'':

Yellowface has often been used simply to facilitate comically insulting representations of East Asians, though, unlike {{blackface}} with MinstrelShows, it has never been associated with a particular artistic tradition. It also never gained the same stigma associated with blackface, and still remains far more acceptable in Western media, as demonstrated, for example, by its use in the film adaptation of ''Literature/CloudAtlas''.

* Played with in the novel ''Yellowface'' by Creator/RebeccaFKuang. June Hayward, who is white, steals an unpublished first draft from her frenemy Athena Liu after Athena's death in a freak accident, and passes it off as her own. To quash possible concerns about the book's authenticity, she publishes it as "Juniper Song", with an author photo that makes her appear ethnically ambiguous. While Song is her actual middle name (ostensibly she's using it as her penname to honor her mother) and she never outright ''claims'' to be Asian, June and her publishers are still very obviously attempting to mislead the casual reader into making some...incorrect assumptions...about her ethnicity. Which quickly turns out to be a ''really'' bad idea.

** Early ''Doctor Who'' serials in Asian settings, such as "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E4MarcoPolo Marco Polo]]" and "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS5E2TheAbominableSnowmen The Abominable Snowmen]]". Zenia Merton, who portrayed Ping-Cho in the former, was half Asian (Burmese, not Chinese), however.

->''"Some people call it ‘yellowface,’ but I say ‘the practice of blackface employed on Asians’ because it’s more evocative."''

* The live-action ''Film/GhostInTheShell'' film (which was already facing accusations of [[RaceLift Whitewashing]]) came under fire after it came out that [[http://screencrush.com/ghost-in-the-shell-whitewashing-scarlett-johnasson-vfx/ the studio was experimenting with digital effects designed to make white actors look more Asian]].

* In one ''Series/{{MADtv}}'' sketch, an Asian guy takes his white girlfriend home to meet his parents. His parents are white (he's adopted) but pretend to be Asian to help him fit in with the family. They then get angry at him for [[HypocriticalHumor dating]] [[MalignedMixedMarriage a white girl]].

* ''The Hatchet Man'': A 1932 drama about Wong Low Get (played by Creator/EdwardGRobinson, a Romanian Jew), a "[[ProfessionalKiller hatchet man]]" working for a [[TheTriadsAndTheTongs tong]]. All the main characters are Asian but they are all played by white actors, with a few Asian actors in minor roles. Because there was at least an attempt at cultural authenticity and the performances were not meant to be comical, the film can be seen as FairForItsDay.

Yellowface has often been used simply to facilitate comically insulting representations of East Asians, though, unlike {{blackface}}, it has never been associated with a particular artistic tradition. It also never gained the same stigma associated with blackface, and still remains far more acceptable in Western media, as demonstrated, for example, by its use in the film adaptation of ''Literature/CloudAtlas''.

* In ''Film/TheTerrorOfTheTongs'' (1961), the leader of the Red Dragon Tong is played by Creator/ChristopherLee, with Ewen Solo, Creator/RogerDelgado and Charles Lloyd-Pack as his main underlings, and Yvonne Monlaur as the hero's half-Chinese love interest. Burt Kwouk, in a tiny role as a diplomat, is the only actor of Asian descent with a speaking part.

* The sound-only equivalent of Yellowface was done, for laughs, in radio ensemble comedy show ''Radio/RoundTheHorne'', where a recurring arch-enemy of Keneth Horne-Special Agent was Chou-En-Ginsberg, voiced in an exaggerated way by Creator/KennethWilliams. Often, he would be acompanied by the lovely Lotus Blossom, played by Bill Pertwee. The portrayals were ''incredibly'' politically incorrect re their portrayals of things Chinese.

* In ''The Terror of the Tongs'' (1961), the leader of the Red Dragon Tong is played by Creator/ChristopherLee, with Ewen Solo, Creator/RogerDelgado and Charles Lloyd-Pack as his main underlings, and Yvonne Monlaur as the hero's half-Chinese love interest. Burt Kwouk, in a tiny role as a diplomat, is the only actor of Asian descent with a speaking part.

* ''Film/INowPronounceYouChuckAndLarry'' has Creator/RobSchneider playing an Asian minister. Schneider is partially of Asian descent already, being one-quarter Filipino, but for his performance, Schneider donned makeup to make himself look distinctly Asian, complete with a bigger, wider nose, slanted eyelids and a darker skin color.

* In ''Film/TheThreeStooges'' short "No Dough Boys", a wartime short, the stooges are dressed as Japanese soldiers for a photo shoot, and later stumble upon a hideout with Nazi spies and have to take on the identity of the Japanese spies they were expecting to meet with. HilarityEnsues.

* ''Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing'' was produced in 1955 with Creator/WilliamHolden as the leading man, and Jennifer Jones in yellowface as Dr. Han Suyin. Nowadays, the film is a case-study in the difficulty Hays Code Hollywood had in depicting interracial relationships.