Cleopatra Wong is a fictional character created in 1978 by Filipino filmmaker and producer Bobby A. Suarez, who featured her in three feature-length movies: They Call Her Cleopatra Wong in 1978, Dynamite Johnson in 1979, and Devil’s Angels in 1980. She was portrayed by Singapore actress Marrie Lee.
Fictional character biography
The Singapore-based fictional Interpol agent has been used in an early film franchise hailing from Southeast Asia, and has remained the only film franchise featuring a Singaporean as the central figure. In Dynamite Johnson, the character Cleopatra Wong joined forces with Bionic Boy, another recurring character also created by Bobby A. Suarez. The Cleopatra Wong films are renowned for bringing together elements pertaining both to the Western spy movie genre and to the Asian martial arts film genre, with the use of numerous gadgets and a variety of exotic locations, as well as for the central character to display top class skills with men, motorbikes, automatic pistols, and even longbow armed with dangerously explosive arrows. Cleopatra Wong’s original tagline in 1978 was: She purrs like a kitten... Makes love like a siren... Fights like a panther.
Inspiration
The fictional character of Cleopatra Wong was inspired by other fictional characters such as James Bond created in 1953 and Cleopatra Jones created in 1973. Rightly so, she was dubbed by the press "Asia’s female James Bond". Her creation also took inspiration from the roles played by Bruce Lee in The Big Boss, Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon, to such an extent that Cleopatra Wong was nicknamed the "Female Big Boss", and that Doris Young who acted the part was given by Bobby A. Suarez the screen name "Marrie Lee", thus sharing Bruce Lee’s surname.
Name
The name of the character was therefore a combination of the first name Cleopatra taken from its American blaxploitation predecessor Cleopatra Jones, and of the Asian surname Wong, an extremely widespread name among Chinese population or populations of Chinese descent. The character’s name ended being catchy and served as the main marketing tool to promote the first installment of the media franchise, the use of the phrase "they call her…" putting the name almost on a pedestal. As a matter of fact, this was also in line with the trend of the day, as in the 1970s there was a vogue for titles of that sort, including spaghetti westernsThey Call Me Trinity and They Call Me Renegade, Swedish action-thriller They Call Her One Eye, Sidney Poitier-starring drama They Call Me Mister Tibbs!, and even a Filipino martial arts knock-off, They Call Him Chop Suey, which had been written and directed by Bobby A Suarez himself in 1976, two years before he created Cleopatra Wong.
Films
Cultural impact
Cinematically, Cleopatra Wong has been an influence within the spy as well as martial arts genres, becoming an icon of popular culture. A major testament to Cleopatra Wong’s prominence in popular culture was made public when Quentin Tarantino, talking about the character played by Uma Thurman in his Kill Bill series declared: Cleopatra Wong's influence on film was also documented by Mark Hartley's feature-length documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! released in 2010. Moreover, Cleopatra Wong's influence extended beyond film, reaching out to the music industry, when Australian musician and composer Amanda Brown, following the breakup of The Go-Betweens, formed with former Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison as well as with Michael Armiger on bass guitar, Colin Bloxsom and Mark Moffatt, a band called Cleopatra Wong which was active from 1991 to 1992. Marrie Lee was dismayed by a Singapore film critic who wrote rather uncharitably that she was "Cleopatra Wrong".
Franchise
In 2000, the Cleopatra Wong franchise was held by Cleopatra Wong International, a company founded by Raphaël Millet and former actress Doris Young and incorporated in Singapore, in order both to preserve the heritage of the character and to revive it.
