Wah Chang

Artist and environmentalist

• Born: August 2, 1917
• Place of Birth: Honolulu, Hawaii
• Died: December 22, 2003
• Place of Death: Carmel, California

An artistic prodigy, Wah Chang survived the breakup of his family and a bout of polio to become a highly respected special effects expert, prop designer, and stop-motion animator in Hollywood. After contributing to numerous films, television series, and commercials, he spent the remainder of his life creating sculpture.

Areas of achievement: Art, film, animation

Early Life

Wah Ming Chang was the son of the architect and artist Dai Song Chang and fashion designer Fai Sue Chang. He was born on August 2, 1917. Through his parents, Wah Chang acquired an interest in art at an early age. Wah was just two years old when the Chang family relocated to San Francisco, where they operated the HoHo Tea Room, which quickly became a gathering place for the local artistic community. It was there that Wah met regular patron James Blanding Sloan, a Texan-born artist, puppeteer, and theatrical set designer, and his journalist wife, Mildred Taylor, who took an interest in the talented child. Sloan began teaching him etching, printmaking, puppetry, and other artistic techniques. Wah started exhibiting his work in 1925. He was included in shows in Brooklyn and Honolulu, and in 1928, he had his first solo exhibition in San Francisco.

Wah’s mother died suddenly in 1928. His father was devastated by his wife’s death. He later remarried and moved to China. Sloan and Taylor became Wah’s legal guardians and eventually adopted him. In 1929, Wah Chang entered the progressive Peninsula School of Creative Education in Menlo Park on a scholarship. In the early 1930s, when his guardians moved to Southern California, Wah went with them and worked with Sloan on set design projects at the Hollywood Bowl. In 1936, after graduating from high school, he accompanied Sloan to San Antonio and assisted in the design of materials for “The Cavalcade of Texas,” a pageant celebrating the state’s centennial. It was in Texas that he met art student and future wife Glenella “Glen” Taylor.

Life’s Work

Chang taught art for a year in Honolulu before returning to California, where, in 1939, he worked on several projects for the San Francisco World’s Fair and several commercial jobs involving animation and stop-motion photography. The experience helped him land work at Disney Studios, where he made wooden models to assist animators in creating movement in the films Pinocchio (1939), Fantasia (1942), and Bambi (1942).

In 1940, Chang was struck with polio and lost the ability to walk. He was not fully mobile again for a year. After recovering, he married Glen Taylor, and they moved into a Southern California apartment. Chang began working as head of the model department at the George Pal Puppetoon Studio before making several films illustrating particular medical treatments.

In 1945, Chang and his adoptive father established a production company, East-West Studio, which made several animated films. Several years later, Chang and an associate founded Centaur Studio, where he produced television commercials, made models for dolls, designed toys and novelty items, and created custom masks and costumes for various movies.

In the mid-1950s, Chang cofounded Project Unlimited, a company specializing in props, special effects, and costume design. Working often with animator-director George Pal, Chang was involved in many movie projects and television commercials. His stop-motion animation, models, masks, and visual effects work can be seen in such films as Tarantula (1955), The King and I (1956), Tom Thumb (1958), Dinosaurus (1960), Spartacus (1960), Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961), The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), Cleopatra (1963), Seven Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), and Planet of the Apes (1968). Some of Chang’s best work was featured in television series. After creating creatures and effects for the science-fiction show The Outer Limits (1963–1965), he designed numerous characters, costumes, and props, including several devices and props for another popular science-fiction show, Star Trek (1964–1968). He was also the head dinosaur designer for the 1974 series Land of the Lost.

In 1970, Chang and his wife moved to Carmel, California, where, after retiring from film and television work in the middle of the decade, he became known as a sculptor of wildlife. He died on December 22, 2003.

Significance

A creative and talented individual who used his special skills in a wide variety of ways, Wah Chang was highly respected in the art world for his early prints and etchings and for his later exquisite sculptures of animals. In the 1980s, Dennis the Menace cartoonist Hank Ketcham commissioned Chang to sculpt a bronze statue of his mischievous creation, which now graces a park in Monterey, California. Film and television aficionados revere Chang for his behind-the-scenes work that seldom received screen credit but left memorable impressions on audiences. Chang, for example, was an uncredited member of the special effects crew that won an Academy Award for The Time Machine (1960). The handheld communication device he designed for the original Star Trek television series is credited as the inspiration for flip-open mobile phones. Chang’s legacy continues long after his death. Revenues from his estate still support environmental projects aimed at preserving or restoring wildlife habitat.

Bibliography

Barrow, David, and Glen Chang. Life and Sculpture of Wah Ming Chang. Carmel: Wah Ming Chang, 1989. Print.

Chang, Gordon H., et al. Asian American Art: A History, 1850–1970. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008. Print.

Poon, Irene. Leading the Way: Asian American Artists of the Older Generation. Wenham: Gordon College, 2001. Print.

"Wah Ming Chang." Museum of Chinese in America, 2024, www.mocanyc.org/collections/stories/wah-ming-chang. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024.