User:NUiniV/Cy Wong

Cy Wong is an American actor, singer and composer. He was one of the first Black actors to star in General Hospital and Young in the Restless. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California and Natchitoches, LA.

Early life
Cy Wong was born on December 11, 1937 in Gary, IN, a steel mill town 20 miles southeast of Chicago. He is the oldest of 13 children of Nathaniel and Olevia Donway Wong. In 1940 the family moved to Campti, LA where Cy's parents had migrated from several years earlier. Wong had two sisters born in Gary, while five brothers and five sisters were born in Campti. Cy Wong is a fourth generation mixed Chinese and black. His great-grandfather Phillip Wong, a first generation pioneer, immigrated into Louisiana on January 15, 1867 from Cuba with a Frenchman, Jules Honorat Normand who owned a plantation. Wong had come to work as an indentured agriculturalist for 5 years. In 1872 Phillip married Lillie James, a woman of color, Creole. They had two sons and two daughters. In 1904 their son Emile Wong, Sr., a noted businessman in northwest Louisiana, married Nellie Washington, a mixed black and native American woman. They had five children including Cy's father Nathaniel.

Wong graduated from Central High School with honors and joined the U.S. Navy in 1956. He served as a seaman aboard two attack troop transports in the Pacific: the USS Noble and the USS Paul Revere. In 1958 while serving aboard the Revere he organized a singing group called The Reveres. He composed his first song for the group, `Petals from a Rose,' for which the group won many talent shows throughout the Pacific. During this period Wong received the Navy's Good Conduct Medal. Cy was honorably discharged from the Navy in 1960 and returned to Natchitoches, LA, where, in 1958 while on leave, he had met an elementary school teacher, Miss Betty Jean Batiste, fell in love and became engaged. On November 20, 1960 Cy married Betty and they later had one child: Faith Devona Wong.

Career
Wong went to New York in January 1961 to promote several songs he had written. With very little success he ended up studying voice under noted vocal coach Mable Horsey for 3 months. Later in the year he moved to Los Angeles and began working in several clubs prior to signing a recording contract as a singer/songwriter with Nat King Cole's K-C records. Wong received recognition and remuneration for his composing efforts on his recorded records "Della" and "Too Proud to Cry." Tel magazine voted him 1962's most promising star. Unfortuntely, the company died with the demise of Cole in 1965 and Wong returned to working the night club circuit while managing the Dear Hearts, a young rock group from San Francisco for 2 years. He was successful getting them club work and television appearances, but a conflict with parents forced him to leave the act.

Wong decided to broaden his talent into the acting field. In 1968 he enrolled in the Professional Theater Workshop in Hollywood. Using the school as a springboard, Cy subsequently appeared in several productions in Los Angeles including American Hurrah, The Blood Knot, and Wuthering Heights. In 1971 while working on ABC's daytime melodrama General Hospital, Wong enrolled full-time in Los Angeles City College and the California State University earning a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and public relations in 1974. Cy left ABC in 1978 and went to work at the Columbia Broadcasting Co., on the melodrama, The Young and the Restless. Other television work to his credit include episodes of Sanford and Son, Hill Street Blues, and the CBS Movie, Perfect Gentlemen in 1978. Wong left the Young and the Restless in 1981 to research and write a motion picture script entitled `The Other Cowboys.' He followed this project with research work on his Chinese heritage entitled `The Cross-Over,' in 1983. In 1985 Cy became a member of the Chinese Historical Society of southern California. He was elected to the board of directors in 1989 as an interim member and was re-elected in 1991 for a 2-year term.