When the opening credits first rolled on Bambi in 1942, moviegoers saw the name “Tyrus Wong” flash by for barely a second, listed simply as a background artist.

They couldn’t have known the film’s dreamlike, mist-filled forest — rendered in soft washes of color, so different from Disney’s earlier, theatrically bright style — sprung from the brush of a Chinese-born artist from L.A.

In Background Artist: The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong , University of Houston film scholar Karen Fang digs into how Wong became one of the first Asian American artists to put a stamp on Hollywood in the 1940s, when the political climate made belonging in U.S. society — much less artistic recognition — an enormous feat.

We also learn how Wong, who died in 2016 at age 106, built a legacy that went far be

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