Wong Howe was born in China, but, aged five, moved to the US with the rest of his family after his father had settled there. He became interested in photography from an early age, but landed a job in the film industry through a fortuitous set of events which read like a movie plot in themselves. Wong Howe wound up in Los Angeles after running out of money to attend school in San Francisco. One of the jobs he took to make ends meet was as a busboy at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Wong Howe was scooped up by Cecil B DeMille after the renowned director spotted him working as a clapper boy on the set of The Little American, which allowed him to examine each scene in meticulous detail. Entertained by the image of a small Chinese man with a large cigar, DeMille hired him. "He asked who that fellow with the funny face was," Wong Howe told Roger Ebert. "I guess he liked my looks, and he made me his third or fourth assistant cameraman. That was in 1918."