Recently Written

• Views of Portugal—Posted on the run
• Views of Tokyo
• Ethel versus the Spider
• Views of Los Angeles and St. Louis—Posted on the Run
• Vale Floppy, 1989 – 2010
• The Ron Mueck exhibition at the NGV
• Street Art in Brunswick
• Mum turns 90! Floppy is 101!! Ping learns to ride a bicycle at 53!!!
• Forthcoming Talk at the Art Deco and Modernism Society
• Views of Western Australia

Categories

• A.W. Purnell
• Anecdotes
• Architecture (excluding A.W. Purnell)
• Crime fiction (excluding Sherlock Holmes)
• Film and television
• Linton
• Sherlock Holmes
• Sketches
• The everyday and the surreal
• Travel

Archives

• June 2010
• May 2010
• March 2010
• February 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• July 2009
• June 2009
• May 2009
• April 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• August 2007
• July 2007
• May 2007
• February 2007
• January 2007

Blogroll

• Anna May Wong (on Chinese television)
• Arthur Purnell (on Chinese television)
• Arthur W. Purnell exhibition
• Better Holmes and gardens
• Derham Groves on Australian television
• Derham’s artist’s books
• Hanoi architecture
• Murderous Melbourne
• The Memorial Museum of Generalissimo Sun Yat-sen’s Mansion
• Women’s casual TV outfits

Admin

• Log in
• Wordpress
• XHTML

Search

A test video using my new incredible Flip Ultra HD camcorder. I’m no Ed Wood…yet.

Hollywood comes to Melbourne
Melbourne Academic Derham Groves will present the story of the Hollywood star, Anna May Wong, who starred in numerous movies (usually as an Oriental Temptress) and who visited Melbourne to perform at the Tivoli in 1939. Anna was an Art Deco diva if ever there was one!

Date: Thursday 11 Feb 2010
Time: 7:30pm for 7:45pm start
Venue: Racecourse Hotel, cnr Dandenong Rd and Waverley Rd, Malvern East (Melways 68 F1)
Cost: $15 (coffee/tea, biscuits and mini-muffins provided)

I was looking at film clips of Anna May Wong on YouTube. She was one of the actors featured in Hollywood Party (1937), a short film of a garden party with a Chinese theme, held to raise funds for the Kuomintang. I was surprised to see the US comedian Charley Chase arrive at the party driving a mock Dymaxion car. I didn’t realize that Buckminister Fuller’s invention had seeped into popular culture to that extent by 1937.

Elaine Mae Woo, the director of Frosted Yellow Willows (2007), a documentary about the career of Anna May Wong, visited Melbourne last week for the Anna May Wong retrospective at ACMI. Pictured are moderator Philipa Hawker (above, left), Elaine and myself on stage following the screening of Frosted Yellow Willows on Thursday night at ACMI. Elaine and I spoke about Anna May Wong at the Chinese Museum on Saturday afternoon (below), and then I introduced Shanghai Express (1932), one of Wong’s best and most memorable films, at ACMI on Saturday night.

Dominick Dunne and the grave of his daughter Dominique at Pierce Brothers cemetery in Los Angeles.  Dominique’s tragic murder started Dominick’s second career as a ‘celebrity’ crime reporter and a crime fiction author.

Recently we saw the compelling Australian documentary Celebrity: Dominick Dunne. What an amazing life he’s had! Besides experiencing more than his fair share of personal tragedies, knowing ‘everybody’ in Hollywood and covering celebrity trials for Vanity Fair, Dunne also produced the late 1950s-early 1960s TV show Adventures in Paradise starring Gardner McKay as dashing Adam Troy, captain of the schooner ‘Tikki’. It was one of my favourite TV shows as a kid.

Above: James Drury, star of the popular US TV Western series The Virginian, visited Australia in the 1960s (although I’m not sure exactly what year). When he arrived at Essendon Airport in Melbourne he was greeted by TV personality Panda (left) and TV singer Val Ruff (wife of Geoff Corke, a.k.a. ‘King Corky, King of the Kids’). You couldn’t tote a handgun at an airport like that these days! Below: Mum and me watching The Virginian on Foxtel last Sunday.

That much maligned pop group The Monkees toured Australia in 1968. The cost of a ticket to see them at Festival Hall in Melbourne was only $2.10. Inflation is a truly frightening phenomenon.

The American-Chinese actress Anna May Wong performed at the Tivoli Theatre in Melbourne in 1939. Currently I’m doing research on the actress and her time in Australia. Few movie stars can surpass Anna May’s beauty and style.

‘Knowing how much the Chinese believe in lucky charms, I looked around the dressing room for some sign of this but as I could see no indication my curiosity prompted me to ask. Anna May picked up a quaint tiny shoe that had been fashioned into a pincushion, and told me it was her mascot, for it had actually enclosed one of her feet when she was a baby. When I pointed out that it resembled a boy’s shoe, she related the fact that, until the age of 10, she was brought up as a boy. It seems the first child in the family was a girl and then Anna May arrived. Her father was so annoyed because he had no heir to his name that he ordered Anna to be considered as such for nearly 10 years. It was her sister who kept Anna’s first shoes, and today she keeps the other one of the pair as a luck-bringer.’ Jonathan Swift, Sun, 13 June 1939.

The dreamy eyed Geoff Corke in his cardboard crown as King Corky and the very lovely Susan Gaye Anderson appearing on The Tarax Show. What a colourful set for black and white television! We never guessed.

keep looking »