This year the Popular Culture Association conference was held in St. Louis, but I had a few days in Los Angeles beforehand. Anaheim: Disneyland (7 images— Disneyland’s entrance and railway station; the Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse statue; Sleeping Beauty’s castle; Storybook Land and the Casey Jones train; It’s a Small World After All building; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride; the Thunder Mountain ghost train). Los Angeles: Walt Disney Concert Hall designed by Frank O. Gehry (5 images—the last being the ‘plaque’ on Gehry’s Delft rose sculpture dedicated to Lillian Disney); the Museum of Contemporary Art designed by Arata Isozaki; Watts Towers designed and constructed by Simon Rodia (6 images); the house directly opposite Watts Towers; the Anna May Wong caryatid, part of the Hollywood Walk of Fame statue designed by Catherine Hardwicke (2 images); Basil Rathbone’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; Grauman’s Chinese Theatre (1926) designed by Meyer & Holler (3 images); Capitol Records building (1956) designed by Welton Becket; Clifton’s Cafeteria (2 images); Piece Brothers cemetery (8 images—the graves of Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, Rodney Dangerfield (with the ‘ghost’ of Derham Groves in the background), Bob Crane and Sigrid Valdis (Colonel Hogan and Hilda from Hogan’s Heroes), Don Knotts (Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show), Billy Wilder, and Jack Lemmon). St. Louis: Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts designed by Tadao Ando (2 images); Sun Theatre (1913) designed by Widman and Walsh; the Pruit-Igoe site—which has remained vacant since the disastrous housing project designed in 1950 by Minoru Yamasaki was progressively demolished between 1972-1974 (2 images); Compton Hill water tower (1898) designed by Harry Ellis (2 images); Bissell water tower (1886) designed by William S. Eames (the uncle of Charles Eames); Grand water tower (1871) designed by George I. Barnett; Yit Mei and Javier; model for the ceiling of the lobby at the Magic Chef appliance factory (1947) designed by Isamu Noguchi, in the St. Louis Museum of Art; Gateway to the West (1963-1968) designed by Eero Saarinen (2 images); sample Gateway to the West elevator car; and Union Station (1894) designed by Theodore Link.
Anaheim
Los_Angeles
St._Louis
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)
Young Australia League’s headquarters, Perth; fishing boats, Freemantle; the lighthouse at Bunbury; dolphin spotting at Bunbury (3 images); Ngilgi Cave, Yallingup; at the beach, Dunsborough; James Bond 007, near Augusta; Southern and Indian Oceans, Augusta; the lighthouse at Augusta; Wave Rock, Hyden (2 images); the dog cemetery at Corrigin (2 images); the town hall at York; reading on the beach, Rottnest Island.
London: St. George’s (Nicholas Hawksmoor); St. Mary Woolnoth (Nicholas Hawksmoor); British Museum (renovation by Norman Foster); a post modern bank building (perhaps by Leon Krier?); Gherkin (Norman Foster); Lloyds building (Richard Rogers); Christ Church (Nicholas Hawsmoor); Gilbert and George’s house, Fournier Street, Spitalfields; Gilbert and George shopping at Spitalfields Market; Sherlock Holmes statue in Baker Street; Portsmouth Harbour (2 images); Richard Lancelyn Green’s Sherlock Holmes collection at City Museum, Portsmouth (2 images); Reconstruction of a typical 1950s English living room at City Museum, Portsmouth; St. Pancras Station (William Barlow); National Gallery (addition by Robert Venturi); St. Martins in the Fields (James Gibbs); John Soane Museum (renovation by John Soane); Big Ben (Charles Barry); London Eye (Mark Barfield); Sherlock Holmes pub; British Library at St. Pancras (Colin St. John); Millenium Bridge (Norman Foster); St. Paul’s (Christopher Wren). Tibilisi: House; Brickwork; Shoe repairer’s sign; Graffiti; Cafe; Balcony; Coke advertisement; Mtskheta, the old capital of Georgia; Old churches near Mtskheta (2 images). London again (Kew Gardens): Chinese Pagoda (William Chambers); Temperate House and Palm House (both by Decimus Burton, 3 images). Minneapolis: My buddy, sculptor Andrew Leicester. Rochester NY: Clock of Nations (Dale Clark); Highland Park Diner (2 images); my mentor Karal Ann Marling’s house.
London
Portsmouth
London
Tbilisi/Republic of Georgia
London
Minneapolis
Rochester
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.
