Style Icon: Anna May Wong

Via Wikipedia:

Anna May Wong (January 3, 1905 – February 2, 1961) was an American actress, the first Chinese American movie star, and the first Asian American to become an international star. Her long and varied career spanned both silent and sound film, television, stage, and radio.

Born near the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles to second-generation Chinese-American parents, Wong became infatuated with the movies and began acting in films at an early age. During the silent film era, she acted in The Toll of the Sea (1922), one of the first movies made in color, and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Wong became a fashion icon, and by 1924 had achieved international stardom.

Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles she reluctantly played in Hollywood, she left for Europe in the late 1920s, where she starred in several notable plays and films, among them Piccadilly (1929).

She spent the first half of the 1930s traveling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work. Wong was featured in films of the early sound era, such as Daughter of the Dragon (1931) and Daughter of Shanghai (1937), and with Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932).

In 1935 Wong was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role in its film version of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, choosing instead the European Luise Rainer to play the leading role in “yellowface”. Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her family’s ancestral village and studying Chinese culture. In the late 1930s, she starred in several B movies for Paramount Pictures, portraying Chinese-Americans in a positive light. She paid less attention to her film career during World War II, when she devoted her time and money to helping the Chinese cause against Japan. Wong returned to the public eye in the 1950s in several television appearances as well as her own series in 1951, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong, the first U.S. television show starring an Asian-American. She had been planning to return to film in Flower Drum Song when she died in 1961, at the age of 56.

For decades after her death, Wong was remembered principally for the stereotypical “Dragon Lady” and demure “Butterfly” roles that she was often given. Her life and career were re-evaluated in the years around the centennial of her birth, in three major literary works and film retrospectives. Interest in her life story continues and another biography was published in 2009.

Below is a video from Sexy Beijing featuring Anna May Wong. If you can get past the dorky Sex and the City intro, the episode actually contains an interesting and informative interview with Graham Russel Gao Hodges, author of Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend.

Cinema Style: Frances

Watch the rise and fall of 1930′s Hollywood actress Frances Farmer in 1982′s Frances. Jessica Lange, in an Oscar nominated role, portrays the non-conformist as she acts her way out of her hometown, struggles with a controlling mother, falls in and out of love, and faces the reality of the mental health industry…and quite stylishly I might add.

posted by: Tricia Rock

Go See: Coco Before Chanel

Studio Synopsis:
“Coco Before Chanel is the story of Gabrielle Coco Chanel, who began her life as a headstrong orphan, and through an extraordinary journey became the legendary couturier who embodied the modern woman and became a timeless symbol of success, freedom and style. The film portrays the formative years of Chanel’s life, the years Chanel spent discovering and inventing herself.”

For a listing of theater release dates click here

posted by: Tricia Rock

Cinema Style: The Conformist

Bernardo Bertolucci‘s 1970 film The Conformist is a stylistic masterpiece, not only in its cinematography but also simply in the styling itself. Fashion and film have a close relationship. Designers create costumes for films and in turn films inspire the collections of designers. Set in 1930′s France and Italy, authentic upper class fashion of the time is captured through a 1970′s lens. Hats and furs, ribbons and gowns create a slightly enhanced and imaginative world in which the characters live. It is an unrealistic world the main character Marcello Clerici has created for himself to escape his past and conform to a fascist society. Critically acclaimed as one of Bertolucci’s best, The Conformist is a must see for fashion lovers and film lovers alike.