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My recently restored Ex Barton Plaxton Paramount bodied DAF MB230 is seen here at Dublin port about to go on the ferry to Holyhead to go to Showbus 2016. I restored this coach over the last year for the event and this photo was taken once daylight was just on the horizon, the Seatruck ferry can be seen in the background.
Back in April 1987 I went on a bus hunting adventure which included a visit to Chester where I photographed Wallace Arnold of Leeds Volvo B10M-61 / Plaxton Paramount 3500 III C53F D225LWY visiting the city.
New York City - September 2022
1501 Broadway, also known as the Paramount Building, is a 33-story office building on Times Square between West 43rd and 44th Streets in the Theater District neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Rapp and Rapp, it was erected from 1925 to 1927 as the headquarters of Paramount Pictures. The building is designed in the Art Deco style, with Beaux-Arts influences. The office wing on Times Square contains numerous setbacks as mandated by the 1916 Zoning Resolution, while the rear wing housed the Paramount Theatre from 1926 to 1967. Newmark & Company owns 1501 Broadway.
The facade is mostly designed with brick walls, though the first five stories are ornamented with limestone piers. The main entrance is on 43rd Street. There is also a five-story arch on Broadway, facing Times Square, which leads to a Hard Rock Cafe; it is an imitation of the former Paramount Theatre entrance. Atop the building is a four-faced clock, with two large faces and two small faces, as well as an illuminated globe that could display the time. The ground floor historically had an ornate lobby leading to the theater, which had 3,664 seats over four levels. The modern building contains office space in both the original office wing and the theater wing.
Wikipedia
A pleasant few hours in Bristol on a sunny July 2016 afternoon yielded a number of shots for the collection.
Here, Arleen of Peasedown RIL7644, a Dennis Javelin / Plaxton Paramount III new to Martin of Kettering as G411YAY in 1990, is seen at the coach park near ss Great Britain.
The 1926 Art Deco Paramount Building - Times Square
By the end of World War I the motion picture industry had begun a serious migration from New York to California. Yet in 1926 when Paramount Pictures decided to build its new headquarters, President Adolf Zuckor chose Times Square for the site. The motion picture giant would make its mark on Broadway – the capitol of the American theater.
Architects C. W. Rapp and George L. Rapp of the Chicago-based firm Rapp and Rapp, had designed several Midwestern movie theatres. Now theywere given the substantial Paramount commission.
In May of 1926, the cornerstone was laid by Mayor Jimmy Walker. Sealed inside were three copper boxes containing the front pages of New York’s morning newspapers, three five-dollar gold coins, two Paramount feature films and news reels of Admiral Byrd’s Polar expedition. Thomas Edison sent a letter of congratulations.
Here on Broadway between 43rd and 44th Streets Rapp and Rapp produced a 33-story Art Deco tower, stair-stepping upward to an enormous four-faced clock surmounted by an illuminated globe. Stars replaced numerals on the clock faces, echoing the stars in the Paramount logo.
Paramount spent $13.5 million on their new headquarters, the tallest building on Broadway north of the Woolworth Building. At night the globe could be seen from as far away as New Jersey.
On the Broadway side an ornate, curved marquee hung over the entrance to the theater. The lobby inside was modeled after the Paris Opera. Two grand, sweeping staircases curved upwards on either side. An enormous crystal chandelier hung from a baroque ceiling supported by marble columns.
The 3,664-seat auditorium was Neo-Renaissance in style with classical busts and statues in recessed niches, gilded detailing, and a frescoed ceiling. Red carpeting led to the stage hung with stories-high red velvet draperies. The orchestra pit was situated on hydraulic elevators, enabling it to be raised and lowered as needed.
The coup-de-grace was the “Dowager Empress,” one of the largest pipe organs ever built by Wurlitzer. Music accompanying the silent films emanated from the organ’s 33 tons of pipes and 36 ranks.
My first camera, a very simple 110 point & shoot, recorded these rather poor quality images in London on Saturday 12th May 1984.
Hills of Tredegar were in town with their RNY306Y, a Leyland Tiger / Plaxton Paramount Express new in 1983.
The Marion Theatre opened in 1918 on Yazoo Avenue in Clarksdale. The theatre was designed by John Gaisford and one of the first theatres in the area to be built mainly for showing movies. By 1931, the Marion Theatre was acquired by the Saenger Amusements chain, which renamed the theatre the Paramount Theatre. It continued to operate as a movie house for over three more decades.
By the time it closed on October 28, 1976, it had been twinned. In 1986, the Paramount Theatre was taken over by a group that used the theatre for performing arts, and was renamed the Larry Thompson Center for the Performing Arts. The theatre seems to have been used on and off since the 1990’s and is currently closed.
A view of theater seats, which are original to the venue, and the beautiful wall murals that are accurate recreations of the the theater's original wall decor
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The Paramount Theatre, also known as the Paramount Arts Center, is located in Aurora, Illinois. It was designed by Rapp and Rapp in the Art Deco style with Venetian elements, and opened in 1931. Over the years, it has hosted films, plays, musicals, concerts, comedy shows, and other acts. It has been extensively renovated and restored, with great attention to maintaining historical accuracy in the beautiful auditorium.
Staintons of Kendal Leyland Tiger Plaxton Paramount 3500 A4 FWS looking superb on 19th December 2020. It was new to Albatross of Twickenham as A522 LPP. I doubt that the appearance of a Caetano Levante will ever invoke such fondness.
F131TRU was a Dennis Javelin 12SDA / Plaxton Paramount 3200 II C53F new as Baker's of Weston-super-Mare number 19 in October 1988. On disposal it passed to Beeline Coaches of Warminster and was re-registered as RJI8602. Taylors of Tintinhull then ran it as RIL1053. First Somerset & Avon purchased it and it receiver fleet number 21053.
In 1889, Charles Baker established a business with a pony chair for hire in Weston-super-Mare. The business expanded and in the early 1900's.
In 1923, two motor coaches and began operating leisure trips. By the beginning of World War II the fleet had grown to 12. During the war, Bakers operated services transporting aircrews for British Empire Airways. By 1945, the fleet had grown to 30. With the end of the war, Bakers began operating day tours from Weston-super-Mare.
In 1952, the Weston-super-Mare branch of Bristol's largest operator Wessex Coaches, was purchased.
In 1981, Bakers purchased the business of Wems Coaches, its largest competitor in the West Country, the combined fleet totalled 77 vehicles. In November 1984, Bakers merged with travel company Dolphin Travel, with the business was re-branded as Bakers Dolphin Travel, with 100 shops. In 1998, the travel business was sold to First Choice Holidays
Paramount Miami Worldcenter is a 60-story condominium tower in the Miami Worldcenter complex. It sits above the Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s stores in the complex.
Architects Elkus / Manfredi
"Elkus / Manfredi Architects is an architectural firm based in Boston, Massachusetts that includes Howard F. Elkus and David Manfredi, both fellows of the American Institute of Architects, as a principal. The firm was established in 1988." Wikipedia
Official site: Paramount Miami Worldcenter
Richmond, BC Canada
Steveston Harbour - the largest commercial fishing harbour in Canada under the DFO - SCH Harbour Authority Program.
Steveston Harbour is located on the south arm of the Fraser River at the south end of Richmond, BC and is composed of two main sites: Paramount and Gulf.
The Paramount site extends from the south foot of No. 2 Road to the Britannia Shipyard National Historic Site and is the main industrial area of the harbour, offering a plethora of on site services through Harbour Authority staff and our upland tenants, a list of which can be found here.
The Gulf site is located between No. 1 Road and Garry Point Park and consists of a combination of working docks, shops and restaurants, and gear storage facilities.
French postcard by CE - Cinémagazine Selection, Paris, no. 2040. Photo: Les Films Paramount.
Jeanne Boitel (1904-1987) was a French film actress, who was a star in the 1930s. She refused to act in films during the Occupation and distinguished herself in the Resistance during World War II, using the surname of Mozart. She met Jacques Jaujard during her resistance activities in the war and married him.
Jeanne Marie Andrée Boitel was born in Paris in 1904. Boitel had a passion for the theatre - she was on stage from the age of 19 - and studied at the Paris Conservatoire, graduating in 1924. After a fine start in her career as a stage actress, her beauty and singing talent were discovered by film directors. She made her first film in Berlin, Le petit écart/The small gap (1932), co-directed by Henri Chomette, René Clair's older brother, and the German actor and filmmaker Reinhold Schünzel. Her partner was Pierre Richard-Willm, whom she reunited with in Un soir au front/One Evening at the Front (Alexandre Ryder, 1931) based on the play by Belgian playwright Henri Kistemaeckers. She played a young woman in Alsace, still annexed to the German Empire, who saves and loves a French officer but remains faithful to her German husband. That same year, she starred opposite Victor Francen, the loyal servant of the Duke of Reichstadt, in L'aiglon/The Eagle (Victor Tourjansky, 1931) written by Edmond Rostand. She ended the year with boulevard comedies, including L'amoureuse aventure/Amorous Adventure (Wilhelm Thiele, 1931) starring Albert Préjean. The year 1932 remained just as active with Chotard et Cie/Chotard and Company (Jean Renoir', 1934), in which Fernand Charpin prevents his daughter's marriage to a budding writer, and Trois pour cent/Three per cent (Jean Dréville, 1934), in which the parents of a poor young man prevent his marriage to a rich girl! She reunited with Reinhold Schünzel in Berlin for Les dieux s'amusent/The gods at play (Reinhold Schünzel, Albert Valentin, 1934), a musical based on Greek mythology, in which Jeanne was a very pretty Alcmène, wife of Amphitryon, alias Henri Garat. She was also very convincing as Madame de Pompadour in Sacha Guitry's Remontons les Champs-Élysées/Let's Go Up the Champs-Élysées (1938). During the 1930s, she made around thirty films and worked with some of the biggest names in French cinema. Her natural distinction destined her - and confined her - to the role of a refined grande dame.
After the Occupation, Jeanne Boitel refused to compromise with the Germans, who controlled all cinema from 1940 to 1944, and returned to her original passion for theatre while working for the Resistance. Through her involvement in the Resistance, she met Jacques Jaujard, curator of the Louvre Museum. Under the code name of "Mozart", she was sent to him to inventory and discuss the fate of the works he had hidden. They fell in love and married after the war, following Jaujard's divorce. After the war, Jeanne Boitel became a Sociétaire of the Comédie-Française. She considered herself too old to resume her film career where she had left off. She remained at the Comédie Française from 1948 to 1973. In 1954, she made a modest return to the cinema for Sacha Guitry. He had directed her in Remontons les Champs-Élysées before the war and had fond memories of her. He courted her and finally persuaded her to take the part of Madame de Sévigné in the film Si Versailles m'était conté (Sacha Guitry, 1953), followed by roles as the Duchesse de Dino in Napoléon (Sacha Guitry, 1954) with Raymond Pellegrin in the title role, before playing Sarah Bernhardt in Si Paris m'était conté (Sacha Guitry, 1955). Her last screen appearance was as Madame Maigre in Maigret Tend un piège (Jean Delannoy, 1957), alongside Jean Gabin as George Simenon's famous police detective. This role brought her lasting fame, as for a long time she was the only Madame Maigret in cinema. After one last small role in the television series Le neveu d'Amérique (1973), she retired from acting at the age of 70. Her courage during the Resistance earned her the Croix de Guerre, the Rosette de la Résistance and the Légion d'Honneur. Jeanne Boitel passed away in 1987 in her hometown Paris at the age of 83. She had a son with Jacques Jaujard, François-Xavier Jaujard (1946-1996), a translator and publisher.
Sources - French), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Alyssa Milano
"Charmed" Celebrates 150 Episodes and First Season on DVD
Paramount Studios
Los Angeles, California USA
February 1, 2005
Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage.com
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French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 876, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
American film star Lizabeth Scott (1922-2015) starred as the bad girl — or the good girl gone bad - in hard-boiled Film Noirs like The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck, Dead Reckoning (1947) with Humphrey Bogart, and I Walk Alone (1948) opposite Burt Lancaster. With her blonde hair, smouldering eyes and her deep smoky voice, she was a sultry femme fatale in a world of crime, tough talk and dark secrets. Of her 22 feature films, she was the leading lady in all but one. In addition to stage and radio, she appeared on television from the late 1940s to the early 1970s.
Lizabeth Scott was born Emma Matzo in 1922, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where her parents, John Matzo and Mary (nee Pennock), had a grocery store. Despite her parents’ opposition to an acting career, she went to the Alviene Master School of the Theatre and Academy of Cultural Arts in New York in her late teens. Here she adopted the stage name of Elizabeth Scott. She landed a small role in a touring company of the hit stage comedy Hellzapoppin'. Back in New York, unable to get an acting job, she landed work as a fashion model with Harper’s Bazaar at $25 an hour. In 1942, she got a small part in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. Scott also understudied Tallulah Bankhead, who played the lead role. The tempestuous Bankhead, who did not get along with Scott, stubbornly never missed a performance. In Boston Scott finally got to play the lead role, taking over from Miriam Hopkins. She decided to remove the 'E' from Elizabeth Scott to be more distinctive. It would be either this performance or a four-picture spread in an issue of Harper’s Bazaar (the sources differ about this) that led to a long-term Hollywood contract with Hal Wallis, who had his own producing organisation through Paramount Studios. Scott": It was off-season on Broadway and since I wasn’t able to find a job there, I thought it might be a good experience to come to Hollywood and find out what it was all about.” Wallis introduced his 22-year-old discovery as “beautiful, blonde, aloof and alluring”. Scott's film debut was the comedy-drama You Came Along (John Farrow, 1945) opposite Robert Cummings. In her second film, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946), she played a young woman wrongly jailed, opposite Barbara Stanwyck, Kirk Douglas and Van Heflin. She made more of an impression in Dead Reckoning (John Cromwell, 1947) as a gangster’s wife, almost luring Humphrey Bogart into her corruptive trap. Her mysterious character was shot in oblique angles and low-key lighting. Stylishly dressed by Edith Head, she played the good girl gone bad becoming good again in the melodrama Desert Fury (Lewis Allen, 1947). Billed as “the blonde with the brown voice”, Scott played a nightclub singer in I Walk Alone (Byron Haskin, 1948), also starring Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster. She was more decadent than ever in Too Late for Tears (Byron Haskin, 1949), having killed two husbands because she wanted “to move out of the ranks of the middle-class poor”. Scott was her own woman in the world of hard-boiled film crime. Ronald Bergan at The Observer: "Scott was strong and sultry, her heavy dark eyebrows contrasting with her blonde hair. Like [Lauren] Bacall, she had a low and husky voice, but she was far harder; in fact, she was able to suggest hidden depths of depravity – the ideal femme fatale of the 1940s."
In her films, Lizabeth Scott made some memorable quotes. In Pitfall (André De Toth, 1948), she described herself to Dick Powell as "a girl whose first engagement ring was bought by a man stupid enough to embezzle and stupid enough to get caught." In The Racket (John Cromwell, 1951), she asked Robert Mitchum: "Who said I was an honest citizen, and where would it get me if I was?" In another Film Noir, Dark City (William Dieterle, 1950), she is a nightclub singer again who drifts on the edges of a shadowy criminal world, though her love for a gambler (Charlton Heston in his Hollywood debut ) is uplifting. Heston and Scott were reunited for Bad for Each Other (Irving Rapper, 1953). She played several similar roles of a woman willing to change her louche ways but doomed to find a worthwhile man to love her only when she had already passed the point of redemption. After several years of making one Film Noir after another — sometimes at a pace of two or three in a year — Scott was ready for a change. She got it in the comedy Scared Stiff (George Marshall, 1953), starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. In September 1954, a front-page story in the magazine Confidential claimed that Scott was a lesbian and was linked to “the little black books kept by Hollywood prostitutes”. It was also said that on a trip to Paris she had taken up with Frédérique 'Frédé' Baulé, manager of Carroll's, an upper-class, cabaret-type nightclub in Paris. One of the owners was Marlene Dietrich. Two months before the issue's printed publication, her lawyer had instituted a $ 2.5m suit against Confidential, accusing the magazine of “holding the plaintiff up to contempt and ridicule and implying in the eyes of every reader indecent, unnatural and illegal conduct in her private and public life”. Scott lost her suit on a technicality, however, and, given the witch-hunting atmosphere of the times, the case certainly harmed her. Compounding her plight was her rebellious nature, having never paid conventional homage to the film establishment and to gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. In 1955, Scott went to Great Britain to film The Weapon (Val Guest, 1957). As with other European films of the 1950s- 1970s period aimed at a US audience, Scott starred with another American actor, Steve Cochran, who played US Army CID officer Mark Andrews. Scott also played a publicity woman in the Elvis Presley vehicle Loving You (Hal Kanter, 1957). In 1957, she also released an album of torch songs and romantic ballads titled 'Lizabeth'. She had a few TV roles in the 1960s. Her last credited movie appearance was as a man-eating cougar in Pulp (Mike Hodges, 1972), a sendup of the Film Noir starring Michael Caine. One of her ex-husbands in the film is played by Mickey Rooney. Scott lived quietly in Hollywood, sometimes accepting invitations to attend film festivals and other events. In a 1996 interview with documentary filmmaker Carole Langer, Scott said she had liked the grittiness of Film Noir and didn't lament the fact that she wasn't cast in studio blockbusters: "The films that I had seen growing up were always, boy meets girl, the boy ends up marrying girl, they go off into the sunset," Scott said. After the war, films got more in touch with "the psychological, emotional things that people feel and people do. It was a new realm, and it was very exciting because suddenly you were coming closer and closer to reality." Lizabeth Scott died in 2015 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She was 92. The cause was congestive heart failure, said her long-time friend Mary Goodstein. Scott's survivors include her brother Gus Matzo and sister Justine Birdsall.
Sources David Colker (Los Angeles Times), Ronald Bergan (The Observer), Mike Barnes (Hollywood Reporter), Variety, Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
PSV licensed Plaxton Paramounts are now well down into double figures but this diddy Dennis Javelin continues to operate in its original Somerset home. ANZ 4374 was new to Wakes of Wincanton as F990 FYB, morphing into a South West Coaches vehicle on its tenth birthday. It was seen amongst more modern buses in Yeovil Bus Station this lunchtime, 15th November, 2019.
Tent Tours Volvo B10M-61 Plaxton Paramount 3500 A777 RUG in London on 14th July, 1992. This operator had once used Bristol MWs and REs but then purchased a sequence of coaches from Armchair - a Seddon Pennine and a pair of Reliances - adopting that operator's livery as their own. The current Volvo had been new to Wallace Arnold as VDV 534.
Seen in Slack's yard, not long after having it's retro MK1 Paramount grill and headlight surrounds fitted.
Although a basic coach, to me, it oozes quality.
The blade sign of the Paramount Theater, reflected against the building opposite it on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6084/2, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Sessue Hayakawa and Anna May Wong in Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan, 1931).
Anna May Wong (1905-1961) will become the first Asian American to be on U.S. currency. She was the first Chinese American movie star, and the first Asian American actress to gain international recognition. Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles she reluctantly played in Hollywood, Wong left for Europe, where she starred in such classics as Piccadilly (1929). The U.S. Mint will begin shipping coins featuring Anna May Wong on Monday 23 October 2022.
Anna May Wong (Chinese: 黃柳霜; pinyin: Huáng Liǔshuāng) was born Wong Liu Tsong (Frosted Yellow Willows) near the Chinatown neighbourhood of Los Angeles in 1905. She was the second of seven children born to Wong Sam Sing, owner of the Sam Kee Laundry in Los Angeles, and his second wife Lee Gon Toy. Wong had a passion for the movies. By the age of 11, she had come up with her stage name of Anna May Wong, formed by joining both her English and family names. Wong was working at Hollywood's Ville de Paris department store when Metro Pictures needed 300 girl extras to appear in The Red Lantern (Albert Capellani, 1919) starring Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. Without her father's knowledge, a friend of his with movie connections helped Anna May land an uncredited role as an extra carrying a lantern. In 1921 she dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue a full-time acting career. Wong received her first screen credit for Bits of Life (Marshall Neilan, 1921), the first anthology film, in which she played the abused wife of Lon Chaney, playing a Chinaman. At 17, she played her first leading part, Lotus Flower, in The Toll of the Sea (Chester M. Franklin, 1922), the first Technicolor production. The story by Hollywood's most famous scenarist at the time, Frances Marion, was loosely based on the opera Madame Butterfly but moved the action from Japan to China. Wong also played a concubine in Drifting (Tod Browning, 1923) and a scheming but eye-catching Mongol slave girl running around with Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the super-production The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh, 1924). Richard Corliss in Time: “Wong is a luminous presence, fanning her arms in right-angle gestures that seem both Oriental and flapperish. Her best scenes are with Fairbanks, as they connive against each other and radiate contrasting and combined sexiness — a vibrant, erotic star quality.” Wong began cultivating a flapper image and became a fashion icon. in Peter Pan (Herbert Brenon, 1924), shot by her cousin cinematographer James Wong Howe, she played Princess Tiger Lily who shares a long kiss with Betty Bronson as Peter. Peter Pan was the hit of the Christmas season. She appeared again with Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (William Nigh, 1927) at MGM and with Warner Oland and Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco (Alan Crosland, 1927) at Warner Brothers. Wong starred in The Silk Bouquet/The Dragon Horse (Harry Revier, 1927), one of the first US films to be produced with Chinese backing, provided by San Francisco's Chinese Six Companies. The story was set in China during the Ming Dynasty and featured Asian actors playing the Asian roles. Hollywood studios didn't know what to do with Wong. Her ethnicity prevented US filmmakers from seeing her as a leading lady. Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles as the naïve and self-sacrificing ‘Butterfly’ and the evil ‘Dragon Lady’, Wong left for Europe in 1928.”
In Europe, Anna May Wong became a sensation in the German film Schmutziges Geld/Show Life (Richard Eichberg, 1928) with Heinrich George. The New York Times reported that Wong was "acclaimed not only as an actress of transcendent talent but as a great beauty (...) Berlin critics, who were unanimous in praise of both the star and the production, neglect to mention that Anna May is of American birth. They mention only her Chinese origins." Other film parts were a circus artist on the run from a murder charge in Großstadtschmetterling/City Butterfly (Richard Eichberg, 1929), and a dancer in pre-Revolutionary Russia in Hai-Tang (Richard Eichberg, Jean Kemm, 1930). In Vienna, she played the title role in the stage operetta 'Tschun Tschi' in fluent German. Wong became an inseparable friend of the director, Leni Riefenstahl. According to Wikipedia, her close friendships with several women throughout her life, including Marlene Dietrich, led to rumors of lesbianism which damaged her public reputation. London producer Basil Dean bought the play 'A Circle of Chalk' for Wong to appear in with the young Laurence Olivier, her first stage performance in the UK. Her final silent film, Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929), caused a sensation in the UK. Gilda Gray was the top-billed actress, but Variety commented that Wong "outshines the star", and that "from the moment Miss Wong dances in the kitchen's rear, she steals 'Piccadilly' from Miss Gray." It would be the first of five English films in which she had a starring role, including her first sound film The Flame of Love (Richard Eichberg, Walter Summers, 1930). American studios were looking for fresh European talent. Ironically, Wong caught their eye and she was offered a contract with Paramount Studios in 1930. She was featured in such films as Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan, 1931) as the vengeful daughter of Fu Manchu (Warner Oland), and with Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932). Wong spent the first half of the 1930s travelling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work. She repeatedly turned to the stage and cabaret for a creative outlet. On Broadway, she starred in the drama 'On the Spot', that ran for 167 performances and which she would later film as Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938).
Anna May Wong became more outspoken in her advocacy for Chinese American causes and for better film roles. Because of the Hays Code's anti-miscegenation rules, she was passed over for the leading female role in The Son-Daughter (Clarence Brown, 1932) in favour of Helen Hayes. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer deemed her ‘too Chinese to play a Chinese’ in the film, and the Hays Office would not have allowed her to perform romantic scenes since the film's male lead, Ramón Novarro, was not Asian. Wong was scheduled to play the role of a mistress to a corrupt Chinese general in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933), but the role went instead to Toshia Mori. Her British film Java Head (Thorold Dickinson, J. Walter Ruben, 1934), was the only film in which Wong kissed the lead male character, her white husband in the film. In 1935 she was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role of the Chinese character O-Lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937). Paul Muni, an actor of European descent, was to play O-lan's husband, Wang Lung, and MGM chose German actress Luise Rainer for the leading role. Rainer won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her father and her younger brothers and sister in her family's ancestral village Taishan and studying Chinese culture. To complete her contract with Paramount Pictures, she starred in several B movies, including Daughter of Shanghai (Robert Florey, 1937), Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938), and King of Chinatown (Nick Grinde, 1939) with Akim Tamiroff. These smaller-budgeted films could be bolder than the higher-profile releases, and Wong used this to her advantage to portray successful, professional, Chinese-American characters. Wong's cabaret act, which included songs in Cantonese, French, English, German, Danish, Swedish, and other languages, took her from the U.S. to Europe and Australia through the 1930s and 1940s. She paid less attention to her film career during World War II but devoted her time and money to helping the Chinese cause against Japan. Wong starred in Lady from Chungking (William Nigh, 1942) and Bombs over Burma (Joseph H. Lewis, 1943), both anti-Japanese propaganda made by the poverty row studio Producers Releasing Corporation. She donated her salary for both films to United China Relief. She invested in real estate and owned a number of properties in Hollywood.
Anna May Wong returned to the public eye in the 1950s in several television appearances as well as her own detective series The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951-1952), the first US television show starring an Asian-American series lead. After the completion of the series, Wong's health began to deteriorate. In late 1953 she suffered an internal hemorrhage, which her brother attributed to the onset of menopause, her continued heavy drinking, and financial worries. In the following years, she did guest spots on television series. In 1960, she returned to film playing housekeeper to Lana Turner in the thriller Portrait in Black (Michael Gordon, 1960). She was scheduled to play the role of Madame Liang in the film production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song (Henry Koster, 1961) when she died of a heart attack at home in Santa Monica in 1961. Anna May Wong was 56. For decades after her death, Wong was remembered principally for the stereotypical sly ‘Dragon Lady’ and demure ‘Butterfly’ roles that she was often given. Matthew Sweet in The Guardian: “And this is the trouble with Anna May Wong. We disapprove of the stereotypes she fleshed out - the treacherous, tragic daughters of the dragon - but her performances still seduce, for the same reason they did in the 1920s and 30s.” Her life and career were re-evaluated by three new biographies, a meticulous filmography, and a British documentary about her life called Frosted Yellow Willows. Wikipedia: “Through her films, public appearances, and prominent magazine features, she helped to ‘humanize’ Asian Americans to white audiences during a period of overt racism and discrimination. Asian Americans, especially the Chinese, had been viewed as perpetually foreign in U.S. society but Wong's films and public image established her as an Asian-American citizen at a time when laws discriminated against Asian immigration and citizenship.” Anna May Wong never married, but over the years, she was the rumored mistress of several prominent film men: Marshall Neilan (14 years older, supposedly Wong's lover when she was 15), director Tod Browning (23 years older, when she was 16) and Charles Rosher (Mary Pickford's favorite cinematographer, who was nearly 20 years older, when Wong was 20). But no biographer can say for sure that any of the affairs occurred.
Sources: Richard Corliss (Time), Matthew Sweet (The Guardian), Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
The work on the Paramount involved doing extensive repairs to the original structure, making new joints and cleaning / re-etching the front dash panel detail. The aluminium panel and headlamps were created from metallic silver decals.
The rear end detail was too badly damaged to 'clean' so a new section was created below the rear window.
Interior refurb involved a repaint and the addition of seat moquette decals in line with the prototype.
Fleetnames and 25th Anniversary crest were drawn in CorelDraw and printed and supplied by John Atwood.
#355/365 I went down to Paramount Studios to take the tour. During the tour I check my facebook and see a message from Brooke Shaden saying she works at Paramount. Back-story: Brooke was one of my first flikr friends and although she moved to LA, we've never been able to connect and meet up. I had no idea she worked there and it was just chance that she happend to see my update while I was there on the lot. Crazy Small world we live in! Now I'm not a spur of the moment portrait type of photographer, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity. She was on a 15 minutes break so we just started to walk around and shoot. I hope I did her justice. Just incase you haven't yet, be sure to check out the Artist Brooke Shaden. It was great meeting you Brooke and I owe you a proper portrait next time (with strobes).
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Taken in 2016.
The old Paramount Theater on Washington Street in the Theater District. It's been rebuilt and repurposed as a mixed-use residential, academic, and performance center for Emerson College.
In Aurora, Illinois.
Opened in 1931. Art Deco design by Rapp and Rapp with Venetian elements. On the National Register of Historic Places.