Google is placing a spotlight on an actress considered to be the first Chinese-American movie star.
Anna May Wong was honored on Wednesday with a Google slideshow Doodle on its homepage exactly 97 years after Wong’s first leading role in a major film, The Toll of the Sea, debuted in theaters.
Wong, who died in 1961 at the age of 56 in Santa Monica, California, was born as Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles in 1905 to second-generation Chinese Americans as the second of seven children.
By the age of 11, she had created her stage name, Anna May Wong, and set out to become an actress.
Anna May Wong was honored on Wednesday with a Google slideshow Doodle on its homepage exactly 97 years after Wong’s first leading role in a major film, The Toll of the Sea, debuted in theaters.
Wong, who died in 1961 at the age of 56 in Santa Monica, California, was born as Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles in 1905 to second-generation Chinese Americans as the second of seven children.
By the age of 11, she had created her stage name, Anna May Wong, and set out to become an actress.
- 1/23/2020
- by Alexia Fernandez
- PEOPLE.com
Stars: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy, Cecil Cunningham, Armand Duvalle | Written by Viña Delmar | Directed by Leo McCarey
Cary Grant plays Jerry Warriner, a New York socialite who’s just returned from a Florida vacation. We meet him bragging in the locker room: “What wives don’t know won’t hurt them!” Jerry’s Wife, Lucy (Irene Dunne), has also been away, supposedly to visit her aunt. So why has she strolled in with a handsome French gentleman? Jerry’s jealousy – not to mention his double standards – sends him into a fit of rage. They argue and Lucy files for divorce.
The rest of the film covers the months before the divorce goes through, as Lucy meets a new suitor and Jerry can’t leave her alone, always finding a reason to gatecrash her life. It’s the proto-rom-com stalker setup, although lovesick Lucy winds up behaving just as badly.
Cary Grant plays Jerry Warriner, a New York socialite who’s just returned from a Florida vacation. We meet him bragging in the locker room: “What wives don’t know won’t hurt them!” Jerry’s Wife, Lucy (Irene Dunne), has also been away, supposedly to visit her aunt. So why has she strolled in with a handsome French gentleman? Jerry’s jealousy – not to mention his double standards – sends him into a fit of rage. They argue and Lucy files for divorce.
The rest of the film covers the months before the divorce goes through, as Lucy meets a new suitor and Jerry can’t leave her alone, always finding a reason to gatecrash her life. It’s the proto-rom-com stalker setup, although lovesick Lucy winds up behaving just as badly.
- 4/24/2018
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
The Impatient Maiden (1932) is an almost entirely overlooked film, and it's easy to see why, falling as it does between Frankenstein (1931) and The Old Dark House (1932) in director James Whale's Universal career. Those two films are important classics of the horror field, whereas Maiden is a modest romantic comedy that probably nobody had any particular hopes for. Still, as some of Whale's other, lesser-known movies are getting more attention (The Road Back has been restored, and Whale's own favorite film, By Candlelight, has had recent revivals; I'd like to see more attention paid to The Great Garrick and The Man in the Iron Mask) this one might reward attention—or at least I supposed so.How it came into the world: Universal had bought the novel The Impatient Virgin as a vehicle for fading star Clara Bow, who promptly rejected it. The censors mandated a change of title, despite...
- 2/16/2018
- MUBI
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937) is showing February 13 - March 15, 2017 in the United Kingdom in the series The Rom Com Variations.Leo McCarey’s 1937 screwball classic The Awful Truth is the epitome of a sub-genre dubbed by philosopher Stanley Cavell the “comedy of remarriage.” In the film, husband and wife Jerry and Lucy Warriner (Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) succumb to their marital suspicions and embark on an easier-said-than-done divorce. He returns home from an unspecified dalliance, complete with fake Florida tan (ever the gentleman, he bronzes so as to save Lucy the embarrassment of getting asked why her husband looks pale after spending time in the sun), but upon his arrival, Lucy herself is nowhere to be found. She must be with her Aunt Patsy, Jerry assures his guests, that is until Aunt Patsy (Cecil Cunningham) shows up sans niece.
- 2/9/2017
- MUBI
Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.
- 11/25/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.
- 11/25/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Norma Shearer: The Boss' wife was cast in 'The Divorcee.' Norma Shearer movies on TCM: Early talkies and Best Actress Oscar Note: This Norma Shearer article is currently being revised and expanded. Please Check back later. Norma Shearer, one of the top stars in Hollywood history and known as the Queen of MGM back in the 1930s, is Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month of Nov. 2015. That's the good news. The not-so-good news is that even though its parent company, Time Warner, owns most of Shearer's movies, TCM isn't airing any premieres. So, if you were expecting to check out a very young Norma Shearer in The Devil's Circus, Upstage, or After Midnight, you're out of luck. (I've seen all three; they're all worth a look.) It's a crime that, music score or no, restored print or no, TCM/Time Warner don't make available for viewing the...
- 11/11/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Greta Garbo movie 'The Kiss.' Greta Garbo movies on TCM Greta Garbo, a rarity among silent era movie stars, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” performer today, Aug. 26, '15. Now, why would Garbo be considered a silent era rarity? Well, certainly not because she easily made the transition to sound, remaining a major star for another decade. Think Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, William Powell, Fay Wray, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Warner Baxter, Janet Gaynor, Constance Bennett, etc. And so much for all the stories about actors with foreign accents being unable to maintain their Hollywood stardom following the advent of sound motion pictures. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star, Garbo was no major exception to the supposed rule. Mexican Ramon Novarro, another MGM star, also made an easy transition to sound, and so did fellow Mexicans Lupe Velez and Dolores del Rio, in addition to the very British...
- 8/27/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. ca. 1935. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was never as popular as his father, silent film superstar Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in one action-adventure blockbuster after another in the 1920s (The Mark of Zorro, Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad) and whose stardom dates back to the mid-1910s, when Fairbanks toplined a series of light, modern-day comedies in which he was cast as the embodiment of the enterprising, 20th century “all-American.” What this particular go-getter got was screen queen Mary Pickford as his wife and United Artists as his studio, which he co-founded with Pickford, D.W. Griffith, and Charles Chaplin. Now, although Jr. never had the following of Sr., he did enjoy a solid two-decade-plus movie career. In fact, he was one of the few children of major film stars – e.g., Jane Fonda, Liza Minnelli, Angelina Jolie, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis – who had successful film careers of their own.
- 8/16/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in ‘Mata Hari’: The wrath of the censors (See previous post: "Ramon Novarro in One of the Best Silent Movies.") George Fitzmaurice’s romantic spy melodrama Mata Hari (1931) was well received by critics and enthusiastically embraced by moviegoers. The Greta Garbo / Ramon Novarro combo — the first time Novarro took second billing since becoming a star — turned Mata Hari into a major worldwide blockbuster, with $2.22 million in worldwide rentals. The film became Garbo’s biggest international success to date, and Novarro’s highest-grossing picture after Ben-Hur. (Photo: Ramon Novarro and Greta Garbo in Mata Hari.) Among MGM’s 1932 releases — Mata Hari opened on December 31, 1931 — only W.S. Van Dyke’s Tarzan, the Ape Man, featuring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan, and Edmund Goulding’s all-star Best Picture Academy Award winner Grand Hotel (also with Garbo, in addition to Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, and...
- 8/9/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Fred MacMurray movies: ‘Double Indemnity,’ ‘There’s Always Tomorrow’ Fred MacMurray is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" today, Thursday, August 7, 2013. Although perhaps best remembered as the insufferable All-American Dad on the long-running TV show My Three Sons and in several highly popular Disney movies from 1959 to 1967, e.g., The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Boy Voyage!, MacMurray was immeasurably more interesting as the All-American Jerk. (Photo: Fred MacMurray ca. 1940.) Someone once wrote that Fred MacMurray would have been an ideal choice to star in a biopic of disgraced Republican president Richard Nixon. Who knows, the (coincidentally Republican) MacMurray might have given Anthony Hopkins a run for his Best Actor Academy Award nomination. After all, MacMurray’s most admired movie performances are those in which he plays a scheming, conniving asshole: Billy Wilder’s classic film noir Double Indemnity (1944), in which he’s seduced by Barbara Stanwyck, and Wilder...
- 8/8/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Over the course of earning a degree in Cinema Studies, I'll be honest with you; I hardly ever got to watch the kind of movies that I liked. Call me lowbrow if you must, but remember, I'm talking about my university years, and getting up at eight Am to watch Berlin: Symphony of a Great City wasn't the best way to nurse a hangover. Don't get me wrong, I learned plenty and I was happy for the chance to see intellectually challenging films -- I just didn't always have that much fun. That is until I signed up for Classic Hollywood Cinema, and finally I got my chance to watch movies like Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth and pretend I was studying.
The great Jean Renoir once said, "[Leo] McCarey understands people - perhaps better than anyone else in Hollywood.", and Truth is a great example of McCarey's way with a character.
The great Jean Renoir once said, "[Leo] McCarey understands people - perhaps better than anyone else in Hollywood.", and Truth is a great example of McCarey's way with a character.
- 8/9/2009
- by Jessica Barnes
- Cinematical
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