#1980s celebrity photos

[eroticlamb]

The Cramps backstage at the Electric Ballroom, Camden Town, London, March 21st, 1980 ♡ Photographed by Paul Slattery

[spyboy2000]

ʟᴀᴅʏ ᴅɪᴀɴᴀ sᴘᴇɴᴄᴇʀ The future Princess Diana working as a nursery school assistant in London, September 1980. Arthur Edwards.

[soft-homestyle]

Sean Connery

-

Stay cozy.

@soft-homestyle

[rocketqueen1989x]

🎀 BEAUTIFUL BOY🎀

[merchantphoto]

our upscaled and enhanced photo of a young Matt Dillon, who played Dallas Winston in The Outsiders (1983)

[runs-4-pinkcupcakes]

Madonna Celebration Tour. Chase Center, San Francisco, CA. February, 2024.

YES! I was alive in 1984! And I dressed just like this! Loved the night of nostalgia and memories of my life through the decades. Madonna! Madonna never goes out of style! 🪩🪩🪩🪩🪩

💋

[liefst]

some favourites from the magritte museum in brussels

[christianbalefanatic]

Christian Bale photographed in his hotel room promoting the release of Empire Of The Sun (February 20, 1988)

Re: Christian Bale as Jim Graham in Empire of the Sun (1987) dir. Steven Spielberg

(christianbalefanatic edit)

[coochiequeens]

I know this blog focuses on TIMs invading women’s sports and locker rooms but Saving Women’s Sports means more than that. Like calling out sexist bs when companies give men real clothes to compete in and women get basically underwear.

The Nike Air Innovation Summit in Paris on Thursday.Credit...Dominique Maitre/WWD, via Getty Images

By Vanessa Friedman April 12, 2024

Ever since the Norwegian women’s beach handball team turned the fact that they were required to wear teeny-tiny bikini bottoms for competition into a cause célèbre, a quiet revolution has been brewing throughout women’s sports. It’s one that questions received conventions about what female athletes do — or don’t — have to wear to perform at their very best.

It has touched women’s soccer (why white shorts?), gymnastics (why not a unitard rather than a leotard?), field hockey (why a low-cut tank top?) and many more, including running.

So it probably should not have come as a shock to Nike that when it offered a sneak peek of the Team U.S.A. track and field unies during a Nike Air event in Paris celebrating its Air technology on Thursday (which also included looks for other Olympic athletes, like Kenya’s track and field team, France’s basketball team and Korea’s break dancing delegation), they were met with some less-than-enthusiastic reactions.

See, the two uniforms Nike chose to single out on the mannequins included a men’s compression tank top and mid-thigh-length compression shorts and a woman’s bodysuit, cut notably high on the hip. It looked sort of like a sporty version of a 1980s workout leotard. As it was displayed, the bodysuit seemed as if it would demand some complicated intimate grooming.

Citius Mag, which focuses on running news, posted a photo of the uniforms on Instagram, and many of its followers were not amused.

“What man designed the woman’s cut?” wrote one.

“I hope U.S.A.T.F. is paying for the bikini waxes,” wrote another. So went most of the more than 1,900 comments.

The running comedian Laura Green posted an Instagram reel in which she pretended to be trying on the look (“We’re feeling pretty, um, breezy,” she said) and checking out the rest of the athlete’s kit bag, which turned out to include hair spray, lip gloss and a “hysterectomy kit,” so the women would not have to worry about periods.

When asked, Nike did not address the brouhaha directly, but according to John Hoke, the chief innovation officer, the woman’s bodysuit and the man’s shorts and top are only two of the options Nike will have for its Olympic runners. There are “nearly 50 unique pieces across men’s and women’s and a dozen competition styles fine-tuned for specific events,” Mr. Hoke said.

Sha’Carri Richardson

Women will be able to opt for compression shorts, a crop top or tank and a bodysuit with shorts rather than bikini bottoms. The full slate of looks was not on hand in Paris but more will be revealed next week at the U.S. Olympic Committee media summit in New York. The Paris reveal was meant to be a teaser.

Anna Cockrell.Credit...Dominique Maitre/WWD, via Getty Images

Mr. Hoke also pointed out that Nike consults with a large number of athletes at every stage of the uniform design. Its track and field roster includes Sha’Carri Richardson, who happened to be wearing the compression shorts during the Paris presentation, and Athing Mu. And there are certainly runners who like the high-cut brief. (The British Olympic sprinter Dina Asher-Smith, another Nike athlete, told The New York Times last summer that while she opts to run in briefs, she also leans toward a leotard style, rather than a two-piece.)

What Nike missed, however, was that in choosing those two looks as the primary preview for Team U.S.A., rather than, say, the matching shorts and tanks that will be also available, it shored up a longstanding inequity in sports — one that puts the body of a female athlete on display in a way it does not for the male athlete.

“Why are we presenting this sexualized outfit as the standard of excellence?” said Lauren Fleshman, a U.S. national champion distance runner and the author of “Good for a Girl.” “In part because we think that’s what nets us the most financial gain from sponsors or NIL opportunities, most of which are handed out by powerful men or people looking at it through a male gaze. But women are breaking records with ratings in sports where you don’t have to wear essentially a bathing suit to perform.”

The problem such imagery creates is twofold. When Nike chose to reveal the high-cut bodysuit as the first Olympics outfit, purposefully or not, the implication for anyone watching is that “this is what excellence looks like,” Ms. Fleshman said.

That perception filters down to young athletes and becomes the model girls think they have to adopt, often at a developmental stage when their relationships with their bodies are particularly fraught.

And more broadly, given the current political debate around adjudicating women’s bodies, it reinforces the idea that they are public property.

Still, Ms. Fleshman said, “I’m glad Nike put this image out as the crown jewel of Olympic Team design,” because it may act as the catalyst for another conversation that has been long overdue.

“If you showed this outfit to someone from the W.N.B.A. or women’s soccer, they would laugh in your face,” she said. “We shouldn’t have to normalize it for track and field anymore. Time’s up on that.”

[mitigatedchaos]

As someone correctly pointed out, the Trump McDonald's photoshoot is camp.

The man is a celebrity reality TV game show host who has had appearances at pro-wrestling matches. This is like if there were a commercial that featured Shaquille O'Neal working the drive-thru at McDonald's, only here, we get the 'backstage version.'

The argument is that this is a fake campaign stop by the politician Donald Trump, rather than a real shift at a McDonald's restaurant.

It's a fake in-person campaign stop by the politician Donald Trump, with, presumably, a few real McDonald's workers.

It's a real reality TV photoshoot of the celebrity businessman character "Donald Trump," who eats McDonald's food and drinks Diet Coke, for the campaign of politician Donald Trump.

The character "Donald Trump" is played by celebrity actor Donald Trump, who eats McDonald's food and drinks Diet Coke. His enjoyment of french fries is authentic.

It's a behind-the-scenes look at the reality TV photoshoot of the campaign ad for politician Donald Trump, featuring celebrity actor Donald Trump, showing us the cameras and set.

The shirt, tie, apron, and lighting are a callback to the 1980s, the time most associated with the brash businessman persona of the character "Donald Trump," seen in movies such as 1992's Home Alone.

The shirt, tie, and apron while serving food at a burger joint feel like a callback to the 1950s, and there are lots of photos online of McDonald's managers looking a lot like this from the 1970s. It has a very "Americana" feel.

It's a real 21st-century campaign PR event spread across social media (with lots of photos and clips circulating) and news media, being used for memes, causing arguments or discourse that cause it to spread even farther.

Win or lose, this is beyond just a campaign ad. Is it authentically inauthentic? This is some kind of performance art.

[twixnmix]

Bette Davis celebrating her 50th year in films and the opening of her film "The Watcher in the Woods" at Tavern on the Green in New York City on April 16, 1980.

Photos by Andy Warhol

[adafruit]

🎄💾🗓️ Day 3: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar presents the Commodore VIC-20! 🎄💾🗓️

The VIC-20 ⌨️📺🕹️, released in 1980 by Commodore, was the first computer to sell over a million units. It had a 6502 CPU running at 1 MHz, 5 KB of RAM (expandable), and displayed up to 22 characters per line on a color-capable screen. An affordable and friendly computer, the VIC-20 was great at games and basic programming and was supported by a library of software and peripherals. It connected to TVs for display and included Commodore's BASIC interpreter for programming. Its success allowed other computers like the Commodore 64 to make its mark.

And since this is a #firstcomputer celebration here's a fantastic story from Jeff -

My first home computer was the Commodore VIC-20. I must have been in second grade (1986/1987). My Dad was working somewhere away from home, but one weekend Mom drove us two kids to spend the night at the motel that was his home base.

He had bought this computer, the VIC-20, and hooked it up to the hotel TV. I remember entering the program pictured below (probably Mom typed it in, actually) and being blown away by the birds flapping their wings across the screen.

The other distinct memory I have is the next morning my folks woke me up and asked whether I was hungry. No, I very much wanted to play with the VIC-20, so I made up the most obvious word that came to mind: "No, I'm Vic-y". I think they were very puzzled. We probably went and had breakfast regardless of whether we wanted to see the birds flying again.

Check out the wikipedia page for some great history, photos (pictured here), and more -

And the COMMODORE vic-20 commercial commercial compilation, featuring William Shatner.

Have first computer memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #firstcomputer #retrocomputing - See you back here tomorrow!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Hugh Dougherty at The Daily Beast:

Jeffrey Epstein described himself as Donald Trump’s “closest friend” and claimed intimate knowledge of his proclivity for sex, including cuckolding his best friends, according to recordings obtained exclusively by the Daily Beast. The convicted pedophile even boasted of his closeness to Trump and his now-wife Melania by claiming, “the first time he slept with her was on my plane,” which was dubbed the Lolita Express.

Epstein spoke at length about Trump with the author Michael Wolff in August 2017, two years before being found dead in his jail cell. Wolff was researching his bombshell bestseller Fire and Fury at the time. The recordings cast more light on Trump’s long relationship with Epstein, and will add to debate over the character of the Republican candidate, especially his attitudes and conduct toward women, just days before the election. The tapes tell Epstein’s version of the relationship between two former friends and their very different paths: One toward infamy, prison and suicide; the other toward power, the Oval Office and his own criminal conviction for paying hush money to a porn star. Trump’s camp referred to the tapes’ release as “false smears” and “election interference.” The tapes also offer unusual insight into the friendship of two wealthy, powerful men who frequently went out on the town together, prowling for women in New York and Atlantic City. [...]

Asked by Wolff, “How do you know all this?” Epstein replied, “I was Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.” Wolff shared the tape with the Daily Beast ahead of discussing it on his Fire and Fury podcast on Monday. Last Thursday he caused shockwaves by revealing a few seconds of a separate recording in which Epstein spoke in detail about the inner workings of the Trump administration. Wolff also said Thursday that the pedophile showed off photos of Trump with topless young women sitting in his lap. Wolff, a veteran journalist and author who was also the biographer of Rupert Murdoch, has long attracted praise and bromides. When Fire & Fury was published in January 2018, Trump tried to stop it with a failed cease and desist order, then threatened to sue. No case ever materialized, and it sold 5 million copies worldwide. Wolff, who appears regularly on his Fire and Fury podcast, wrote two more books on Trump after Fire and Fury, and about Epstein in 2021’s Too Famous.

Wolff says he has up to 100 hours of recordings of interviews with Epstein, including from using him as a source for Fire and Fury, and from years of meetings when the disgraced financier appeared to want Wolff to write a biography of him. Wolff said he decided to release parts of the archive after a new accuser, a former Miss Switzerland, alleged last week that Trump had groped her in 1992.

[...] Trump’s long friendship with Epstein, which spanned the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s has been well documented. In the 1990s, the two publicly partied at Mar-a-Lago and went to a Victoria’s Secret Angels show together. In 2002, Trump told New York Magazine of Epstein, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Epstein’s infamous leaked addressbooks had Trump’s own phone number as well as Melania’s, while Trump’s name appeared seven times in the passenger logs of Epstein’s planes. (The books and logs also included princes, politicians and potentates such as Bill Clinton, former British prime minister Tony Blair, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, Prince Andrew and celebrities and billionaires including Mick Jagger and Les Wexner.)

[...] In 2022 Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who procured him underage girls, would be sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for the sex trafficking of minors. Upon hearing of her arrest in 2020, Trump, then president, said he wished her well. “Her friend or boyfriend was either killed or committed suicide in jail. Yeah, I wish her well… Good luck.” In 2004, Epstein and Trump fell out when they both tried to buy a Palm Beach estate, Maison de L’Amitié, out of bankruptcy. The next year, the FBI began investigating Epstein for child sex trafficking.

In 2019, on the day after Epstein’s arrest, Trump said in the Oval Office, “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you,” and that they had not been friends for 15 years. He said it “did not much matter” what the fall-out had been over. This September, asked about Epstein by the tech podcaster Lex Fridman, Trump said: “He was a good salesman. He was a hailing, hearty type of guy. He had some nice assets that he’d throw around like islands, but a lot of big people went to that island. But fortunately, I was not one of them.”

[...]

The Epstein tape includes an allegation—which is impossible to verify—that Trump had an affair with a politician while in the White House. Epstein offered no proof or sourcing for the claim. He also alleged that Trump cheated on both his first wife Ivana and second wife Marla Maples with “a Black girl.” At one section, Epstein used a Yiddish racial slur to refer to Black women and alleged Trump boasted to him, “I’m f---ing all these Black women.” The tape mixes sexual allegations with other aspects of Trump’s life. Early in the recording Epstein is heard to say, “You probably know he had a scalp reduction. He’s getting the same male pattern baldness that we all have. He had his scalp reduced. It’s hysterical.” Trump has long refused to release full medical records while his White House medical reports did not disclose any prior surgeries.

“He’s charming. In a devious way, he’s charming. To some extent it’s a typical tragedy where he believes his own bulls---”

— Epstein on Trump

And Epstein offers his eyewitness account of Trump Tower and Trump’s office where, he said, Trump had “fake honors” on the wall. Trump, he claimed, would yell at his personal assistant Rhona Graff, “who’s a loyal, perfect, secretary,” as well as Matthew Calamari Snr., his bodyguard, and Michael Cohen, his attorney who is now an enemy. Epstein compared Trump to “an emotionally challenged 9-year-old,” and said, “He screams and yells at Rhona more than anybody else. His screaming is how he treats people. He has a tantrum, not a temper. If you don’t understand him, it’s frightening. Once you understand him, it’s sort of silly.” Epstein also told Wolff he had positive things to say about Trump. “He’s charming. In a devious way, he’s charming,” he said. “To some extent it’s a typical tragedy where he believes his own bulls---. He has delusions of grandiosity, then he takes it on board.” He added that he had a “self-deprecating nature” and was “not vulgar.” “He’s funny,” Epstein said. “Self-awareness means you’re self-aware. He’s aware of that person, Donald Trump. He talks about The Trump, The Trumpster. ‘Trump’s getting laid.’”

On the tape Epstein, speaking in a New York accent, also mentioned the rich and powerful. (In a deposition released after his death Epstein admitted under oath that he dropped the names of people he had never met.) The names he mentioned on tape include: Former president Bill Clinton; Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner; then-Defense Secretary James Mattis; and the billionaires Carl Icahn and Tom Barrack, both of whom are friends of Trump. Clinton was a long-standing friend of Epstein but has denied any association after the pedophile’s disgrace in the mid-2000s. Mattis has no known association with him. Ivanka was photographed with him as a child but Kushner has never been known to be linked to him. Barrack appeared in a leaked appointment diary for Epstein from 2016, while Carl Icahn, a corporate raider and long-time Trump friend, was in Epstein’s 1997 address book. Startlingly for a man who became one of the world’s most notorious sex offenders, Epstein on the tapes offers a damning judgment of Trump, telling Wolff, “The moral compass just does not exist.”

The Daily Beast reported that Jeffrey Epstein was Donald Trump's closest friend for about 10 years, according to tapes obtained from the outlet that featured Michael Wolff interviewing the late pedophile.

[soft-homestyle]

Sean Connery

-

Stay cozy.

@soft-homestyle

[anotherplacemag]

The Alec Gill Hessle Road photo archive

A photobook, which documents Hull’s lost working-class fishing community, has exceeded its Kickstarter target. 

The Alec Gill Hessle Road photo archive, by editor Iranzu Baker and designer Fran Méndez, celebrates the work of photographer Alec Gill, who documented the changing landscape of Hull's Hessle Road fishing community throughout the 1970s and 1980s.  

Alec Gill took his first photograph of the Hessle Road area in 1971. Drawing up a boundary map, and sticking to it conscientiously, he manages to warmly capture, and tell the relatively unknown story of, a working-class community during the decline of its fishing trade, and a period of mass housing demolition.

The Kickstarter, set up to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Alec’s Hessle photography project, was launched to raise funds to produce a book - and has now exceeded its target by over £5,000.

Editor Iranzu Baker and designer Fran Méndez were given access to Alec’s complete archive, including over 6,000 black-and-white photographs, taken on his Rolleicord twin-lens reflex camera.

The book contains several unpublished images, which were scanned for the first time, and over 200 images are presented alongside archival material, such as Alec’s camera and notebooks, setting the work in its historical context. 

Celebrating and honouring Alec’s dedication to, and portrayal of, Hull's fishing culture and the people of Hessle Road, the book not only shines a light on a particular period of Hull’s history but documents the decline of a key part of the UK’s fishing trade. 

The Alec Gill Hessle Road photo archive has additionally won, and been shortlisted for, a number of design awards - including AIGA 50 Books 50 Covers, European Design Awards, Laus Awards, and the British Book Design and Production Awards.

Website & book - highly recommend picking up a copy of this fantastic new title while it's available!

All images © Alec Gill

[wlwcatalogue]

Female Queer Icons of Hong Kong // Yam Kim Fai (任劍輝) and Pak Suet Sin (白雪仙)

Photo 1: Promotional photo for 1955 contemporary movie The Model and the Car (玉女香車) (no video available) (Source: LCSD Museum Collection Search Portal)

Photo 4: Photo from Sin Fung Ming Opera Troupe's 1958 trip

Photo 5: Photo from a 1962 newspaper feature on Yam, Pak, and others at their (?) summer villa in Central, Hong Kong

Photo 6: Christmas celebrations with Yam, Pak, and their protégés of the Chor Fung Ming Troupe

Far and away the most iconic duo in Cantonese opera, Yam Kim Fai (任劍輝) and Pak Suet Sin (白雪仙) – commonly referred to simply as Yam-Pak (任白) – were famed for their partnership both on and off the stage… Click below to learn more!

Edit on 28/07/2023: Updated to link to a photo of the entrance to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum’s Pop Culture 60+ exhibit, and to add information regarding Yam and Pak's marriage status.

Iconic? How?

Yam-Pak are the face of Cantonese opera; you can't talk about the latter without mentioning the former. It's to the point where a gigantic picture of them graces the entrance to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum’s permanent exhibition on Hong Kong pop culture’s evolution across the past 60 years (“Hong Kong Pop 60+”) - they are the first thing you see upon entering!

Best known as the originators - with Yam playing the male leads and Pak the female leads - of five masterpieces of Cantonese opera, namely:

1. Princess Cheung Ping (帝女花) 2. The Legend of the Purple Hairpin (紫釵記) 3. The Dream Tryst in the Peony Pavilion (牡丹亭驚夢) 4. The Reincarnation of Lady Plum Blossom (再世紅梅記) 5. Butterfly and Red Pear Blossom (蝶影紅梨記) (Note: Princess Cheung Ping, Purple Hairpin, and Butterfly and Red Pear Blossom were made into abridged movie versions, with the Sin Fung Ming troupe members reprising their roles from the theatre productions. Also, the "Fragrant Sacrifice" (香夭) duet from Princess Cheung Ping (movie clip) is one of - if not the most - famous songs in Cantonese opera.)

Yam and Pak were the leading pair and co-founders of the legendary Sin Fung Ming Opera Troupe (仙鳳鳴劇團; 1956-1961), which is widely held to have pushed Cantonese opera forward as an artform due to Pak and scriptwriter Tong Tik Sang’s (唐滌生) emphasis on poetic libretti and adapting source material from Chinese literature and history. (Note: it has been common practice since the 1930's for Cantonese opera troupes to be founded by key actor(s).)

They were also very active in the Hong Kong film industry in the 1950's, being paired in over 40 movies together across roughly 8 years. One of those – the aforementioned Butterfly and Red Pear Blossom (蝶影紅梨記) – is the sole Cantonese opera movie on the Hong Kong Film Archive’s 100-Must See Hong Kong Movies list (IMDB list / archived version of the official PDF). It's a well-deserved inclusion - check out this beautifully-shot dance scene.

Even their post-retirement activities had a significant effect on the industry! In the early 1960’s, they held auditions for prospective students and provided - for free - systematic, hands-on training to those who passed; Yam and Pak even hired other veterans to teach skills they personally were not as familiar with. Prior to this, apprentices were expected to learn primarily from observing their masters, and to pay handsomely for the privilege. Yam-Pak’s methods proved exceedingly effective: the Chor Fung Ming Opera Troupe (雛鳳鳴劇團; 1963-1992) starring their apprentices reigned supreme in the 1970’s-1980’s. Following this success, Cantonese opera institutes - most notably the major 1900s-era guild, the Chinese Artists Association of Hong Kong (八和會館) - started to offer systematic coaching to young hopefuls in the 1980's.

Okay, so why are they queer icons specifically?

The lazy answer is that they're queer icons because nearly all of Yam's roles were male, so Gender is involved by default, and since most hit Cantonese operas of the time were romances, that means you get to see two female actors performing being in love onscreen (and also on stage, but there aren't any video recordings from back then). So far, so Takarazuka Revue.

Female actors playing male roles in Cantonese opera To give some context, each Cantonese opera performer specialises in one of four major role-types, and Yam was a sung (生) - i.e. an actor specialised in playing standard male roles. Female sung were fairly common in the 1910's-1930's due to women being banned from performing with men during that period, but when the ban lifted in the mid-1930's, many troupes shifted towards cis-casting. Yam was pretty much the only one whose popularity survived the transition. Just take a look at the huge number of Cantonese opera movies produced during the 1950’s-1960’s – you’ll be hard-pressed to find a female sung other than Yam, let alone one with top billing. Happily, thanks to Yam's immense popularity, her profilic film career (over 300 movies!), and the prominence of Sin Fung Ming works in the Cantonese opera canon, there has been a resurgence in female sung which endures to this day. Two noteworthy examples are Yam's protégé Sabrina Lee/ Loong Kim Sang (龍劍笙) - a star in her own right - and Joyce Koi/ Koi Ming Fai (蓋鳴暉), one of the biggest names still active in the industry. (Note: perhaps due to cinema being more "realistic" in nature, Yam's early movies often involved her playing female characters cross-dressing as men, including in some Cantonese opera movies. However, she received increasingly more male roles as her fame grew, and from the mid-1950's onwards she was playing male characters onscreen nearly exclusively-- even in non-Cantonese opera movies! See Photo 1 above.)

What sets Yam and Pak apart is that they were particularly known for their chemistry. Long before Sin Fung Ming's formation in 1956, the advertising copy for their first Cantonese opera movie together - Frolicking with a Pretty Maid in the Wineshop (酒樓戲鳳, 1952) - declared "Only this movie has Yam-Pak flirting on the silver screen" (source - 華僑日報 1952/05/23-26). And indeed, they were popular for their flirtatious duets: their Cantonese opera works invariably contained at least one, and such scenes made it into some of non-Cantonese opera (i.e. "contemporary") movies too. In fact, there are not one but two contemporary movies where Yam and Pak's characters are not paired up and yet still sing a duet together in such a way that their significant other(s) become convinced that the two are in romantically interested in each other - see 1952's Lovesick (為情顛倒) and 1956's The Happy Hall (滿堂吉慶) - a weirdly specific situation which doesn't crop up in the other, non-Yam-Pak movies I have seen.

Speaking of contemporary movies, let's talk about a certain plotline that keeps cropping up in works featuring the both of them and where Yam plays a woman! Six of the eleven movies which fit that criteria involve Yam's character cross-dressing as a man (a common characteristic across Yam's handful of female roles), and Pak's character falling for her. Nothing ever comes of it, of course, but, um. It was certainly a trend. Actually, even their very first movie together - 1951's Lucky Strike (福至心靈) - falls into this category.

Such storylines, and the emphasis on their chemistry, are particularly interesting given that both Yam and Pak remained ostensibly unmarried throughout. This was unusual for female performers of their stature, who tended to wed in their twenties, often to fellow-actors or wealthy men (e.g. Hung Sin Nui/紅線女, Fong Yim Fun/芳艷芬, and Tang Pik Wan/鄧碧雲)... In contrast, by the time Yam-Pak retired from the stage in 1961, they were both over 30 years old and without husbands.

Also, did I mention they were popularly believed to be living together? There doesn't seem to be any conclusive evidence either way... although it's a little strange that separate newspaper pictorials depicting "Yam at home" and "Pak at home" seem to be of the same location... however what is conclusive is that they did spent a lot of time together offstage. Pak has talked about how when they had no guests over, Yam would watch TV by herself while Pak was in the living room (source - p93), and protégé Mandy Fung/ Mui Suet Sze (梅雪詩) has said that Pak would sometimes cook for Yam at home (source - 03:53~). They would also celebrate birthdays, New Year's, and Christmas together (see Photo 6 for an example of the latter).

Shortly after Yam's passing in 1989, Pak set up the Yam Kim Fai and Pak Suet Sin Charitable Foundation (任白慈善基金) to support the arts and provide welfare for the elderly. In 1996, Pak made a large donation to Hong Kong University, resulting in one of the buildings being renamed Yam Pak Building (任白樓) in thanks (source).

Thanks for reading! Please feel free to DM me or send an ask if you have any questions, or are just interested in learning more.

If you made it here, have this bonus piece of trivia - Yam and Pak were also well-acquainted with Hong Kong's preeminent queer icon, Leslie Cheung (張國榮), who was a massive fan of theirs. Sadly there don't seem to be any pictures of them before Yam's passing, but here's one of Pak (centre) having afternoon tea with Cheung (left) and his long-term romantic partner Daffy Tong (唐鶴德) (right) at the Cova cafe in the Pacific Place shopping mall.