#leslie fay

[chicinsilk]

US Vogue October 1, 1971

Donna Mitchell wears a long red shirt dress, in Qiana nylon. By Leslie Fay. Short Dynel wig by Halston for Abbott Tresses; arranged by Franklyn Welsh. Barrette, Therese Ahrens, evening clutch, Walborg, red tights, Belle-Sharmeer, shoes, David Evins.

Donna Mitchell porte une longue robe-chemise rouge, en nylon Qiana. Par Leslie Fay. Perruque courte Dynel de Halston pour Abbott Tresses ; arrangée par Franklyn Welsh. Barrette, Therese Ahrens, pochette de soirée, Walborg, collants rouge, Belle-Sharmeer, chaussures, David Evins.

Photo Richard Avedon vogue archive

[dozydawn]

[lisamarie-vee]

[colorhollywood]

Old Hollywood stars on the bicycles

[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.

[weirdlookindog]

The Most Dangerous Game (1932) - Trade ad

[citizenscreen]

Leslie Banks, Fay Wray, and Joel McCrea in THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932), directed by Irving Pichel, Ernest B. Schoedsack

[rwpohl]

queen bee, ranald macdougall 1955

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/17/2023: THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932)

I'm probably not supposed to say this, but I find this movie pretty silly. I'd never seen it before, even though it's one of the most referred-to titles alive. And I mean it's from Ernest Schoedsack who co-directed KING KONG, so what could go wrong? But I have to be honest, I'm not attracted to its boys' adventure vibrations; Joel McCrea is strutting around being the World's Most Awesomest Dude, with everybody including the villain slavering for his approval, and I'm just sitting there thinking, Can't some weasels come and rip this guys' flesh already?

I don't think my problem is just that, like everyone else, I know the twist and the ending already. I've seen lots of very old, very famous movies pretty late in life, and I treasure the discovery of how great and powerful they are despite being so familiar. THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME does face one specific contextual challenge, which is that this Blogtober season I also watched SVENGALI and DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1931), and to be blunt about it, Leslie Banks is nowhere near the class of Fredric March and John Barrymore in terms of crafting a charismatic, sexy, scary, physically impressive screen villain. Joel McCrea is perfectly bland as the movie's flawless hero, who doesn't so much learn an ironic lesson about his hunter's hubris as he proves that he can do anything he wants in any situation, especially when he's up against a bunch of swarthy foreigners who wish they could be him, so who really cares. Fay Wray flops around being completely helpless and witless, with this look on her face all the time

while the music goes, "Duh nuh nuh nuh nuh NUH. Duh nuh nuh NUH NUH NUH! DUH NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH!!!" The jungle sets are admittedly beautiful and fun, but I have to deal with all these boring jerks if I want to enjoy them, so that's too bad.

What would have brightened this movie up for me is if it fulfilled on its consistent teasing that the evil Count Zaroff has a super fucked up trophy room with all the most dangerous games that he's murdered stuffed and mounted in it...but apparently whatever version of this once existed was so upsetting to test audiences that it basically survived only in the viewer's imagination. Here are some pretty concise notes on that, if you're interested. But obviously I don't have much of interest to say about this movie. I know it's a classic and all, but let's just say that if you've ever suspected that I'm here to toe the party line on all the great classics to try to sound smart and sophisticated, well, you'd be wrong!

[lavadorafangirl]

🏳️‍🌈Day 26: Tony & Leslie (Happy Together)

FOUR DAYSSS MORE AND WE ARE OVER LETSGOOO i haven't seen this movie either:-) My coloring so lame sorry

HAPPY PRIDE 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

Remember: i'm drawing a lgbt canon couple daily for pride month, follow me or check my profile to see the rest!🏳️‍🌈 Thanks for the support!

[chicinsilk]

US Vogue September 1, 1961

Leslie Fay

Model : Iris Bianchi

vogue archive

[moviesandmania]

THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME Hunting humans in 1932 - free to watch online

The Most Dangerous Game is a 1932 action horror film about a psychotic big game hunter who hunts stranded human beings on his private island. Directed by Irving Pichel and Ernest B. Schoedsack (King Kong, 1933) from a screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman based on the 1924 short story of the same name by Richard Connell, the first film version of the story that has formed the basis for a plethora…

[esonetwork]

The Most Dangerous Game (1932) | Episode 375

New Post has been published on http://esonetwork.com/the-most-dangeroous-game/

The Most Dangerous Game (1932) | Episode 375

Jim discusses a classic suspense-horror film from 1932 produced and directed by the same team who produced “King Kong” – “The Most Dangerous Game,” starring Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Leslie Banks, Noble Johnson and Steve Clemente. A big game hunter finds himself stranded on a remote island following a shipwreck. The estate on the island is owned by an eccentric hunter who has a particularly dangerous appetite. Find out more on this episode of MONSTER ATTACK!, The Podcast Dedicated To Old Monster Movies.

[madmoviemark]

The Most Dangerous Game (1932) Review - Bob (Joel McCRea) is a big game hunter and the sole survivor of a horrific boat accident. After the crash Bob finds a castle and goes inside in search of aid. He meets Count Zaroff who tells him that other boats have met the fate as his and survivors from those boats are also on his island. One of the other survivors Eva believes that their is foul play a foot. Bob and Eva eventually learn that Zarzoff is hunting humans and they are intended to be his next victim. Can Bob and Eva get off the island? Or will they end up another trophy for Zarzoff's wall? You'll need to tune in to find out!

[classicmoviesarchive]

The Most Dangerous Game (1932) / Adventure Horror Film / Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Leslie Banks