Interactive Thursday - We Three
Yes, we know it's supposed to be Interactive Monday, but with travel it's been hard to be consistent and we decided do it when the mood struck us. This great photo was sent courtesy of the ever mysterious Friendatella. Can you name all three in the shot? What brought them together? Try scripting their dialog at this convergence. Too bad Eva Peron wasn't in town to join them.
posted by Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) @ 7:53 PM
13 comments
13 Comments:
My god, no idea on the middle and right, but that surely is Marlene Dietrich on the left. Or not?
Rich - Correct on the gal on the left. Hint on the other two: both had movie careers, not without controversy. One was involved in a film with a big rally, the other set in a night club in London in the late 1920s. Middle gal and left gal starred together in a film on a train...
Dietrich, and um... um idunno, um... Margie Lockwood? this is a good one! My first guess was Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee and Alan Hale
Gavin - If I've stumped a Hollywood aficionado like you I feel my task is worthy. I'll try to reveal the answer on Monday when people are back at work checking my blog instead of their Excel sheets and expense receipts. I think the identity of the lady on the far right will surprise everyone.
...
Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong & Leni Riefenstahl
What brought them together was SHANGHAI EXPRESS.
Gavin - You are correct, sir, but I wasn't sure of the occasion, but that makes sense, though the photo is dated 1929 and SHANGHAI EXPRESS was released in 1932. Any news on when that one will be on DVD?
Say what you will about Leni's politics, she looks pretty swell in an evening gown.
Don't hold your breath on this one. Unless those hacks Harris and Katz get a hold of this and make it their new restoration project I doubt this will slip out anytime soon. 1998 seems to have been the last release on VHS.
As for the still picture I believe it was a session for LIFE magazine.
Gavin - Well, I'd settle for VHS. Another one to hunt down. There's a new Anna May Wong doc at the Asian and Pacific Islander Film Festival I hope to check out. You're correct on the photo sourcing from Life, though that too is confusing for the 1929 date. There was, indeed, a Life magazine then, but it was still the humor magazine without photos. The better known photo-intensive Life didn't launch until the early 1930s.
That is odd. Could it be miss-dated?
Gavin - I'll have to check in with the all knowing "Friendatella".
I did find this excerpt from a bio of Anna May Wong:
"...In 1928, Anna May left for Europe where she made a number of films in Germany and England. She also appeared on the London stage with Laurence Olivier in "The Circle of Chalk", and in Vienna in the play "Springtime". While in Europe she met and partied with many other rising film personalities, and an Alfred Eisenstadt photo of her with the German actress Marlene Dietrich and the German actress/director Leni Riefenstahl, at the Press Ball in Berlin, was widely circulated and eventually published in the U.S. by LOOK magazine. Anna May learned to speak both French and German, and many people believed that in both attitude and outlook she quickly became more European than American."
Gavin - Well, according to the message sent by "Friendatella" it credited to Life, but then it's not out of the question that both publications bought it.
A mind-blowing combination -- Don Mark should write a on-act about the dialogue about the German ex-patriot who became anti-NAZI, the woman who had to deal with racism, and the woman who became a NAZI -- each of them having a torturous psychological path to follow -- Were they aware of the collision they represented? More blind-blowing than one I have of Portuguese fado singer Amalia Rodrigues posing with Greer Garson, Jane Powell, Ronda Fleming, and that actress who starred in PINKY.
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