Almost There: Nancy Kwan in "The World of Suzie Wong"
Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 2:36PM 
Arthur Dong's documentary Hollywood Chinese, about the complicated history of Chinese and Chinese American lives on the big screen, serves as a starting point for one of the Criterion Channel's new collections. Spanning over a century of American filmmaking and 24 films, this curated program highlights issues of representation, racism, erasure, and more. At the same time, it serves as a chance to illuminate the cinematic contributions of marginalized artists who found unlikely success in Hollywood. They were people like the Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe, Taiwanese director Ang Lee, and Hong Kong-born American actress and dancer Nancy Kwan.
In 1960, Kwan made her film debut in Richard Quine's The World of Suzie Wong, became an overnight star, and surely came closer to that elusive Best Actress Oscar nomination than most performers of Asian descent…
Published in 1957, The World of Suzie Wong is a novel by Richard Mason about the relationship between a British artist living in Hong Kong and a Chinese prostitute. Despite its popularity, the piece has long been accused of perpetuating harmful stereotypes about Asian women, characterizing its titular protagonist as an exotic other whose subservience to men falls in line with Western cultural assumptions. Like most of Mason's successes, the book regards a foreign culture through the eyes of a British man, exploring the possibilities of exoticism supposedly inherent to the setting, its people. The book has given way to adaptations and even an unauthorized sequel.
The first of those derived works arrived just one year after publication when Paul Osborn penned a stage play that opened on Broadway before moving to the West End in 1959. Joshua Logan directed while William Shatner and France Nuyen took on the principal roles. Constantly reworked throughout its original run, the text became the basis for The World of Suzie Wong movie, whose production was littered with problems from early on. The main issue was casting, with Nuyen initially planning to reprise the role despite some producers advocating for different actresses. One of those candidates was Nancy Kwan, who Ray Stark discovered.
Though lacking professional acting experience, Kwan was promptly screen-tested for a potential film adaptation of The World of Suzie Wong and sent to America for Hollywood acting classes. Still, as Nuyen went on to start shooting the picture, Kwan went on tour with the stage show, playing a supporting character and serving as understudy for her leading lady. When a storm of personal issues made Paramount sour on France Nuyen as their Suzie Wong, the role was recast with Kwan. Unfortunately, it wasn't an easy fix, as five weeks of location shooting had already been completed by the movie's original director Jean Negulesco.
When firing Nuyen, Stark also got rid of the director, bringing Kwan and Richard Quine into the project, which now needed extensive reshoots to accommodate the changes. From this chaotic process, The World of Suzie Wong emerged as an exercise in romance as an insular experience by which two people create an alternate dimension for themselves. The contrast between location shooting and cramped studio interiors highlights a sense of physical displacement, the actors trying to calibrate their pantomimes of intimacy to acute variations. It's not very good and often quite offensive, but it'd be a lie to say it holds no interest for a cinephile.
Insouciant and insolent, Nancy Kwan enters the film as one of many unwitting models for artist Robert Lomax, reimagined as an American and played by William Holden. Ferrying through the Hong Kong port, he people watches, capturing strangers' likeness on his faithful sketchpad. As he changes seats to find better subjects, Lomax spots a beautiful young woman making faces at an older lady's baby. Despite the goofy expressions, her beauty is undeniable, costumed by Phyllis Dalton in a cinched trench and sleek cheongsam. However, she doesn't like to be ogled. This becomes apparent when she escapes the draughtsman's gaze, later accusing him of stealing her purse.
Saddled with dialogue written in broken English, Kwan struggles to transcend a character whose very conception hinges on stereotypes and fantasies. Furthermore, her delivery does little to improve the script, mistaking flat vociferation for a show of charming insolence. And yet, it's easy to see why 1960 audiences were captivated by this unknown actress. She's magnetic in ways that override whatever deficiencies her dramatic work might possess, resembling a green Audrey Hepburn in her first movies right down to a certain clumsiness with the dialogue. Crucially, she signals Suzie's playful misdirection, how much of her initial presentation is a game of innocent lies.
Though she calls herself Mei Ling and says she's the virginal daughter of a wealthy man, Robert soon reencounters the young woman in the Wan Chai district, working the American sailors at a bar. She's Suzie Wong, the joint's most popular girl, and a liar who regards the artist with unflappable confidence. Maybe he wanted the stuck-up girl on the ferry, but he'll soon get lonely and fall for the woman in red who now stands before him. Kwan plays the part confidently while differentiating Suzie's interactions with Robert from her usual shtick with clients. One seduction is playful and imbued with a shadow of genuine feeling. The other is mechanically vivacious, almost automatic in its motions.
Kwan's dance training is handy for the bar scenes, her gestures so fluid they gain a sensuousness that's almost more aesthetic than sexual. Her elegance feels effortless, even as the persona of Suzie Wong is pointedly artificial. We discover this along with Robert, as the woman unpeels like an onion, layers of aloofness falling to the wayside as her personality is revealed, her insecurities, her troubled history. Kwan is more adept at these negotiations of openness than she is at comedy, often feeling hollow whenever a scene bends toward the farcical side of things. Though, considering how puerile the writing is, it's hard to put all blame on the actress.
When you have a scene where Nancy feigns domestic violence for clout among her girlfriends, how do you make the material sing instead of having the audience cringe? Perhaps a bolder performer would have played up the pitch-black comedy of the moment, but Quine never seems willing to let his cast explore the darkness within the love story. The approach is surface-level to a fault but also awfully demanding to the actors. Kwan, in particular, has to sell Suzie's infatuation, the profundity of her attachment, while never quite articulating what draws the pair together. It's a risky gambit that stems from an unbalanced text. Nevertheless, Kwan makes it work through charisma and star quality, the gravitational pull of her on-screen presence.
Notably, Kwan improves as the film unfolds, her coquettish play substituted by a more straightforward romance. In terms of actorly peaks, her standout scenes manifest when Suzie is most vulnerable. Think of her being compared to a European streetwalker by the man she loves or disclosing a secret that could ruin everything, pretending to be other people in the comfort of shadows or appreciating a kind gift. The poised silences, the doll-like expressions of sorrow, and the exteriorization of marrow-deep shame indicate an actress capable of more than what the movie provides. In other words, Nancy Kwan deserved better.
While reviews were mixed at the time, The World of Suzie Wong proved to be a commercial success. More importantly for this piece, the movie catapulted Nancy Kwan into celebrity status, announcing her as one of Hollywood's newest breakthroughs, a starlet full of potential. So much so that Kwan received two nominations at the Golden Globes, both for Best Actress in a Drama and Most Promising Newcomer. Though she lost the former prize to Greer Garson, she won the latter alongside Ina Balin and Hayley Mills. Still, when it came time to announce the Oscar nominations, Kwan's name wasn't announced.
Instead, AMPAS chose Greer Garson in Sunrise at Campobello, Deborah Kerr in The Sundowners, Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, Melina Mercouri in Never on Sunday, and Elizabeth Taylor in BUtterfield 8. In part due to industry goodwill and all the press surrounding recent health troubles, Taylor won her first of two Best Actress Oscars. On the other hand, Kwan would never be nominated for an Academy Award. To this day, Asian performers are severely underrecognized by AMPAS. This category is especially bad, but hopefully, that will change soon. If A24 plays their cards right, Michelle Yeoh might become the first East Asian Best Actress nominee in Oscar history.
You can find The World of Suzie Wong on the Criterion Channel. The film is also available to rent or purchase on other platforms.
Reader Comments (4)
She also probably came close to getting a nomination for Flower Drum Song
I don’t believe Nancy Kwan came anywhere near qualifying for the Oscar ballot. AMPAS voters created a false image of appearing to address the Asian bias in 1957 by nominating veteran silent film star Sessue Hayakawa for The Bridge Over The River Kwai and giving the Best Supporting Actress prize to Miyoshi Umeki for Sayonara.
Yet, they didn’t change the issue of casting in studio productions. Yellow face (white actors wearing heavy make up to play Asians) was still prevalent in that era. Oscars winners Robert Donat (Inn of the Sixth Happiness), Jennifer Jones (Love is a Many Splendored Thing), Marlon Brando (Teahouse of the August Moon), Mickey Rooney (Breakfast at Tiffany’s), and Alec Guinness (A Majority of One) all donned yellow face.
After Umeki’s win, the Asian community waited decades for another Asian actress to break through the prejudice and receive a nomination.
Nuyen's "storm of personal issues" doesn't begin to hit on what allegedly went on behind the scenes, none of which were definitively established as far as I can tell. Either she broke down over her relationship with Marlon Brando, had challenges dealing with a pregnancy, or just had conflicts with Stark. In any case, Nuyen's loss was Kwan's gain, and, while Kwan made the best of what she could get in the 60s, she ultimately did hit the inevitably low ceiling, but has still been extremely well-spoken for Asian representation over the years. She even passed on a role in The Joy Luck Club, a movie in which Nuyen appeared, because of a disparaging line about The World of Suzie Wong, but I keep hoping that she, and Nuyen for that matter, might somehow show up in one of the Crazy Rich Asian sequels.
The last time I watched “Flower Drum Song”, I rewatched the scene where Nancy Kwan sings and dances “I Enjoy Being A Girl” over and over.
I marvelled at her extension, her long clean lines, and her quickness (and sang along). She expresses the wonderful self confidence and self possession that great dancers do. She is so exquisite, I just love her.