Saturdays with the Stars: Nancy Kwan

Each month of 2020 we will be looking at the movies of some of Hollywood's most famous sex symbols, women whose intense beauty frequently overshadowed their filmic careers.  Last month, our focus was on Gina Lollobrigida, an actress who gained international fame & acclaim early in her career, but became more famous for a decades-long feud & her bust size.  This month, we'll move halfway across the planet to Hong Kong, to discuss an actress who was amongst Lollobrigida's peers, but unlike Gina, eventually made a career in pictures filmed in America.  This month, our star is Nancy Kwan.

Born in Hong Kong, Kwan's early life was complicated.  Her father was a Cantonese architect while her mother was English (and white); at the time in China, interracial marriages were still considered quite taboo.  During World War II, Nancy, her father, and her two brothers fled to Western China during the invasion of the country by Japan, with her mother returning to England and not really playing a role in the rest of her life.  Returning to Hong Kong after the war, Kwan lived a posh lifestyle that involved ballet lessons, and eventually, training by the Royal Ballet School in London.  It was there she met Ray Stark, a stage producer who would change her life.

Kwan wasn't the original choice to play the part of Suzie Wong (in the big-screen adaptation of The World of Suzie Wong), but fate (and bad decisions) helped her get the part.  France Nuyen, who had played the role on stage and was already well-known to American audiences for her role in South Pacific, was the favorite of the studio, but she dropped out.  Rumors persist as to why (with the most salacious being that she was pregnant with Marlon Brando's love child, as she was in a relationship with the actor at the time), but either way, Nuyen was out and Kwan was in, and that's what it took.  Suzie Wong became a gargantuan hit for Paramount, and as a result, Kwan became the first Asian actress since Anna May Wong 25 years earlier to become a bankable leading woman.

Kwan's time in the spotlight was brief, and we're going to try and explore as much of her career as possible this month.  Suzie Wong brought acclaim (she won a Golden Globe for the film, and I suspect was very close to an Oscar nomination for it), a Life Magazine cover, and a high-profile follow-up (the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song), but her career never really equalled the promise of her first two movies.  That said, she headlined films throughout the 1960's, and was really the first Asian-American sex symbol in Hollywood.  This month we'll take a look at her unusual and trailblazing career, including her breakout role in Suzie Wong, and find out why Kwan was able to be a first in so many ways within Tinseltown.