OVP: Flower Drum Song (1961)

Film: Flower Drum Song (1961)
Stars: Nancy Kwan, James Shigeta, Miyoshi Umeki, Benson Fong, Jack Soo, Juanita Hall, Reiko Sato
Director: Henry Koster
Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound, Scoring)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Nancy Kwan-click here to learn more about Ms. Kwan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Most actors in Nancy Kwan's position would have scrambled to know how to follow a film like The World of Suzie Wong.  A 21-year-old who made a massive hit that suddenly made her a household name would always struggle in such a situation, but Kwan had become a star in a Hollywood where Natalie Wood or Debbie Reynolds were the big names on marquees; there weren't a lot of roles for an Asian-American actress in Hollywood without Hollywood trying color blind casting, which even today they're not great at, and in 1961 was almost non-existent.  Luckily for Kwan, there was in fact a film that would be perfect for her that went into production shortly after Suzie Wong, the big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Flower Drum Song, the latest from Rodgers & Hammerstein.  Considering her quick celebrity at the time, Kwan was hired almost immediately after Suzie Wong was released in the part of Linda, thus for the time-being avoiding what we'd seen from actresses of color like Lena Horne or Dorothy Dandridge who couldn't get parts immediately after their breakouts, and instead being treated like most actors after they had a breakout hit-that is, get them in something else quickly to cash in on the new name.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a musical love square of sorts, and takes place in San Francisco.  The first player in the square is Mei Li (Umeki), a mild-mannered girl from Hong Kong who has stowed away & is coming to marry Sammy Fong (Soo), a rambunctious nightclub owner who is contracted to marry her despite them having little in common.  This is a problem because Sammy is in love with Linda (Kwan), a dancer in his club who is mad he hasn't proposed, and therefore starts pursuing Wang Ta (Shigeta), the son of a wealthy traditional father (Fong) who wants his son to marry someone like Mei Li...and eventually when it's clear that Sammy is trying to go back on the contract, he does just that, arranging for their wedding.  The film thus has about two hours of back-and-forth, including a weird interlude with a fifth wheel, Helen (Sato), that's never really resolved (side note-this is the biggest issue with the film's plot that we never understand what happens to her, and I figured out why when I realized that the book has Helen kill herself, which would've been too much of a bummer in a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical...but why not just cut her entirely?), with eventually Mei Li & Wang Ta together and Sammy & Linda getting married in a double wedding.

As you might expect, the film is a teensy bit dated, but not as much as you'd think.  The most egregious sin in the film would be that Juanita Hall as Madame Liang is in yellowface, though she's the only actor that is doing so (is it weird to anyone else that Hall's two most famous film roles have her playing an Asian-American actress, her other being Bloody Mary in South Pacific, despite her being African-American in real life?), but otherwise the film takes more care than you'd expect to not be derogatory about Asian-Americans, or to indulge in too many stereotypes.  Flower Drum Song was the first major American film to feature a predominantly Asian cast, and it was unfortunately not the harbinger of more (really only The Joy Luck Club in 1993 or Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 could boast a similar cache), so it was refreshing that I didn't have to cringe too much during this film because of dated portrayals

By far my favorite performance in the movie was Kwan's.  She gets the best role, even if Umeki is the more traditional heroine part (and despite "Suzie Wong" getting the lead, Umeki gets more substantial screen-time).  Her ballet roots show off in her dance numbers, she's fun & flirty in the part, giving the film (which drags at times from trying to underline to a predominantly white audience specific aspects of Asian-American culture) a sense of bounce & light.  She also gets the movie's best musical number, the only song from the film that you'd know (this is one of the few Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals with a little-known score): "I Enjoy Being a Girl."

The film was not the hit that Suzie Wong was.  You'll read some accounts of the film being a flop, which doesn't appear to be the case (it seems to have roughly broken even), but it certainly wasn't the gargantuan success that more recent Rodgers & Hammerstein big-screen adaptations The King & I and South Pacific had been.  Critics also were mixed on the film, particularly wondering why it was so decadent, but as far as Kwan's career it still felt like a smart move.  We'll get to what happened next in her stardom throughout October, but between Suzie Wong and Flower Drum Song, her career looked in as good as shape as any Asian-American star had ever seen in 1961.

The film won five Academy Award nominations (losing all of them to West Side Story).  I do tend to agree with some of the critics when it came to the aesthetic choices in the film.  While some of the art direction is gorgeous (I love the sort of wavy, watery set during Helen's ballet sequence), there are other sequences that feel gaudy and out-of-place (what was hell with the beat poetry scene that lasts for five seconds?).  Occasionally the art direction has a sense that the budget was too large, the same with the costumes.  The best look might have been Kwan's mini-towel dress during "I Enjoy Being a Girl" since it's such a fresh look, but during other sequences (like her fan dance number), it borders into tacky.  The musical numbers are in a similar situation-"I Enjoy Being a Girl" and "Chop Suey" are both super fun, but some of the others are routine, and in the case of the ones featuring Umeki, dull (the same goes for the sound work, which varies wildly throughout the film along with the musical numbers).  Cinematography makes sense considering all of the color on display, but again the indulgence of the film overwhelms some scenes (though, again, the Helen Ballet sequence may be superfluous to the plot, but it's brilliantly-rendered).