Flower Drum Song is a 1961 American musical film directed by Henry Koster, adapted from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song, premiered on Broadway in 1958, which in turn was based on the 1957 novel by Chinese American author Chin Yang Lee. The film stars Nancy Kwan, James Shigeta, Miyoshi Umeki, Jack Soo, Benson Fong and Juanita Hall. It was nominated for five Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy.
Flower Drum Song is the first major Hollywood feature film to have a majority Asian-American cast in a contemporary Asian-American story. It would be the last film to do so for more than 30 years, until The Joy Luck Club (1993). In 2008, Flower Drum Song was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
Mei Li, a young woman, emigrates from China to Chinatown, San Francisco as an illegal immigrant with her father. After landing, the Lis seek the address of Madam Fong, the mother of Sammy Fong, to whom Mei Li has been promised in an arranged marriage. While asking where to find Madam Fong, Mei Li performs a flower drum song to earn money. Sammy is the owner of a night club, the Celestial Gardens and already is romantically involved with his leading showgirl Linda Low. The Lis arrive at the Celestial Gardens during a show.
Sammy does his best to dissuade Mei Li from marrying him, introducing her to Madame Liang, the sister-in-law of Master Wang. Dissolving the marriage contract is harder than either imagined. Master Wang is persuaded by Madame Liang to allow Mei Li to fall in love naturally with Master Wang's eldest son Wang Ta, and the Lis move in with Master Wang. However, Ta is dazzled by the charms of Linda, who flirts with him. He asks her to go on a date, and she convinces him to give her his fraternity pin to symbolize they are "going steady" during the date.
When Mei Li sees Wang Ta sneaking back in after the date, she mistakes his friendly greeting as a welcome to the household and starts to warm to America. Linda plans to use Wang Ta to force a commitment from Sammy Fong out of jealousy, but Sammy gets wind of her scheme when Linda attends a party to celebrate both Ta's graduation from university and Madame Liang's graduation from citizenship classes. At the party, Linda has Frankie Wing, the club emcee, pose as her brother to grant permission for Linda to marry Wang Ta. Mei Li, hearing this, becomes discouraged, and Ta and his father argue over his marriage plans. Ta argues that he is old enough to make his own decisions, but the father says that he will be the one to let Ta know when he is old enough.
At the New Year's Parade, in an effort to keep Linda from marrying Wang Ta, Sammy invites Ta and his family to Celestial Gardens, where they see Linda's nightclub act. Wang Ta is shocked at her performance. He leaves, distraught, accompanied by the seamstress Helen Chao, his friend since childhood. Helen also grew up in the U.S. and deeply loves Ta. Ta becomes drunk in his misery over Linda, and Helen ends up letting him stay for the night in her apartment, where she declares her unrequited love.
In the morning, Mei Li comes to deliver a burned coat for Helen to mend and becomes distressed when she discovers Wang Ta's clothing in Helen's kitchen. When Ta wakes up (seconds after Mei Li leaves), he still does not notice Helen's affections, even as she pleads for him to stay, and he leaves quickly. He goes to speak with Mei Li, now realizing that she is a better match for him than Linda Low, only to have Mei Li reject him, saying that she once loved him, but not anymore.
She and her father leave Master Wang's house and pursue the marriage contract between Mei Li and Sammy Fong. Sammy has proposed to Linda. However, now that Mei Li is pursuing Sammy again, he and Linda will be unable to marry as the contract with Mei Li is binding. Sammy enumerates his many faults in an attempt to convince Mei Li to break the contract. Before the wedding, Wang Ta goes to see Mei Li, and they both realize that they are in love with one another. They agree to try to come up with a way to get Mei Li out of her marriage contract.
The day of the wedding, before she is to sip from a goblet (which would seal her marriage to Sammy), Mei Li declares that, because she entered the United States illegally, the marriage contract is null and void (which she learned from a TV Western she watched on the late show the previous night). Wang Ta can marry Mei Li, and Sammy decides to marry Linda, resulting in a double wedding.
Cast
Music Although the score of Flower Drum Song did not produce many hit tunes, "I Enjoy Being a Girl" has been recorded by such performers as Doris Day, Peggy Lee, Pat Suzuki, and Phranc, and it has been used in other movies and shows, and "Love, Look Away" was recorded by Tony Bennett.
Compared with the Broadway musical on which it is based, the film rearranged the order of the songs. According to David Henry Hwang, the song "Like a God" was dropped from the film because studio executives were worried it could "offend audiences in the American South". Alfred Newman, the film's music supervisor and score conductor, wrote a letter to producer Ross Hunter protesting the excision of music arrangers from the credits during post-production; Hunter agreed to reinsert a credit for Ken Darby, the associate music supervisor.
Soundtrack
The 1961 soundtrack album from the film was critically praised; Variety lauded Newman's "rousing orchestration". Shortly after its release by Decca Records, both the monaural and stereo versions of the soundtrack charted on the list of bestselling records, according to Billboards Top LP's list. For the film soundtrack album, the performers were credited by role, not name, since "several of the performers in the movie don't do their own singing." The singing voice of the character Linda Low (portrayed by Nancy Kwan) was dubbed by B.J. Baker, a white studio singer who had worked with Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin, The Righteous Brothers, and Sam Cooke.
The torch song "Love, Look Away" sung by Helen Chao (portrayed by Reiko Sato) was dubbed in by the American opera singer Marilyn Horne, who was offered the job by Alfred Newman after Horne's triumphant début with the San Francisco Opera in Wozzeck. Horne and Newman were friends through her extensive background singing on film soundtracks. In addition, Dr. Han Li (portrayed by Kam Tong) is dubbed by John Dodson.
The film soundtrack was reissued on CD by Decca Broadway on September 24, 2002, which added a bonus track of "Love, Look Away" (2:27), recorded by Rosemary Clooney around 1958.
Production After the novel was released and became a bestseller, options were offered to author C.Y. Lee to produce a movie or stage adaptation. Lee was torn between the movie offer, which was more lucrative at $50,000, but would force him to give up all rights, or the stage offer from Joseph Fields, which only gave him $3,000 but only relinquished stage rights. After getting drunk the night of the decision, Lee could not remember the offer he chose, but his agent congratulated him on making the right choice the next morning. It turns out Lee had chosen the offer from Fields, who initially wanted to produce a play and eventually a movie, but after Fields mentioned the novel to Rodgers and Hammerstein, they signed on to write the musical.
The 1961 film adaptation of Flower Drum Song was produced by Universal Studios, a break for Rodgers and Hammerstein, who had previously had their films produced by Twentieth Century Fox. The screenplay was written by Joseph Fields, who had previously collaborated with Hammerstein on the libretto for the musical, but had not previously written a major musical film; likewise, the director Henry Koster and producer Ross Hunter were working on their first musical feature film. San Francisco watercolorist Dong Kingman painted the opening title sequence, which traces the journey of Mei Li from Hong Kong. Hermes Pan provided the choreography. Principal photography began on March 20, 1961; the film was largely shot at Stage 12 of the Universal Studios Lot, on a set built to reproduce Chinatown, including the opening scenes at Saint Mary's Square (complete with a replica of the stainless steel statue of Sun Yat-Sen sculpted by Beniamino Bufano), at a cost of $310,000.
Casting The film was the first to feature a cast almost entirely consisting of Asian Americans (one of the few speaking white parts being that of a mugger), including dancers, though three of the singers used for dubbing were not Asian. At the time, the practice of yellowface was more common than Asian actors playing Asian roles (see Examples of yellowface).
Starring in the movie were Nancy Kwan, James Shigeta, Benson Fong, James Hong, Reiko Sato, Victor Sen Yung, and the original Broadway cast members Jack Soo, Miyoshi Umeki, and Juanita Hall (an African American actress who had previously played the Tonkinese Bloody Mary in the Broadway and film productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific).
For an episode of the contemporary TV show Wagon Train, white actor Arnold Stang was cast in yellowface wearing rubber eyelids. For this casting decision, the reason given was that "all of Hollywood's Oriental actors were busy making Flower Drum Song".
Anna May Wong had been scheduled to play the part of Madam Liang, but she died in February 1961, before production began. Kwan was cast in the role of Linda Low when she met Ross Hunter, the producer of Flower Drum Song, at a party after he saw her film debut in the 1960 film adaptation of The World of Suzie Wong. Kwan's hiring was announced in February 1961.
Changes from musical and novel
Among changes for the film, the song "Like a God" was changed from a song into a presentation of Beat poetry. The film (and earlier stage version) is more light-hearted than the novel upon which it is based. For example, while Helen is simply left alone and broken-hearted in the musical and film versions, Ta's rejection of her prompts her to commit suicide in the novel. In the novel, Mei Li does not arrive in Chinatown illegally, nor does she have an arranged marriage with Sammy Fong (the character was created for the musical and film).
Filming locations Although set in San Francisco, only a few scenes were actually filmed on location, including a scene with Kwan and Shigeta on Twin Peaks. However, neither Kwan nor Shigeta actually filmed at this location. Doubles stood in for them for the long shots of the car arriving and leaving Twin Peaks. The close-ups of Kwan and Shigeta in the car were process shots filmed at Universal Studios in Hollywood with the view from Twin Peaks projected on a screen behind them.
The film includes scenes from the 1961 San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade.
Awards and honors Award Category Nominee(s) Result Academy Awards Best Art Direction – Color Alexander Golitzen, Joseph C. Wright and Howard Bristol Best Cinematography – Color Russell Metty Best Costume Design – Color Irene Sharaff Best Scoring of a Musical Picture Alfred Newman and Ken Darby Best Sound Waldon O. Watson Directors Guild of America Awards Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures Henry Koster Golden Globe Awards Best Motion Picture – Musical Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy Miyoshi Umeki Grammy Awards Best Sound Track Album or Recording of Original Cast From a Motion Picture or Television Alfred Newman and Ken Darby Laurel Awards Top Musical Top Female Supporting Performance Juanita Hall National Film Preservation Board National Film Registry Writers Guild of America Awards Best Written American Musical Joseph Fields
Release