Nancy Kwan Ka-shen (; born May 19, 1939) is a Chinese-American actress whose career included more than fifty English language film and television roles. Kwan's career coincided with Hollywood's casting of more Asian roles in the 1960s, and she became an Eastern sex symbol in the 1960s.
Biography
Early life
Kwan was born in Hong Kong on May 19, 1939, and grew up in Kowloon Tong district. Kwan's father was Kwan Wing-hong, a Cantonese architect and her mother was Marquita Scott, a White British model of English and Scottish ancestry. Kwan Wing-hong was the son of lawyer Kwan King-sun and Juliann Loke Yuen-ying, daughter of business executive Loke Yew. He attended Cambridge University and met Scott in London. The two married and moved to Hong Kong, where Wing-hong became a prominent architect. In that era, interracial marriage was not widely accepted. Nancy has an older brother, Ka-keung.
In 1941, Kwan's parents divorced when she was two years old. Scott escaped to England during the World War II Japanese invasion and never rejoined the family. She later moved to New York and married an American.
At Christmas 1941, in fear of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong during World War II, Wing Hong, in the guise of a coolie, escaped from Hong Kong to North China with his two children, whom he hid in wicker baskets. Kwan and her brother were transported by servants, evading Japanese sentries. They remained in exile in western China for five years until the war ended, after which they returned to Hong Kong and lived in a spacious, contemporary home her father had designed. Remaining in Hong Kong with the children, her father married a Chinese woman, whom Kwan called "Mother". Her father and stepmother raised her, in addition to her brother and five half-brothers and half-sisters. Five of Kwan's siblings became lawyers.
All of my brothers and sisters are lawyers. The whole family. So I'm the black sheep. – Nancy Kwan
Except during World War II, Kwan had a comfortable early life. Cared for by an amah (阿嬤), a woman who looks after children, Kwan owned a pony and spent her summers in resorts in Borneo, Macao, and Japan. An affluent man, her father owned a several-acre hilltop property in Kowloon. In her youth, she was called "Ka-shen". She wrote in 1960 that as an eight-year-old, her fortune-teller "predicted travel, fame, and fortune for me".
Kwan attended the Catholic Maryknoll Convent School until she was 13 years old, after which she travelled to Kingsmoor School in Glossop, England a private boarding school that had offered places to refugees in 1938 and 1939, either at no cost or at a reduced rate, that her brother Ka-keung was then attending. Her brother studied to become an architect and she studied to become a dancer.
Kwan's introduction to tai chi sparked a desire to learn ballet. When Kwan was 18, she pursued her dream of becoming a ballet dancer by attending the Royal Ballet School in London. She studied performing arts subjects such as stage make-up and danced every day for four hours. Her studies at the Royal Ballet School ran concurrently with her high-school studies. Because Kwan's high school had deep connections with nearby theatre companies, Kwan was able to take small parts in several of their productions. Upon graduating from high school, she took a luxurious trip to France, Italy, and Switzerland. Afterwards, she traveled back to Hong Kong, where she started a ballet school.
Early career Stage producer Ray Stark posted an advertisement in the Hong Kong Tiger Standard (later renamed The Standard) regarding auditions for the character Suzie Wong for a play. The ad asked applicants to present their pictures, résumés, and proportions. Kwan submitted her application and actually met Stark in a film studio that her father had constructed. After auditioning for Stark, she was asked to screen test to play a character in the then-upcoming film The World of Suzie Wong. Stark preferred Kwan over the other applicants because she "would have more universal acceptance". Another applicant, French actress France Nuyen, played the stage version of the role and had been called a "businessman's delight" by a number of reviewers. Stark disliked this characterization, as well as "happy harlot" characters such as Melina Mercouri in Never on Sunday. Stark wanted an Asian actress because reshaping the eyes of a white actress wouldn't look authentic. He also praised Kwan's features: an "acceptable face" and "being alluringly leggy [and] perfectly formed".
For each screen test, Kwan, accompanied by her younger sister, was chauffeured to the studio by her father's driver. Stark characterized Kwan's first screen test as "pretty dreadful" but one that hinted at her potential. After four weeks of training with drama teachers, including hours of lessons with Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright–screenwriter John Patrick, Kwan's second screen test was a significant improvement.
Although she had not yet become an actress, Stark said, there was a "development of her authority". Once, upon viewing her screen test, Kwan said, "I'm a terrible girl" and "squealed with embarrassment"; acting as a prostitute was a vastly different experience from her comfortable life in Hong Kong. The reaction prompted Stark to forbid her from viewing the dailies. Kwan did a third screen test after four months had passed, and the producers couldn't decide whether to choose Kwan or Nuyen.
Owing to Kwan's lack of acting experience, at Stark's request she travelled to the United States, where she attended acting school in Hollywood and resided at the Hollywood Studio Club, a chaperoned dormitory with other apprentices actresses. She later moved to New York. Kwan signed a seven-year contract with Stark's Seven Arts Productions at a starting salary of $300 a week, even though she was not given one, or any particular role. In 2005, Edward S. Feldman and Tom Barton characterized Kwan's wages and her employment as "indentured servitude". In a retrospective interview, Kwan told Goldsea that she had no prior acting experience and that the $300 a week salary was "a lot of money to me then".
When The World of Suzie Wong began to tour, Kwan was assigned the part of a bargirl. In addition to her small supporting character role, Kwan became an understudy for the production's female lead, France Nuyen. Though Stark and the male lead William Holden preferred Kwan despite her somewhat apprehensive demeanor during the screen test, she did not get the role. Paramount favored the more accomplished France Nuyen, who had been widely praised for her performance in the film South Pacific (1958). Stark acquiesced to Paramount's wishes. Nuyen received the role and Kwan later took Nuyen's place on Broadway. In a September 1960 interview with Associated Press journalist Bob Thomas, she said, "I was bitterly disappointed, and I almost quit and went home when I didn't get the picture." Kwan did not receive the lead role because Stark believed she was too inexperienced at the time. Nuyen won the title role in the ensuing movie because of her powerful portrayal of Suzie Wong during the tour. She moved to England to film the movie, leaving an opening for Kwan to ascend to the lead female role in the touring production. In 1959, one month after Nuyen was selected for the film role and while Kwan was touring in Toronto, Stark told her to screen test again for the film. Kwan responded to his phone call from London, asking, "How can I come? I'm in this show." To provide a pretext for Kwan's sudden hiatus from the touring production, Stark sent a cablegram to her superiors saying her father had become ill and had been hospitalized. Kwan later recalled in an interview about three years later, "So I went to the manager and told him a lie. It was not very nice, but what could I do?" After Kwan accepted the role, the Broadway play producer sued her for leaving with little notice.
Nuyen, who was in an unstable relationship with Marlon Brando, had a nervous breakdown and was fired from the role because of her erratic behavior. The film's director, Jean Negulesco, was fired and replaced by Richard Quine. Kwan, who had never previously been in a film, got the part by beating out over 30 actresses from Hollywood, France, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines. On February 15, 1960, she began filming the movie in London with co-star William Holden.
During the filming, Kwan's only trouble was a lingerie scene. Robert Lomax, as played by Holden, tears off her Western dress and says, "Wear your own kind of clothing! Don't try to copy some European girl!" Director Richard Quine was displeased with Kwan's underclothes: She wore a full-slip rather than a half-slip and bra. Finding the attire too modest and unrealistic, he asked Stark to talk to Kwan. Stark discovered Kwan taking refuge in her dressing room, sobbing hysterically . He warned her, "Nancy, wear the half-slip and bra or you're off the picture. France Nuyen is no longer in it, remember? If you're difficult you'll be off it too. All we want to do is make you the best actress possible." Kwan bashfully returned to the set after lunch having made the requested wardrobe changes and acting as if the events of the morning's shoot had never happened.
Owing to Kwan's evident Eurasian appearance, the film's make-up artists attempted to make her look more Chinese. They plucked her eyebrows and sketched a line across her forehead. In movies where Kwan plays Asian roles, the makeup artists reshaped her brown eyes. Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wrote that Kwan, as a Eurasian, does not look fully Asian or European. Hopper wrote that the "scattering of freckles across her tip-tilted nose give her an Occidental flavor". The production spanned five months, an unusually lengthy shoot for that time.
Stardom
The World of Suzie Wong was a "box-office sensation". Critics lavished praise on Kwan for her performance. She was given the nickname "Chinese Bardot" for her unforgettable dance numbers. Kwan and two other actresses, Ina Balin and Hayley Mills, were awarded the Golden Globe for the "Most Promising Newcomer–Female" in 1960. The following year, she was voted a "Star of Tomorrow". Scholar Jennifer Leah Chan of New York University wrote that Suzie provided an Asian actress—Kwan—with the most significant Hollywood role since actress Anna May Wong's success in the 1920s.
Following The World of Suzie Wong, Kwan was totally unprepared for fame. While she was purchasing fabric in a store on Nathan Road, she found people staring at her from the window. Wondering what they were staring at, it suddenly struck her that she was the focus of attention. Kwan remarked that in Beverly Hills, she could walk without attracting attention. She reasoned, "[It] is better in America because America is much bigger, I guess". When people addressed her father after watching the film, they frequently called him "Mr. Wong", a name that really annoyed him. Kwan said in a 1994 interview with the South China Morning Post that even decades after her film debut and despite her having done over 50 films in the interim, viewers continued to send her many letters about the film.
The scene of Kwan, in repose on a davenport and adorned in a dazzling cheongsam, while showing a "deliciously decadent flash of thigh", became an iconic image. Similarly attired, Kwan appeared on the cover of Life magazine's October 1960 issue, cementing her status as a sex symbol for the 1960s. Nicknamed the "Suzie Wong dress", the cheongsam in the portrait spawned thousands of copycat promotional projects. In a 1962 interview, Kwan said she "loved" the cheongsam, calling it a "national costume". She explained that it "has slits because Chinese girls have pretty legs" and "the slits show their legs".