Nancy Kwan

Nancy Kwan
Nancy Kwan (關家蒨)

Nancy Kwan at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on August 11, 2011
Born May 19, 1939 (1939-05-19) (age 72)
Hong Kong
Years active 1960–present
Spouse Peter Pock (m.1962)
David Giler (m.1972)
Norbert Meisel (1976–)
Children Bernhard Pock (1963-1996; deceased)
Parents Kwan Wing Hong and Marquita Scott
Relatives Ka Keung Kwan - brother
Website
http://www.nancy-kwan.com/

Nancy "Ka Shen" Kwan (Chinese: 關家蒨; pinyin: Guān Jiāqiàn; born May 19, 1939) is a Eurasian-American actress, who played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian descent in major Hollywood film roles. Widely praised for her beauty, Kwan was considered a sex symbol in the 1960s.

Contents

Biography

Early life

Kwan's husband, Norbert Meisel, at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre on August 11, 2011

Born in Hong Kong on May 19, 1939,[1] Nancy Kwan is the daughter of Kwan Wing Hong,[2] a Cantonese architect,[3] and Marquita Scott, a model of English and Scottish decent.[4][note 1] The son of a Chinese lawyer, Kwan Wing Hong attended Cambridge University and became an eminent architect in Hong Kong. After he met Marquita Scott in London, the two married and moved to Hong Kong.[4] Kwan has a brother, Keung.[4]

Under fear of the Japanese invading Hong Kong during World War II, Wing Hong, under the guise of a coolie, escaped from Hong Kong to North China with his two children, whom he hid in wicker baskets. They remained in exile for five years. Marquita Scott escaped to England and never rejoined the family. Kwan's parents divorced, and her father remarried, giving her five half-brothers and half-sisters.[4]

Save for during World War II, Kwan had a comfortable early life. Serviced by an "amah" ("阿嬤"), a woman who looks after children, Kwan owned a pony and passed the summer months in resorts in Borneo, Macao, and Japan.[4] She wrote in 1960 that as an eight year old, her fortune-teller "predicted travel, fame and fortune for me". The Associated Press called the fortune-teller "either a gifted or lucky" one.[5][note 2]

She attended the Catholic Maryknoll Convent School until she was 13 years old, after which she traveled to Kingsmoore, an English boarding school. Her four years of studying at the school earned her the General Certificate of Secondary Education.[4]

Her father remarried a Chinese woman, with whom he had five children. Kwan called her "Mother".[6]

When Kwan was 18 years old, she pursued her dream of becoming of a ballet dancer by attending 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 theater groups, Kwan was able to perform small parts in several of their productions.[note 3] Upon graduating from her scholastic studies, she sojourned to France, Italy, and Switzerland on a luxury trip. Afterwards, she traveled back to Hong Kong.[1]

Career

Stage producer Ray Stark discovered Kwan in Hong Kong in a film studio constructed by her architect father.[7][8] After auditioning for Stark, she was asked to screen test to play a character in the prospective film The World of Suzie Wong.[1] She was not given the role; instead, France Nguyen received it and Kwan later took the place of Nguyen on Broadway. In a September 1960 interview with Associated Press journalist Bomb Thomas, she said, "I was bitterly disappointed, and I almost quit and went home when I didn't get the picture."[8] Kwan signed a seven-year contract[9] with Stark's Seven Arts Productions[6] at a beginning salary of $300 a week.[9] In 2005, Edward S. Feldman and Tom Barton characterized Kwan's wages and her employment as "indentured servitude".[9] 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".[1] Owing to Kwan's lack of acting experience, at Stark's request,[10] she traveled to the United States, where she attended acting school in Hollywood and later moved to New York. Kwan resided in a dormitory with other junior actresses.[1]

Roger Ebert and his wife Chaz Hammel-Smith gave the thumbs up to Nancy Kwan at the Hawaii International Film Festival on October 20, 2010.

When The World of Suzie Wong began to tour, Kwan was assigned to be a bargirl. In addition to her small supporting character role, Kwan became an understudy for the production's female lead, France Nguyen, a French actress.[1] Kwan did not receive the lead role because Stark believed she was too inexperienced at the time.[10] Nguyen won the title role in the upcoming 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. While Kwan was touring in Toronto, Canada, Stark told her to screen test again for the film.[1] Nguyen, who was in an unstable relationship with Marlon Brando, had a nervous breakdown and was fired from the role because of her erratic actions.[7][note 4] The film's director, Jean Negulesco, was fired and replaced by Richard Quine.[7] Kwan, who had theretofore never been in a film, defeated 30 competitors from Hollywood, France, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines.[12] On February 15, 1960, she began filming the movie in London with co-star William Holden.[13] After Kwan accepted the role, the Broadway play producer sued her for leaving with little notice.[8] Owing to Kwan's perceptible Eurasian appearance, the film's make-up artists endeavored to make her look more Chinese.[14] In such movies where Kwan plays Asian roles, the makeup artists slant her brown eyes. The Hartford Courant's 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".[6]

The World of Suzie Wong was a "box-office sensation". Critics lavished praise on Kwan for her performance. She 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".[14] 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.[15] Chinese and Chinese-Americans became aggrieved after seeing how Chinese women were depicted as promiscuous. Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul speculated that the wave of unfavorable media attention drove filmmakers to escalate the production of Kwan's next film. In 1961, she starred in Flower Drum Song in a related role. The film was distinguished for being the "first big-budget American film with an all–Chinese cast".[14]

After starring in The World of Suzie Wong and Flower Drum Song, Kwan experienced a meteoric rise to celebrity. Scholar Jennifer Leah Chan of New York University chronicled the media attention Kwan received after starring in two Hollywood films, writing that Kwan's fame peaked in 1962. In 1960, Kwan's image was featured on the cover of Life magazine. Women's magazine McCall's published an article about Kwan in 1962 titled "The China Doll that Men Like".[16]

Her third movie was the 1962 British drama film The Main Attraction. While she was filming the movie in the Austrian Alps, she found Peter Pock, a hotelier and ski teacher, with whom she immediately fell in love. She reflected that "The first time I saw that marvelous-looking man I said, 'That's for me.'" After several weeks, the two married and resided in Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria. Kwan later gave birth to Bernhard Pock.[17] In December 1963, Pock was constructing a luxury hotel in the Tyrolean Alps. During Christmas of that year, Nancy Kwan visited the location and was able to participate in several pre-1964 Winter Olympics events despite having been very occupied with movies. Her contract with film production company Seven Arts led her to travel around the world to film movies. She found the separation from her son, Bernhard, who was not yet a year old, to be difficult. She said "he's coming into a time when he's beginning to assert his personality". Fair-skinned and blue-eyed, Bernhard had his father's appearance.[6]

In 1963, Kwan starred as the title character of Tamahine. Playing an English-Tahitian teacher at an old English public school, she was praised by the Boston Globe for her "charming depict[ion]" of the character.[18][note 5]

In the 1964 Fate Is the Hunter, her seventh film, Kwan played an ichnologist. It was her first role as a Eurasian character.[6][note 6] Kwan's roles were predominantly comic characters, which she said were more difficult roles than "straight dramatic work", owing to the necessity of more vigor and precise timing.[6]

Kwan divorced Peter Pock.[19]

In 1972, Kwan married David Giler, an Austrian hotelier, in Hong Kong.[20] That year, Kwan returned to Hong Kong with her son because her father was sick. She initially intended to remain for one year to assist him but ultimately remained for about seven years. While in Hong Kong, Kwan founded a production company, which made ads mostly for people in Southeast Asia. In a 1993 interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Kwan remarked that her son Bernhard was frequently called a "blond, blue-eyed Chinese" because he could speak the language fluently. In 1979, the two returned to the United States because Kwan wanted him to finish his schooling there. Bernhard was an actor, a martial artist, and a stunt performer. Kwan and he recorded a tape about tai chi.[19]

In the 1970s, Kwan and her son, Bernhard Pock, returned to Hong Kong, where she served as the managing director of Nancy Kwan Films. In 1980, she moved back to the United States. She played characters in the TV shows Fantasy Island, Knots Landing, and Trapper John.[3]

In 1993, Kwan played Gussie Yang, a "tough-talking, soft-hearted Hong Kong restaurateur", in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.[19][21]

In May 1993, she completed the production of a film about Eurasians, Loose Woman With No Face, which she wrote, directed, and starred in.[21] She called the film "a slice of life about Euro-Asians in Los Angeles, and it's something I know about".[19][21]

She produced the feature film Biker Poet.[3][when?]

She has appeared on television commercials even into the 1990s.[citation needed] She became a household name[citation needed] after appearing in "late night infomercials" as the spokesperson for the cosmetic "Oriental Pearl Cream".[20][note 7]

Today, she is politically active as the spokeswoman for the Asian American Voters Coalition.[23]

Selected filmography

Poster of To Whom It May Concern: Ka Shen's Journey, a docudrama about the actress.

Awards

Bibliography

  • Pock, Bernie & Nancy Kwan. A Celebration of Life, Memories of My Son. ISBN 0-9664395-0-3

References

Notes
  1. ^ Nancy Kwan is "half-Chinese, three-eighths English, one-eighth Scot, blended with a touch of Malayan".[4]
  2. ^ In 1959, the fortune teller who had told eight-year-old Kwan she would be blessed with "travel, fame and fortune" prophesied that Kwan would assume the lead role in the film The World of Suzie Wong (film). The first prophesy was fulfilled by when Kwan traveled to Toronto to play the female lead Suzie. The second prophesy was fulfilled when the chosen actress was disqualified, after which producer Ray Stark asked her to screen test for the role and then gave it to her[5]
  3. ^ Kwan served as a "spear carrier" during an Aida opera show.[1]
  4. ^ The official reason Paramount Pictures gave for Nguyen's departure was that she had developed "a recurrence of a throat infection that developed into tonsillitus and laryngitis".[11] Richard West of the Los Angeles Times wrote that there was speculation that Nguyen was removed owing to her recent weight gain because she binge ate after splitting up with her lover Marlon Brando.[12]
  5. ^ The energetic of Kwan's character Tamahine either causes amazement or captivation in her family members. With an irreverent air about clothes, Tamahine, an instructor at Hallow school, is welcomed as a guest in the headmaster's dwelling. While at the school, she takes her clothes off with no sense of self awareness; she has the same attitude as when she stripped off her clothes in her homeland while entering the ocean. Adorned in only a bra and panties, she tosses flowers to her students from her boudoir. Her "high-jinks" cause all the male students and the headmaster to become infatuated with her. The more conservative teachers are angered by Tamahine's antics.[18]
  6. ^ In Kwan's previous six films, she plan non-Eurasian characters. In the 1960 The World of Suzie Wong, Kwan played a Hong Kong prostitute; in the 1961 Flower Drum Song, a Chinese-American residing in San Francisco, in the 1962 The Main Attraction, an Italian circus entertainer; in the 1963 Tamahine, an English-Tahitian; in the 1963 The Wild Affair, two English sisters, one of whom was "good", and the other of whom was "bad"; and in the 1964 Honeymoon Hotel, a New Yorker.[6]
  7. ^ In the infomercials, Kwan would say an advertising catchphrase coined by copywriter Gary Halbert: "If you're friends don't actually accuse you of having had a face-lift, return the empty jar."[22]
  8. ^ In Kwan's role in the film, she fought the character played by Sharon Tate by throwing a flying kick. Her martial arts move was based not on karate training but on her dance foundation. Author Darrell Y. Hamamoto noted that this "ironically" twisted Kwan's "dragon-lady role" through its underscoring the replacement of Kung Fu with Western dance moves. Bruce Lee was the film's choreographer.[24]
Footnotes
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Lisanti & Paul 2002, p. 166
  2. ^ Harada, Wayne (2007-04-13). "Nancy Kwan creates own opportunities". The Honolulu Advertiser (Honolulu). Archived from the original on 2011-10-22. http://www.webcitation.org/62dTdaUPp. Retrieved 2011-10-22. 
  3. ^ a b c Lee 2000, p. 201
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Robinson, Johnny (1963-05-18). "Is Graduate of Royal Ballet". Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, Maine). http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1913&dat=19630518&id=47c0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=wGkFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3319,2014523. Retrieved 2011-10-22. 
  5. ^ a b "Nancy Kwan Says Fortune Teller Predicted Future". The News and Courier. Associated Press (Charleston, South Carolina). 1960-04-01. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2506&dat=19600401&id=cZlJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZAwNAAAAIBAJ&pg=4680,153408. Retrieved 2011-11-15. 
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Hopper, Hedda (1964-03-22). "Best of Two World Merge in Nancy Kwan: Hollywood's Eurasian beauty takes advantage of both cultures". Hartford Courant. Archived from the original on 2011-11-17. http://www.webcitation.org/63GATNJ72. Retrieved 2011-11-17. 
  7. ^ a b c Capua 2009, p. 117
  8. ^ a b c Thomas, Bob (1960-09-24). "Hong Kong Beauty Arrives: Nancy Kwan Heads Toward Stardom". TimesDaily. Associated Press (Florence, Alabama). http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=8iMsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FJ4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=869,2841694. Retrieved 2011-10-28. 
  9. ^ a b c Feldman & Barton 2005, p. 48
  10. ^ a b Feldman & Barton 2005, p. 64
  11. ^ "Of Local Origin". The New York Times (New York). 1960-02-05. Archived from the original on 2011-11-17. http://www.webcitation.org/63G8S4fmp. Retrieved 2011-11-17. 
  12. ^ a b West, Richard (1960-02-15). "Dine on Sukiyaki". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 2011-11-17. http://www.webcitation.org/63G9A2bXb. Retrieved 2011-11-17. 
  13. ^ "New Suzie Wong Found: Nancy Kwan Is Replacement for France Nuyen in Film". The New York Times (New York). 1960-02-15. Archived from the original on 2011-11-15. http://www.webcitation.org/63DbHlpqi. Retrieved 2011-11-15. 
  14. ^ a b c Lisanti & Paul 2002, p. 167
  15. ^ Chan 2007, p. 97
  16. ^ Chan 2007, p. 86
  17. ^ Thomas, Bob (1963-12-11). "For Chinese Food, Nancy Kwan Has to Drive to Another Country". Evening Independent. Associated Press (St. Petersburg, Florida). http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=XFdQAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7FYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5043,1761003. Retrieved 2011-11-15. 
  18. ^ a b "Nancy Is Pretty Leader In 'Tamahine', Orpheum". Boston Globe (Boston). 1964-03-26. Archived from the original on 2011-11-19. http://www.webcitation.org/63IyfZPVN. Retrieved 2011-11-19. 
  19. ^ a b c d Horning, Jay (1993-07-25). "Nancy Kwan's new roles include writing, directing". St. Petersburg Times (St. Petersburg, Florida). Archived from the original on 2011-11-19. http://www.webcitation.org/63J85HlkS. Retrieved 2011-11-19. 
  20. ^ a b Lisanti & Paul 2002, p. 168
  21. ^ a b c Polunsky, Bob (1993-05-13). "Debt to Lee". San Antonio Express-News (San Antonio). Archived from the original on 2011-11-21. http://www.webcitation.org/63ORBOVGs. Retrieved 2011-11-22. 
  22. ^ Kennedy 2004, p. 110
  23. ^ "Chinese American Heroine: Nancy Kwan". http://www.asianweek.com/2009/05/04/chinese-american-heroine-nancy-kwan/. 
  24. ^ Hamamoto & Liu 2000, p. 50
  25. ^ To Whom It May Concern: Ka Shen's Journey, American Cinemathequeca, 2011
Bibliography

External links


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