Flower Drum Song

[Hondo]

Nancy Kwan is a timeless beauty.

Now theres a reason to watch, enjoy FDS, beauty indeed

 

[Rafter]

Not Rodgers and Hammerstein's best work, but pretty darn good. Set in San Francisco, it provided an excellent cross-sectional view of the generation gaps during the 60's. Saw this film during it's original release on the huge screen of the Loew's Valencia.

"Flower Drum Song" was considered minor Rodgers and Hammerstein but when it hit Hollywood it exploded across the screen like a string of Chinese firecrackers. The story may seem to be kinda dated but with colorful sets and costumes and the impeccable cast and the score, the movie is eye and ear candy.

Miyoshi Umeki proves she can be a cut-up when she plays the perfect foil to Jack Soo during the "Don't Marry Me" comic duet.

But the real star here is Nancy Kwan as the gal with the heart of tin, who sets the screen on fire when she performs her big numbers "Fan Tan Fanny" "Grant Avenue" and the hilarious dream sequence with Jack Soo, "Sunday". Her real standout is "I Enjoy Being A Girl"
She was one hot beauty!!!!

 

[Lincsong]

Chop Suey

The "chop suey" segment was well choreographed and musical mix. Of course chop suey is an American invention of all the kitchen scraps stir-fried and passed off as a Chinese dish. The term has also come to mean a person of mutliple racial stock. But, in this scene it is a great mix of various musical and dance types. The dancerrs are begin by a square dance, then a waltz, then a hoe down, then a quick Chinese dance, then the charleston, followed by jazz, then the jitterbug and ending with a Chinese bow. The music and the dance types flow smoothly and effortlessly. It really was an impressively choreographed and filmed sequence.

 

[Lincsong]

The "chop suey" segment was well choreographed and musical mix. Of course chop suey is an American invention of all the kitchen scraps stir-fried and passed off as a Chinese dish. The term has also come to mean a person of mutliple racial stock. But, in this scene it is a great mix of various musical and dance types. The dancerrs are begin by a square dance, then a waltz, then a hoe down, then a quick Chinese dance, then the charleston, followed by jazz, cha cha, samba, then the jitterbug and ending with a Chinese bow. The music and the dance types flow smoothly and effortlessly. It really was an impressively choreographed and filmed sequence.

I tried to edit this but for some reason I can't. Don't know why???[huh]

The edit works on this post though. hmmmmm

 

[Lincsong]

a funny line by Wang Chi Yang

money is like a man's wife; strangers should not get their hands on it.

 

[Andykev]

I liked it, but haven't seen it in many years.

I thought the film was very entertaining. Isn't that what a film is for?

The scenery and the costumes were fabulous. I found the overall play to be very nice, music good, and the acting very good also. The story was nice also.

Refreshing compared to the CRA* out today.

OH, IMHO.

 

[Lincsong]

I got a copy of the 1958 paperback and read it. The book is not as fun as the movie, but both are well done. C.Y. Lee did a good job.

 

[Feraud]

Oscar winner Miyoshi Umeki dies at 78 Wed Sep 5, 7:43 PM ET


Actress Miyoshi Umeki, who won an Oscar for her performance as the doomed wife of an American serviceman in "Sayonara" and later starred in the Broadway musical "Flower Drum Song," has died of cancer. She was 78.

The Japanese-born actress, the first Asian performer to win an Oscar, died Aug. 28 at Licking nursing home, said Michael Hood, her son.

In "Sayonara," the 1957 film version of James A. Michener's best-selling novel, she teamed with Red Buttons in a tragic subplot about a U.S. serviceman and local woman who fall in love in post-World War II Japan. They commit suicide rather than part when he is supposed to return to America.

Both won Oscars for their supporting roles, surprising fans to whom Umeki was unknown and Buttons was a television comedian.

"I wish somebody would help me right now," the stunned actress told the Oscar audience. "I didn't expect and have nothing in my mind." According to an account in The New York Times, she then thanked "you, and you and you and all American people."

She later played Mei Li, a timid mail-order bride brought to San Francisco from China, in Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1958 show "Flower Drum Song." She was nominated for a Tony for best actress in a musical and repeated her role in the 1961 film version.

Umeki also portrayed Mrs. Livingston, the housekeeper, in the ABC series, "The Courtship of Eddie's Father" (1969-1972), which starred Bill Bixby and Brandon Cruz. In a 1969 Washington Post interview, Bixby called her "the best actress I've ever worked with."

Among her other movies were "Cry for Happy" (1961), "The Horizontal Lieutenant" (1962) and "A Girl Named Tamiko" (1962).

Umeki was born May 8, 1929, in Otaru, Japan. She sang on Japanese radio and television and in the mid-1950s, then left for the United States.

Appearances on Arthur Godfrey's TV program brought her to the attention of Joshua Logan, who was to direct "Sayonara." While that film made Umeki the first Asian actor or actress to win an Oscar, she wasn't the only one nominated that year. Japanese-born Sessue Hayakawa received a best supporting Oscar nomination for "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

Umeki retired from show business in the early 1970s and moved to Licking, a small town in the Missouri Ozarks, in the 1990s to be closer to her family, her son said. Her second husband, Randall F. Hood, died in 1976.

Besides her son, Umeki is survived by two grandchildren.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070905/ap_en_mo/obit_umeki&printer=1;_ylt=AkzUtvwt1u9G6QZ1rWOx2sKmG78C

 

[Lincsong]

Her performances in both Flower Drum Song and Sayonara were surperb. I remember her in the The Courtship of Eddies Father, but only within the past few months saw her in these two films. A great talent who called it quits while she was riding high.:eusa_clap