Flower Drum Song (film)

Sammy Fong (Jack Soo) and Linda Low (Nancy Kwan) in Flower Drum Song

A young woman named Mei Li 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 ("A Hundred Million Miracles"). Sammy is the owner of a night club, the Celestial Gardens (inspired by the actual Forbidden City nightclub) and already is romantically involved with his leading showgirl Linda Low. The Lis arrive at the Celestial Gardens during a show ("Fan Tan Fannie").

Sammy does his best to dissuade Mei Li from marrying him, introducing her to Madame Liang, the sister-in-law of Master Wang. Liang and Wang bemoan the gap between immigrants and their offspring ("The Other Generation") as Master Wang's younger son Wang San gives his own take on the gap to some younger children. 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, Wang Ta is dazzled by the charms of Linda, who flirts with him ("I Enjoy Being a Girl"). 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 ("I Am Going to Like It Here"). 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 Wang Ta's graduation from university and Madame Liang's graduation from citizenship classes. Madame Liang compares the citizens of the U.S. to a mix of different ingredients ("Chop Suey"). 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.

Grant Avenue, Chinatown's "western street with eastern manners" (1945)

At the New Year's Parade, Linda rides on a float and sings about Grant Avenue, Chinatown's "western street with eastern manners" ("Grant Avenue"). Sammy, in an effort to keep Linda from marrying Wang Ta, invites Wang Ta and his family to Celestial Gardens, where they see Frankie Wing recall girls he has known ("Gliding Through My Memoree") and Linda's nightclub act ("Fan Tan Fannie"). 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 Wang 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 ("Love, Look Away").

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 Wang 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 ("You Are Beautiful"), 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, who daydreams about wedded life ("Sunday"). Unfortunately, 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 ("Don't Marry Me") in a last-ditch 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 deeply 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.

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.[8] 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".[9] 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.[10]

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.[21]

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.[8] San Francisco watercolorist Dong Kingman painted the opening title sequence, which traces the journey of Mei Li from Hong Kong.[22] Hermes Pan provided the choreography.[23] Principal photography began on March 20, 1961; the film was largely shot at Stage 12 of the Universal Studios Lot, on a 51,300 sq ft (4,770 m²) 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.[10]

Changes from musical and novel

Nancy Kwan on set.

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 lighter-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).[8]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – Nominated[41]
• 2004: AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
  • "I Enjoy Being a Girl" – Nominated[42]

Nancy Kwan with her father and step-mother at the film's premiere.

Flower Drum Song premiered in New York City at Radio City Music Hall on November 9, 1961.[43] The initial plan was to have the premiere on November 17 in San Francisco, at the Golden Gate Theatre, to benefit local hospitals, including the San Francisco Chinese Hospital. The Golden Gate Theatre premiere would be followed by a three-day Flower Drum Festival in Chinatown.[44] A private screening was held for President John F. Kennedy and his family at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port on November 24.[10] The film was widely released near Christmas.[45][46]

It has been asserted the film was the only Hollywood adaptation of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical to lose money.[47] The production rights were reported as costing $1 million and the budget was $4 million,[10] while gross revenues have been reported as $10.7 million.[48] Since half of gross revenues are actually returned as "rentals" to the studio, and since movies at the time needed to make back at least twice their production and advertising budgets to be profitable, the movie's $5 million rental return was a loss for the studio.

Reviewing for The New York Times after the premiere, Bosley Crowther called the film neither "subtle or fragile ... It is gaudy and gaggy and quite melodic."[43] Life called it "gay, tuneful and well worth the admission".[22] However, Variety thought that "much of the fundamental charm, grace and novelty of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song has been overwhelmed by the sheer opulence and glamour [of the film]".[13]

David H. Lewis in 2006 called it "a bizarre pastiche of limping mediocracy". He comments that since the 1958 version of the musical was only rarely revived for decades after its initial run, the film "would in future years come to stand for the stage musical it so crassly misrepresented"[50] and would serve as the version that academics and latter-day theatre critics would judge when they analyzed the musical. James Deaville countered that Koster and Hunter "wanted to make the musical more relevant and accessible ... [by] intensify[ing] the generational conflict ... [and] required spelling out much that the musical left to the audience's imagination."[8]

Some Asian-Americans have found the film offensive in later years due to common stereotypes and what was seen as miscasting Japanese American actors Shigeta and Umeki in Chinese American roles.[23] David Henry Hwang, who revised the musical for a 2001 revival, "had a secret soft spot for the movie version. 'It was kind of a guilty pleasure ... and one of the only big Hollywood films where you could see a lot of really good Asian actors onscreen, singing and dancing and cracking jokes.'"[51] Writer Joanna Lee praised the film's portrayal of Asian Americans as "prominent and legitimate American citizens".[8][52]

• List of American films of 1961

• Flower Drum Song at IMDb
• Flower Drum Song at the TCM Movie Database
• Flower Drum Song at AllMovie
• Flower Drum Song at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Flower Drum Song at Rotten Tomatoes
• Flower Drum Songs at Google Books
• Cunningham, Brian. "Flower Drum Song". Movie Musicals. Archived from the original on 28 October 2009. Retrieved 29 August 2018.
• R&H Theatricals
• Nancy-Kwan.com filmography with notes on the actors in Flower Drum Song
• Ma, Sheng-mei (2003). "Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Chopsticks" Musicals". Literature/Film Quarterly. 31 (1): 17–26. JSTOR 43797092.
• McConachie, Bruce A. (October 1994). "The "Oriental" Musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein and the U.S. War in Southeast Asia". Colonial/Postcolonial Theatre. 46 (3): 385–398. doi:10.2307/3208614. JSTOR 3208614.
• Kim, Chang-Hee (Fall 2013). "Asian performance on the stage of American empire in Flower Drum Song". Cultural Critique. 85: 1–37. doi:10.5749/culturalcritique.85.2013.0001. S2CID 141856711.
• Gill, Brendan (18 November 1961). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. p. 207. Retrieved 2 September 2018.(subscription required)
• Fuller, Karla Rae (2010). "4: Comics and Lovers– Postwar Transitions and Interpretations". Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American film. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. pp. 193–200. ISBN 978-0-8143-3467-6. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
• Flower Drum Song essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 ISBN 0826429777, pages 575–576