Nancy Kwan wanted to be a ballet dancer, not a movie actress, but a seemingly random impulse changed the direction of her life. Wandering into the screen test for The World of Suzy Wong (1960), she won over everyone with her natural ease.
With To Whom It May Concern: Ka Shen’s Journey, director Brian Jamieson documents her fascinating life. The daughter of a Western educated Chinese and an English movie actress at a time when such unions were bold, Kwan fled Hong Kong with her father as the Japanese invaded in 1941 and returned after the war. Learning ballet at a convent school, she had no idea of becoming a male fantasy image of Oriental women as well as a role model for Asian actresses working in the West.
Before the late 1950s, Caucasian actors usually played Asian leading roles in Hollywood; Wong was part of the first wave to break the barrier. While her best roles perpetuated stereotypes, they also expanded upon them through a sense of psychological complexity. After Suzy Wong and the groundbreaking all-Asian musical, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song, she went to TV “Hawaii 5-0” and “Kung Fu” and descended from their into schlocky C pictures. Jamieson cuts between chronicling her life and recent trips to Hong Kong, for the premiere of the Suzy Wong ballet, and her pilgrimage to Angkor Wat. To Whom It May Concern is out on DVD.
