American architect Robert Lomax is living in Hong Kong for a year to try and make a living as an artist. While aboard a ferry he meets Mei Ling, a smartly dressed young woman who claims her father is wealthy. When the ferry docks, they part ways.
Robert looks for an inexpensive living place in a poor area known for prostitution. By chance, he sees Mei Ling leaving the run-down Nam Kok Hotel. When he inquires inside, the hotel owner replies that he does not know any Mei Ling, but he and Robert negotiate a monthly room rate. At the bar adjoining the hotel, Robert sees Mei Ling dressed in a slinky red cheongsam and with a sailor. He learns her real name is Suzie Wong, and she is the bar's most popular girl.
Suzie Wong with a sailor (screenshot from trailer)
The following day, Robert visits a Western bank and sets up an account with banker Mr. O'Neill, who also provides him letters of introduction. His secretary and daughter, Kay, is immediately attracted to Robert.
Robert hires Suzie to pose for him. He eventually learns that she was forced into prostitution after being abandoned when she was ten. Suzie begins falling in love with Robert, but he dissuades her, though he keeps her as his muse. Meanwhile, Kay discreetly pursues Robert. One night after a party at Kay's house, Robert invites her to see his paintings but is embarrassed to find Suzie on his bed. After Kay departs, Robert orders Suzie out. As she is leaving, a sailor who she spurned earlier that evening beats her in the stairwell. Enraged, Robert punches the sailor.
Suzie accepts her client Ben's offer to be his mistress to make Robert jealous. When Ben reconciles with his wife, he asks Robert to tell Suzie. She is so hurt by the rejection that Robert finally admits he loves her and asks her to stay with him.
Soon the couple is living together in the hotel, with Robert painting more enthusiastically than ever. Curious by Suzie's daily absences, he follows her up a hillside path to a small house. He finds Suzie visiting her baby son, whom she has kept secret. Robert accepts the child.
Robert faces financial difficulties when his paintings fail to sell. Both Kay and Suzie offer him money, but he refuses. When Suzie pays his rent and wants to resume working as a prostitute to help him, he angrily drives her away. Robert quickly regrets his actions and spends days searching for Suzie. Meanwhile, Kay informs Robert that a painting of Suzie has sold in London. Robert reveals that he has lost Suzie. Kay, misunderstanding, says he can find another model; she romantically pursues Robert but he rebuffs her.
Robert finds Suzie waiting outside the hotel. She asks for his help to retrieve her son, who is in danger due to the heavy rains. Robert and Suzie force their way up the hillside house, but the baby has been killed in a landslide. After the temple ceremony for her son, Robert asks Suzie to marry him: she agrees.
France Nuyen, who had played the role of Suzie Wong in the Broadway production opposite William Shatner[6] and was familiar to film audiences from her appearance in South Pacific, originally signed to reprise the role on screen. After five weeks of location shooting in Hong Kong, the cast and crew – including original director Jean Negulesco – moved to London to film interiors.
Nuyen was romantically involved with Marlon Brando, and rumors of his affair with Barbara Luna was causing her distress. She began overeating, and before long was unable to fit into the body-hugging silk cheongsams her character was required to wear. Unwilling to halt production until she could lose enough weight for the production's requirements, executive producer Ray Stark replaced her with Nancy Kwan, who was touring the United States and Canada as the understudy to the lead in the road company performing the play. Stark had auditioned her for the film but had felt that she was too inexperienced to handle the lead.[7]
Stark also fired the director, Negulesco, and replaced him with Richard Quine. Everyone involved in the completed Hong Kong scenes was required to return to reshoot them with Kwan, and all the unpublished publicity with Nuyen, including an article and photo layout for Esquire, had to be redone.[7]
The film's title song was written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen. Artist Dong Kingman acted as the film's technical advisor[8] and painted sets for the film. The movie features location filming in Hong Kong, and art direction and production design by John Box, Syd Cain, Liz Moore, Roy Rossotti and R. L. M. Davidson at MGM British Studios.
Sylvia Syms had just made Ferry to Hong Kong in Hong Kong.[9]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 38% based on eight reviews, with an average rating of 5.75 out of 10.[12]
When the film was released it attracted a mixed response. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times observed that sceptics could assume "that what we have here is a tale so purely idealized in the telling that it wafts into the realm of sheer romance. But the point is that idealization is accomplished so unrestrainedly and with such open reliance upon the impact of elemental clichés that it almost builds up the persuasiveness of real sincerity. Unless you shut your eyes and start thinking, you might almost believe it to be true." He added, "Mr. Patrick's screenplay contrives such a winning yum-yum girl that, even if she is invented, she's a charming little thing to have around . . . And a new girl named Nancy Kwan plays her so blithely and innocently that even the ladies should love her. She and the scenery are the best things in the film."[13]
Variety said, "Holden gives a first-class performance, restrained and sincere. He brings authority and compassion to the role. Kwan is not always perfect in her timing of lines (she has a tendency to anticipate) and appears to lack a full range of depth or warmth, but on the whole she manages a fairly believable portrayal."[14]
Some years after the film's release, the London listing magazine Time Out commented that because the film is "denied the chance of being honest about its subject, it soon degenerates into euphemistic soap opera, with vague gestures towards bohemianism and lukewarm titillation."[15]
In 2013, the Japanese American Citizens League called out Katy Perry's geisha-styled performance on the American Music Awards, as "the latest rendition of the bad movie we've all seen before. There is a persistent strain in our culture that refuses to move beyond the stereotype of Asian women as exotic and subservient. These stereotypes have been reinforced in our popular culture through plays and movies from our distant past such as Madame Butterfly and The World of Suzie Wong."[16]
^"All-time top film grossers", Variety 8 January 1964 p 37. Please note this figure is rentals accruing to film distributors not total money earned at the box office.
^Lai, Linda Chiu-Han (2013). "Many-Splendored Things". In Chiu-Han Lai, Linda Chiu-Han; Choi, Kimburley Wing-yee (eds.). World Film Locations: Hong Kong. Intellect Books. p. 45. ISBN9781783200214.
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