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The World of Suzie Wong....


KhonKaenKowboy

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The World of Suzie Wong, 55 years on: archives opened to revisit 1960s Hong Kong’s main event
This pretty woman turned heads in Hong Kong before Julia Roberts.

www.scmp.com/lifestyle/film-tv/article/1878049/real-world-suzie-wong-archives-opened-relive-1960s-hong-kongs-main

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Many have told the story of the hooker with a golden heart, but this one was Hong Kong’s special girl.
 Suzie Wong has led a convoluted existence. The Wan Chai girl who falls in love with an Englishman was born into a novel by Richard Mason: The World of Suzie Wong, published in 1957.
A year later, Suzie was resurrected on stage, with France Nuyen playing opposite William Shatner, of all people. Suzie then boldly went where no Wan Chai girl had gone before and became a star of the silver screen thanks to Chinese actress Nancy Kwan.

The film of hit 50s novel The World of Suzie Wong turned 55 this week and in a new series we give readers a privileged view of our archives to reveal the buzz surrounding these events.
 REVIEW: The World of Suzie Wong (1960)
The film is a tale of a young British man, Robert Lomax who comes to Hong Kong to become an artist for a year. He checks in to the Nam Kok Hotel, based on the Luk Kwok Hotel, though the book turns it into a brothel stocked with “bar-girls” or prostitutes.

But many would recall the famous names associated with this story’s three forms as a novel, a play and film.
 William Shatner played artist Robert Lomax on Broadway, and France Nuyen played Suzie Wong.
 Nuyen was then cast as Suzie in the film, which began shooting in locations around Hong Kong with William Holden as the lead man on January 5, 1960, as the SCMP reported.
 Sampans and junks bobbed in the cool January breeze as Holden is pictured “in a playful mood” -- but wearing an overcoat -- with Nuyen at the Kowloon Star Ferry pier.


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www.scmp.com/article/637171/goodness-sake-afterlife-suzie-wong

For Goodness Sake: The Afterlife of Suzie Wong- Book review

James Clapp, writing as Sebastian Gerard, was clearly not satisfied with the story in all its incarnations, for he has constructed an absorbing novel about obsession, love, art and politics that pushes Suzie towards the 21st century. It is 1997 and Hong Kong is on the verge of the handover. Professor Marco Podesta is researching the ramifications of the social and political change when he steps aboard a Star Ferry. While his eye is stopped by a woman with a 'silky, raven-black pony-tail', his heart drifts to Suzie Wong. Podesta's fascination with Suzie's back story grows when he chances upon another beautiful girl, this time in a painting by Fong So. Mixing fact and fiction, flashbacks to Vietnam and atmospheric descriptions of Hong Kong, Gerard's novel is a romantic puzzle, a political meditation and largely a triumph.


 
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35 minutes ago, Minnie the Minx said:

A good movie and a good read. There is a little bit of Suzie in all of us.

Ditto. The movie also is a terrific showcase of 1950's Hong Kong and Wanchai. Any bars you see around the world of this name will be named after the book or film. 

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There is also a 'The world of Lily Wong' a cartoon series http://lilywong.net/archive/index.html it got axed from the SCMP in 1995, they were scared of upsetting the demigods in mainland China.

 

Tongue in cheek but spot on, if you watched the movie you will see many HK spots in it, ChungKing Mansions briefly.

 

Cheers for the OP KhonKaenKowboy.

 

 


 
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