Hong Kong
Faces 'A Many Splendored Thing'
by John
Campbell
(New York Times, April 3, 1955)
(The writer was a member of the location company which is now
back in Hollywood)
With the forbidding – and forbidden – mountains
of Red China at their backs, cloud banks threatening and sometimes
charging from the sea, William Holden, Jennifer Jones and a troupe
of thirty other Hollywood actors and technicians recorded her
on film the rising emotional temperatures of two lovers separated
by custom and conscience. The story they enacted in its indigenous
background is “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing,” a
somewhat autobiographical novel written by Han Suyin, a Eurasian
woman physician, now living in Malaya, but well remembered here.
John Patrick, who found an Oriental setting to his liking in
“The Teahouse of the August Moon,” wrote the screen
play for the Twentieth Century Fox production without departing
from the main ingredients of the novel. The British war correspondent,
married but estranged from his wife, was changed to an American
when Mr. Holden was cast in the picture, bu this does not ameliorate
the character’s problem when he falls in love with a dedicated
Eurasian, portrayed by Miss Jones. A wig of long, black hair covering
her own Italian cut and subtle lines and shadows around the eyes
were Miss Jones’ sole concession to the Orient in her appearance.
This is considered permissible in Hong Kong, where it is said
Eurasian features run the full range from Orient to Occident.
The presence here of the two stars is completely voluntary.
When trouble begins to develop around Formosa, Producer Buddy
Adler, well aware that he could not order his stars into an area
of potential danger, invited them to Hong Kong in the interests
of artistic integrity. Miss Jones needed no other argument and
for Holden, who loves to travel and has flown 80,000 miles in
the last year, the argument was superfluous.
Director Henry King had to return to Hollywood from Hong Kong
to prepare for the interior scenes that will be made there. After
blocking out a schedule for eighteen days of shooting in the Crown
Colony, he left the direction in the hands of Otto Lang, who has
been all over the world on such assignments since the advent of
Cinemascope.
On Aberdeen Bay
A major part of the shooting here was done in the exotic floating
village in Aberdeen Bay, named in memory of the British Foreign
Secretary, Lord Aberdeen. An estimated 10,000 persons live in
the village. All population figures in the Crown Colony are estimates
because of the violent fluctuations brought about by changing
conditions in China. The populace, which sustains itself principally
by fishing but also transports cargo, lives on the junks and sampans
in which it works.
The Hollywood invaders created a sensation in Aberdeen. Between
its floating and shoreline population, this is one of the most
densely populated areas in the world and, while impoverished,
hardly anyone seemed to be too busy to stop his work and watch
what was going on. Relatively few had seen motion pictures and
fewer still understood the making of them. This lack of communion
with Hollywood was strikingly demonstrated by the fact that only
once were Mr. Holden and Miss Jones asked for autographs, whereas
at their quarters in the historic Peninsula Hotel they lived under
constant siege by insistent hordes armed with autograph books.
The stars sometimes required police assistance to get in and out
of their rooms.
Inquisitive
The presence of Sub-Inspector Jack Martin, police officer in
charge of the district, and a couple of Chinese constables, was
a tangible corroboration of Martin’s apt observations on
Chinese curiosity. Originally, Mr. Lang planned to conceal his
camera in a delivery van parked on the quay. Mr. Holden then was
to drive up with Miss Jones, park, and embark upon a sampan propelled
by two pretty, if muscular, girls. The director hoped to gain
spontaneity in the shot and also to avoid having passers-by stare
into the camera, this last being the most common difficulty in
work outside the studio. However, the hope was in vain. Cameraman
Charles Clarke had to expose his lens briefly for focus; one Chinese
eye caught the movement and, instantly, the “hidden camera”
was the most interesting object in the vicinity. Inspector Martin
was called and the area was cleared except for extra players hired
on the spot and instructed not to look at the camera.
However, Mr. Lang soon experienced a typically Oriental contradiction.
To film a sequence showing the stars being rowed from the shore,
he partially hid the camera on the lower deck of a floating restaurant
with the intent of catching them moving through the normally colorful
flow of harbor traffic. This included toddlers, barely able to
stand, propelling their sampans; the big junks tacking in perilously
close quarters, and the various venders sculling and crying their
wares.
“CinemaScope was made for this!” Mr. Lang exclaimed.
Shocked Scullers
All was proceeding smoothly when a woman sculled her scampan,
with two small children aboard, within a few yards of the camera.
She glanced up and hurriedly embraced both children with one arm,
shielding them and herself with her back, the while sculling furiously
and screaming what could only have been a stream of imprecations.
Mr. Lang guessed at the general import of the incident and withdrew
the camera until things had quieted down a bit, and then brought
it out into full view. After a while, the unattended camera lost
some of its glamour and, at a time when the attention of most
of the harbor was diverted by a loud quarrel between the skippers
of two junks, Mr. Lang made his shot.
Later, he learned that among the fisherfolk are members of the
Haka clan, which, in one of the antique dynasties, was driven
from its lands to find refuge in the south of China. Its members
believe that the camera robs human beings of their souls. It was
to this group that the woman so frightened undoubtedly had belonged.
This quaint superstition was, of course, especially interesting
and amusing to the Hollywood visitors and provoked much comment.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Holden observed dryly.
“Sometimes after we get back to Hollywood, we’ll look
around and then we’ll remember these fishermen and what
they believe. “Lord!” we’ll say to ourselves,
“they were right!”