Flower Drum Song is a 1961 Academy Award-nominated film adaptation of the 1958 Broadway musical play Flower Drum Song, written by the composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The film and stage play were based on the 1957 novel of the same name by the Chinese American author C.Y. Lee. This movie was unusual (for its time) in featuring nearly all Asian American cast members (one of the few speaking Caucasian parts...
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Flower Drum Song is a 1961 Academy Award-nominated film adaptation of the 1958 Broadway musical play Flower Drum Song, written by the composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The film and stage play were based on the 1957 novel of the same name by the Chinese American author C.Y. Lee. This movie was unusual (for its time) in featuring nearly all Asian American cast members (one of the few speaking Caucasian parts being that of a mugger), including dancers, though two of the singing voices were not by Asian ones. Starring in this movie were Nancy Kwan, James Shigeta, Benson Fong, James Hong, Reiko Sato and the original Broadway cast members Jack Soo, Miyoshi Umeki and Juanita Hall (an African American actress who previously played the Pacific Islander Bloody Mary in the Broadway and film productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific).
Among various changes for the film, the song "Like a God" was changed from a song into a beat poetry...
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