Flower Drum Song Ballet

[EvanstonDad]

Posted: 1/28/26 at 2:06pm

The 1961 movie adaptation of Flower Drum Song includes a lengthy ballet sequence. Does anyone know if the original Broadway musical contained a ballet, and if so, is there any recording of FDS that includes it? I feel like this is a show that needs a complete recording similar to the treatments they've done recently to Oklahoma!, Carousel, and My Fair Lady.

[merle57]

Posted: 1/28/26 at 3:27pm

After Love Look Away, there was a ballet in Flower Drum Song on Broadway, but more an Asian dance piece - one can see photos of it in the souvenir program. It was not the jazzy thing in the movie.  Carol Haney did the choreoraphy for the stage version, not Gene Kelly who was just the overall stage director.  I recall it as a very beautiful Chinese ballet showing her distress at losing Wang Ta. Love Look Away and the ballet were the first musical numbers in the second act. 

[EvanstonDad]

Posted: 1/28/26 at 3:56pm

Interesting. I really like the ballet in the movie, even if it does give a disproportionate amount of time to a relatively minor character. I also really like the Sunday number in the movie too. It's a musical I've always had a soft spot for even though it feels like a lesser work than some of R&H's best.

[joevitus]

Posted: 1/28/26 at 5:07pm

merle57 said: "After Love Look Away, there was a ballet in Flower Drum Song on Broadway, but more an Asian dance piece - one can see photos of it in the souvenir program. It was not the jazzy thing in the movie. Carol Haney did the choreoraphy for the stage version, not Gene Kelly who was just the overall stage director. I recall it as a very beautiful Chinese ballet showing her distress at losing Wang Ta. Love Look Away and theballet werethe first musical numbers in the second act."

Ethan Mordden refers to it as "Wang Ta Makes Up His Mind."

[merle57]

Posted: 1/29/26 at 12:54pm

In the novel Flower Drum Song by CY Lee, Ta had three women -- Linda Low character (different name in novel), Helen, and Mei Lei. Linda was revealed to be a gold digger and eventually dumped Ta and then got killed by another jealous lover in Los Angeles.  Helen Chao was a major part of the center of the story - she had a bad skin condition and feared never finding a man, latched onto Ta after his rejection by Linda Low, she seduced and manipulated him in a desperate attempt to hold on to him, then when he told he it would not work out, she walked into the ocean at the beach and committed suicide. It was a very tragic (and manipulative) end to her story. Then Mei Lei and her father entered the picutre. So it was a more episodic story line.  Jospeh Fields owned the rights originally, so he had a lot to say about the book''s construction and wanted to apporach it more from a comedic point of view. Hammerstein was drawn to the Helen Chao story, hence the lyric Love, Look Away and the dramatic ballet in the original. However, Gene Kelly urged the original actress playing Helen to play down the tragedy of her story. There is a wonderful book on the making of Flower Drum Song, both the original and the rewrite in 2003, as well as the movie.  

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 2/3/26 at 5:48pm

As stated, the stage musical has a different "dream ballet" which I don't think has ever been properly recorded--I wish it would be.  (The movie has some good things, but I tend to agree with those that feel it actually accentuated Asian stereotypes that weren't in the stage show, and some of the choreography is included in this for me.)

There also was an extended, sorta fantasy "dance break" for Sunday on stage, most of which you can see in the great Ed Sullivan extended FDS performance.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkYQaNHl2K8