Jump to content

Love Is a Many Splendored Thing


DRW50

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 345
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • 3 months later...
  • Members

Han Suyin, who wrote the book on which the soap opera Love Is a Many Splendored Thing was based, has died. Below is a news article about the death from msn.com.

'Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing' author dies

Renowned Chinese-born writer Han Suyin, whose autobiographical novel was turned into the popular American film "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing", has died in Lausanne, Switzerland, Chinese and Swiss media said Sunday. She was 95.

Han, the author of about 40 books on modern China, died Friday, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported, citing her family.

The frail-looking and charismatic Han was branded both as a "Chinese revolutionary" in the West and "bourgeois" in communist China, with her work, often based on her own life straddling the two worlds.

The thrice-married Han's numerous novels and essays, as well as her meetings with Indira Gandhi, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, earned her a worldwide reputation.

The writer's biggest work was a five-volume autobiography, while other writings included biographies of Mao and Zhou, and a study on Tibet.

She had been one of the few foreigners to be able to visit communist China in the early years of the regime. In a 1968 interview with France's Le Figaro newspaper, she said Mao was "the greatest man China has known".

Born Matilda Rosalie Elizabeth Chow in Henan province on September 12, 1917, Han was the daughter of a Chinese railway engineer and his Belgian wife. She studied medicine in China before continuing her studies in Belgium in the 1930s and later in London.

She later changed her name to Rosalie Elizabeth Comber and chose Han Suyin as a pen name. "Suyin" means ordinary voice in Chinese.

She was criticised for supporting Chairman Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward in the 1950s and the later Cultural Revolution.

Han's work as a nurse in China during the war against the Japanese occupation in 1938 stoked her patriotic feelings.

She qualified as a doctor in London in 1948, meantime having a disappointing marriage with her first husband, Dang Baoyang, an anti-communist engineer.

He was killed during China's civil war, after which Han abandoned medicine and started writing, in Chinese, English and French.

She wrote "A Many-Splendored Thing" in Hong Kong based on her romance with British war correspondent Ian Morrison, who was killed in the Korean War in 1950.

The book was adapted for the silver screen in 1955.

She married a British anti-espionage specialist, Leon Comber, and worked as a doctor in Malaysia and Singapore, during which time she grew increasingly sympathetic with communism.

She returned to China in 1956, when she was greeted with great fanfare by then premier Zhou.

Having divorced Comber, she later married a third time, to Indian engineer named Vincent Ruthnaswany, with whom she had lived in Lausanne.

Han frequently returned to China and in 1984 wrote a historical novel set in China and Switzerland, "The Enchantress".

Funeral services for Han are planned for Thursday in Lausanne, the Swiss news agency ATS reported.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • Members

Martha Greenhouse, the original actress to play Sarah Hanley (before the late Sasha von Schurler assumed the role) died on January 5.

Here is an obituary:

New York stage, film and TV actor Martha Greenhouse, who served as a SAG and AFTRA leader for more than four decades, has died. Greenhouse passed away Saturday at the age of 91, according to a statement from SAG-AFTRA. Greenhouse appeared in many plays on and off Broadway, including Summer Brave; Dear Me, The Sky Is Falling; and Jose Quintero’s Our Town. Her TV and film credits included Law & Order; Ryan’s Hope; The Jackie Gleason Show; The Stepford Wives; Car 54, Where Are You?; Woody Allen’s Bananas; and the original production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.

Greenhouse joined AFTRA in 1941 and Screen Actors Guild in 1955, serving five terms as the president of AFTRA’s New York Local, from 1977-1982, and two terms on SAG’s National Board, from 1981-87. More recently she served as an AFTRA Foundation Board member and was president of the AFTRA Heller Memorial Foundation for more than a decade. She also served on the board of the N.Y. Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and was an AFTRA representative to the Associated Actors and Artistes of America. She remained active on the national and local AFTRA boards until 2005 and 2010 respectively. During her tenure, Greenhouse received the Founder’s Award, the N.Y. Local’s Ken Harvey Award, and the George Heller Gold Card, the highest honor given by national AFTRA for service to the union. She continued to work as an activist and leader, ensuring that plans for Manhattan Plaza included low-income housing for performers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

Sarah Hanley was the roommate to Julie Richards (Beverlee McKinsey) seen in the infamous vacumming episode I have on my Youtube channel. Sasha von Scherler was the real-life wife of writer Paul Avila Mayer. Their daughter Daisy is a fillmmaker best known for the Parker Posey feature Party Girl in which Sasha played Parker's godmother, Judy the librarian.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.



  • Recent Posts

    • It's such a delicious set of circumstances that I'm actually a little surprised that I can't think of ones that exactly match. I've just got a couple of close but no cigars (the reveal wasn't public, like when Alexis told Dominique at her and Garrett's engagement party that Garrett lied about being married; or the revealer didn't come up with the idea of the party). Maybe I need to think some more about it.
    • Not too shabby, making her mark in only six episodes. There's a project for the soap historians -- characters with the least episodes/most impact.
    • Which could make sense , except that we have seen Mariah function for years w/o any real residue pain from her upbringing. Josh decides to randomly make it a thing, when a good writer might foreshadow that for months. It's not like he's just arrived at the show. He's been there for years . Everything seems to be thought out only a few weeks ahead. It's like Phyllis all freaky from being kidnapped when she has done a million other things that didn't seem to bother her at all.
    • Unrelated, sort of, but he looks absolutely nothing like Amanda Setton or Dominic Zamprogna so it's kind of hilarious they decided to make Gio their kid.  It's very clear this was not the original origin story for Gio when they cast him. He is a very handsome guy though. 
    • I tend to agree, although going back to OLTL, Frank has so often cast guys who are meant to be attractive yet come across as cold and dead, I'm surprised he managed to get one who has a bit of a pulse.
    • For all I care, the boy can parade around in a g-string.  It won't make this show suck any less.
    • AMC was about a decade later so things may have changed by then, although maybe they never approached her anyway. She joined Santa Barbara in 1985, when they didn't seem interested in bringing back Hope. SB ended in late 1992, so JFP could have asked her back, but I doubt she did. For as much as JFP clearly had some use for Rick Hearst given that she hired him on GH and kept him around as often as she could, I don't think she ever used Alan-Michael well. I can't see Elvera as Delia, but she could have worked well as Faith - she had a glimpse of a strong personality alongside warmth, which only one Faith ever managed (Catherine Hicks).
    • IIRC, FC reruns aired for awhile on Lifetime, way before the network became the Women in Peril Channel, lol.
    • PAM!! YES!!! You have jogged my memory. She worked at Cedars. She's mentioned in a write-up of Tim's history in the show. It says she was a nurse, but I seem to remember she was a secretary at Cedars, working for either Ed or Sarah. (It's almost 50 years ago, so I definitely could be wrong). I'm certain she was an unwed mother. I recall reading an interview with the actress, Maureen Silliman (I looked it up, that's her correct name, LOL). She started on the show just before the Dobsons started writing it. She was shocked to get a script that said her character had been pregnant since she hit town. I remember a scene where she told Tim she was going to leave SF for a better job for her daughter's sake (really, I think she was upset he was serious about Rita). I don't remember them getting married and leaving town, but according to "Who's Who in Springfield" that's how the characters were written out. Mattson did All My Children for several years, so she might have been persuadable. Here's an interesting factoid I recently learned on these message boards: Elvera Roussel was in the running to play Delia on RH when the show first hit the air. How wild is it that Mattson played Delia for a while? (Though from what I saw of her performance, she was miscast). It's hard to know if Roussel would have been a good Delia. You'd think she would have been better suited to playing Faith Coleridge, but who knows? She didn't get to show a whole lot of range as Hope.
    • If I were to do an EON reboot, I think I would start at the beginning, with Mike Karr leaving the police force in order to begin a new career as an attorney, and dealing with his wife, Sara's, crooked family.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy