Robert Wise’s follow-up to The Sound of Music (1965) netted eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Supporting Actor mention for Mako’s endearing portrait of a Chinese coolie. Hong Kong and Taiwan provide the locations for this widescreen spectacle—an exotic 1920s China in revolutionary turmoil, where Chinese women are prostitutes and Chinese men are ruthless, where colonialism and missionaries are the norms, and the leading man is always a white savior. The Sand Pebbles kickstarted Mako’s distinguished career in film, stage, and television, and as co-founder of the nation’s leading Asian American theater group, the East West Players, in Los Angeles. Fellow founders James Hong and Beulah Quo also appear in The Sand Pebbles.

DIRECTOR: Robert Wise. WRITTEN BY: Robert W. Anderson. CAST: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, Mako. 1966. 182 min. USA. Color. Scope. English. 35mm. New print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

November’s Oscar® Sundays are programmed as part of the series Hollywood Chinese: The First 100 Years, guest programmed by Arthur Dong.

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation. 

Make It Dinner and a Movie

Fanny's Restaurant & Café

All guests who present a ticket for a film screening, Tuesday through Saturday (and the first Sunday of every month), receive 10% off all food and non-alcoholic beverages at Fanny's. Discount only applicable on the same day as the screening and cannot be redeemed for another screening or date. Dinner reservations can be made on OpenTable or Resy.