Beulah Quo on AllMovie

Beulah Quo is the founder of one of America's first Asian-American repertory groups, the East West Players. The Emmy-nominated actress embarked on a lucrative film and television career following her film debut in 1955's Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. Born Beulah Kwoh in Stockton, CA, the future dialog coach-cum-actress earned a bachelor's degree in social welfare at the University of California, later obtaining a master's in sociology from the University of Chicago. Subsequently, Quo and her family relocated to China so she could find work as a teacher, but she and her family fled the country on a U.S. destroyer, just as the Communists took over shortly after World War II. It was while working as a sociology teacher at a small community college that Quo received news that director Henry King was searching for an Asian dialect coach for his film Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, and after meeting with the director, King cast Quo in a small role in the film. Her career took off shortly thereafter. Quo appeared in such films as Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962) and Chinatown (1974) before receiving an Emmy nomination for her role as a dowager empress in 1978's Meeting of Minds. Joining the cast of television's General Hospital in 1985, Quo would remain on the soap opera for six years. She also appeared in such films as Bad Girls (1994) and Brokedown Palace (1999). In her later years, Quo's final feature role was in the 2001 film Forbidden City. In late October of 2002, Beulah Quo died of heart failure in La Mesa, CA. She was 79.