Dr. Haing Somnang Ngor (1940 - 1996)

“This unbelievable, but so is my entire life. I wish to thank all member of Motion Picture Academy for this great honor. I thank David Puttnam, Roland Joffé for giving me this chance to act for the first time in The Killing Fields.

And I share this award to my friend Sam Waterson, Dith Pran, Sydney Schanberg and also Pat Golden, director casting lady who found me for this role.

And I thank...and I thank Warner Brothers for helping me tell my story to the world. Let the world know what happened in my country.

And I thank God Buddha that tonight I’m even here.”

Haing Ngor, born on this day in 1940, was the first Asian to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the only physician to ever win a Oscar for acting. He shared the nomination with Adolph Cesar, John Malkovich, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita and Sir Ralph Richardson.

Despite having no previous acting experience, Dr. Haing Ngor was cast in The Killing Fields, a film about a photojournalist trapped and tortured in Cambodia during the genocidal rule of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, at the time of the Year Zero campaign, which resulted in the deaths of millions of Cambodians.

Ngor, a surgeon and gynecologist in Phnom Pehn, was imprisoned with his pregnant wife in a labor camp when the Khmer Rouge took over the Cambodian capital in 1975. His wife and child died in childbirth while in the prison camp. Ngor never remarried and kept a locket with a photo of his wife.

In 1980, Ngor immigrated to the United States. The Killing Fields was released in 1984. Ngor won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for his supporting role as,"Dith Pran". Unable to practice medicine, he used his success as an actor to help Cambodia and Cambodian refugee communities though his Haing S. Ngor Foundation.

In 1996, Ngor was killed by members of street gang outside his home in Los Angeles' Chinatown when he refused to give them his locket.

Dith Pran, the photographer whom Ngor potrayed in the film, said of Ngor's death, "He is like a twin with me. He is like a co-messenger and right now I am alone."

 

That is the Physician and Surgeon's Almanac for Tuesday, March 22, 2011.

And now, please sing along if you know the tune...

Temples are asleep in the forest,

Remembering the splendour of Moha Nokor.

Like a rock the Khmer race is eternal.

Let us trust in the fate of Cambodia,

The empire which challenges the ages.

From "Nokoreach" (Royal Kingdom), the national anthem of The Kingdom of Cambodia.