Cary Grant in Hong Kong

Cary Grant with Shaw stars Au Kar-wai and Ting Ning (ca. January 1960)

Recently, in a post about Pearl Au Kar-wai's U.S. sojourn, I mentioned that Cary Grant had been seen "monopolizing" her at a party thrown by director Otto Preminger. A year later, after Pearl had returned to Hong Kong, Cary Grant met with her again, as seen in the above photo from Southern Screen No. 24 (February, 1960).

Was Cary in Hong Kong "just to see his tailor", as gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen related? Or was he there "to look over facilities for filming of his production of 'One Arabian Night' here next year", as another U.S. paper reported?

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but Pearl's Arabian Nights–inspired film, The Talking Bird (1959), had just been released on December 30th, and a similarly themed follow-up, Ali Baba and the 40 Robbers (1960) was released just six months later.

Hmm... what did Cary have in mind? As far as I can tell, his One Arabian Night project never materialized, but I wonder if he'd wanted Pearl to play a part in it...