Shaw's Lost Era (1958-61)

Don't get me wrong, I've been just as excited as every other Hong Kong movie fan about the recent restoration and release of the Shaw Brothers Film Library, but I can't hide my disappointment about the dearth of films from the studio's early years. According to The Shaw Screen: A Preliminary Study, the first Shaw Brothers film was The Magic Touch, starring Betty Loh Tih and King Hu. It premiered on December 4, 1958 and was followed on December 31 by the Cantonese production, Sweet Girl in Terror, starring Patricia Lam Fung and Cheung Ying-Choi. Yes, that's right... Shaw Brothers made Cantonese films... at least until 1963. But you wouldn't necessarily know this, because ZERO of their Cantonese films were restored and released on DVD. I have heard this was because none of these films survived in the Shaw Brothers library, but I don't know for sure. Whatever the reason, it's a real shame. The same goes for all the Mandarin films from 1958 to 1961 that are missing in action. Of the 91 films released by the studio during that period (51 Mandarin, 39 Cantonese, and 1 featuring both dialects), only 5 are available on DVD. That's a huge loss. While most of the early Shaw films may never be seen again, at least traces of them have survived in the pages of Southern Screen, the studio's publicity magazine. In the coming weeks, I'm planning on digging through the few issues that I own and posting items about the films and stars from this lost era.

The early issues of Southern Screen are not easy to come by and are subject to highly competitive bidding on eBay. Fortunately, you can get a taste of the early years of Shaw Brothers from two wonderful Flash slideshows, which are featured as issues of the online tofu-magazine. Here are direct links. Once the video has loaded, click on the right hand side of the window to advance to the next screen.

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SOUTHERN SCREEN: A Shaw Brothers' pictorial part 1
features covers and photos from Southern Screen Nos. 1-17
(December 1957 through July 1959)

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SOUTHERN SCREEN: A Shaw Brothers' pictorial part 2
features covers and photos from Southern Screen Nos. 40-52
(June 1961 through June 1962)

Enjoy!

BTW, the cover of Southern Screen No. 3 shown above features "Little Wildcat" Chung Ching, who made movies for Shaws and Sons before that studio and many of its stars were incorporated into the newly founded Shaw Brothers company.