In 2003 the UCLA Film & Television Archive organized Heroic Grace, a retrospective of classic Chinese martial arts films. Opening the series was the feature-length sixth episode of the 13-part serial Red Heroine. Made in Shanghai in 1929, this episode is the earliest surviving martial arts film of the silent era.
I'm very excited to report that Devil Music Ensemble has created an original score for Red Heroine and will be performing live with the film this fall on a 29-date, cross-country tour. This is a rare opportunity to witness the roots of one of Chinese cinema's most popular genres. Check out the trailer below and mark your calendars!
Further Reading Heroic Grace program catalog [PDF file, 6.3 MB] Jean Lukitsh's "The Origins of Kung Fu Cinema", parts 1, 2, 3, and 4
Cover of movie booklet for Red Thread Steals a Precious Box (1963)
I still remember the first time I saw Josephine Siao. Her hilarious performance as Jet Li's kung-fu fighting mom in Fong Sai Yuk (1993) made a huge impression on me. Little did I know then that Josephine was one of Hong Kong cinema's top teen idols during the 1960s and that at the age of 16 she was already a martial-arts star.
Check out this cool opening credit sequence from Red Thread Steals a Precious Box.
After reading Dev's comment (on my previous entry) that Chung Ching is "the finest 'pin-up' girl of Hong Kong Cinema" — with which I couldn't agree more! — I decided that I ought to post a pin-up of her so you all can see what we're talking about.
I also wanted to post a clip from The Magic Lamp (1964), the only one of Chung Ching's films currently available on DVD. She has a very small role as a school bully. It's not typical of the roles that made her famous, but at least you can feel a little bit of the "heat" that made her such a sexy star.
Last weekend I was excited to discover a new blog devoted to Hsia Moon, the "Crown Princess" of Great Wall (Hong Kong's leading left-wing studio throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s). Like myself, blogmaster Dev Yang is a devoted fan of vintage Chinese cinema. He is an amateur scholar in the best sense: knowledgeable and passionate. I've already learned a lot just from his comments on my own blog, and I'm eagerly looking forward to learning more!
I really love these movie flyers—and not just because of the way that Chung Ching strikes a pose. These flyers are also fine examples of the two-color printing process that was frequently used in the 1950s and 60s.
At first, movie flyers were just printed in black and white. Then theaters started using a single color, like red or green, instead of black, which gave the flyer a brighter, more appealing look. Although full-color printing was cost prohibitive, the creative use of two colors could result in an eye-catching design not possible with one color. Notice how the two colors are used to create the foreground of the flyer. The designs were usually collaged from publicity photos and then photoengraved for printing. I don't know whether the designers worked at the production company, the distributor, the theater, or the local printer. But I do know that, whoever they were, these unknown artists helped create a popular art form that has transcended its original, short-term commercial function. Furthermore, in cases where a movie no longer survives, flyers are sometimes the only remaining visual and historical record of a lost film.
I hope you enjoy these Chung Ching movie flyers. Be sure to click for a larger version. All of them, except the last one, were printed by Nanyang Printers Ltd of Singapore.
Love Fiesta (1957)
Love at First Sight (1958)
The Mermaid (1959)
Sweet as a Melon (1956), click here to see what's inside.
References Ho Ying Lung. "Handbills and Their Values". Hong Kong Film Archive Treasures: An Exhibition.
I'm not sure when I became a devotee of Chung Ching (Zhong Qing), but she is now, along with Bai Guang, one of my favorite Hong Kong movie actresses whose movies I am tragically unable to see. She does appear very briefly in the MP&GI huangmei opera The Magic Lamp (1964), which is available on DVD, but if you want to see one of the many musicals that made her a star in the mid to late 1950s, you'll need to buck down for a flight to Hong Kong and visit the HKFA.
So imagine my absolute delight when I flipped through the pages of an October 1954 issue of The Young Companion that I recently bought because it featured on its cover a very young Lin Dai (long before she became Shaw Brothers' reigning movie queen) and was surprised instead by this deliciously literal depiction of Chung Ching as goddess!
Last month in my blog entry "Shaw's Bathing Beauties", I posted a picture of seven actresses being groomed for stardom by the Shaw Brothers studio in 1964. One of the young ladies stood out for me, simply by being the only one standing (and not lounging like the others). She was also conspicuous because she was the only one wearing a swimming cap (and holding goggles!), which made me think that she was more a sporty girl than a glamor girl. All of this piqued my curiosity, especially since she never became a big star like some of the other actresses.
It appears that Allyson Chang Yen was a child actor in both Cantonese and Mandarin films throughout the 1950s. She joined Shaw Brothers in 1961 and started acting right away in their Cantonese division in such films as Teenage Beat (1961) and The Four Sisters (1963). Because of her outgoing personality and talent for swimming and water-skiing, she was dubbed "Little Wildcat" and "Little Mermaid". After Shaw Brothers stopped making Cantonese films in 1963, Chang Yen was sent to Japan (along with fellow Shaw girls Chin Ping and Margaret Hsing Hui) to study drama and dancing at the Toho Academy of Performing Arts. Back at Shaw Brothers, she appeared in secondary roles supporting Li Ching and Chin Ping, who had become big stars at the studio. She evidently retired in 1968 after the release of her last film for Shaws, Hong Kong Rhapsody.
From the little that I've seen of her, Chang Yen possessed a buoyant charm and fresh contemporary look. But it seems she never found her place in the Hong Kong movie industry. She was a little too girl-next-door to succeed at Shaw Brothers and not girl-next-door enough for Cantonese audiences at that time. Thankfully, she did have one opportunity to take center stage and strut her stuff before she vanished from the silver screen, here in this memorable scene from a Cantonese film she made in 1967 with Nam Hung and Lui Kei, They All Fall in Love.
Chang Loo, circa 1950s (from The Age of Shanghainese Pops: 1930-1970)
Chinese pop music has always developed hand in hand with Chinese cinema, so I hope you don't mind if I occasionally indulge in a musical tangent or two. Recently I was listening to a Chang Loo CD that I picked up a few years ago and was really digging her song "小癩痳" (sorry, I don't know the English translation). The back of the CD case indicated that it was a cover version of "Jambalaya". Now, I'd eaten the dish before when I was in New Orleans, but I'd never heard the song. So, I was surprised to discover that it was a big hit in the early 1950s, originally recorded by none other than Hank Williams, and has been extensively covered throughout the years by artists ranging from Brenda Lee to The Carpenters.
There couldn't have been a Chinese singer more appropriate than Chang Loo to record this "creole" song. Influenced by Hawaiian, Japanese, Latin, and Western styles, Chang Loo epitomized the global vogue for all things cosmopolitan. According to an interview excerpted in The Age of Shanghainese Pops, it was Brazilian singer Carmen Miranda who inspired her to take up singing.
At 15 and 16 I was in Shanghai and had just left school. I liked music and in movies I happened to come across Carmen Miranda, a Brazilian singer - definitely the wild kind. In Shanghai we rarely had fruits, but she had fruits on her hat, a really big hat (with all those fruits). And the way she swung and wriggled, with very little clothes on. That kind of tropical allure, (as I watched) I just thought she was a goddess, and wanted to see more of it. She gave me a lot of inspiration, and it was then that I felt that foreign people were so open, so energetic. It made me feel that singing was a very enjoyable thing.
Without further ado, here is Chang Loo cooking up some tasty jambalaya, Hong Kong-style.
If you're a fan of Hong Kong cinema, then you've undoubtedly seen Roy Chiao in one film or another. The first time that he came to my attention was in Summer Snow (1995), where he played Josephine Siao's Alzheimer's-inflicted father-in-law. Later, I would recognize him in King Hu's Touch of Zen (1971), The Fate of Lee Khan (1973), and The Valiant Ones (1975), as well as Tong Shu-Shuen's The Arch (1970). And although I didn't know it at the time, long before I even started watching HK movies, I'd already seen him in Enter the Dragon (1973) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)!
Several years ago the Cathay Classic Film Library opened its vaults and I suddenly became aware that Roy's acting career stretched back even further, into the 1960s and 50s. Around a third of the thirty-odd movies he made for Cathay's MP&GI studio between 1959 and 1970 are now available on DVD. Some of his memorable roles include the shy campus jock in Spring Song (1959), the "grease monkey" boyfriend in Sister Long Legs (1960), and the archetypal villainous warlord in A Story of Three Loves (1963). Unfortunately, one film that seems tailored especially for him, The Iron Fist (1960), has yet to be released.
Roy Chiao and Julie Yeh Feng in The Iron Fist (1960)
I was surprised to discover recently that my favorite femme fatale and sour beauty Bai Guang was the one who helped launch Roy Chiao's film career (see this article from the October 1956 issue of International Screen). In 1955 she met Roy in Japan and recruited him for her independent production Fresh Peony (1956). She must have taken quite a shine to him, because three years later she cast him as the male lead in her next film Welcome, God of Wealth! (1959). Publicity for the film reveals that Roy had more than one occasion to show off his fine form. It seems that Miss Bai, in what was her second outing as producer-writer-director, had no qualms with indulging her sweet tooth for beefcake.
Bai Guang and Roy Chiao in Welcome, God of Wealth! (1959)
Besides Roy's steady work at MP&GI during the first stretch of his career, he had a few odd acting gigs worth mentioning. In 1959 he had a small role in the British film Ferry to Hong Kong as a Chinese pirate. Although the movie stars Orson Welles and was directed by Lewis Gilbert, who would go on to make Alfie (1966) and You Only Live Twice (1967), TimeOut.com says it's "a moronic male melodrama-cum-adventure movie", which certainly won't deter me from seeking it out. BTW, the picture of Roy Chiao at the top of this post shows him in the "pirate" outfit he wore for the film... hmmm... all the more reason to check it out!
Equally unusual is Roy's presence in a series of Cantonese Bond-style spy films during the mid-sixties: Gold Button (1966), The Golden Gun (1966), The White Swan (1967), and Bomb in Pink (1967). Produced by the Mingxing Film Company, all four films feature newcomer So Ching (about whom I know absolutely nothing), the ubiquitous Bowie Wu Fung, and the voluptuous Fanny Fan Lai (doing pretty much the same thing she was doing at Shaw Brothers at that time). I did see The White Swan during a recent trip to the Hong Kong Film Archive. It was OK. So Ching certainly tried hard, but she didn't have the attitude or the moves of the other "Jane Bonds" (Connie Chan, Josephine Siao, Suet Nei, Lily Ho). Both Roy and Fanny were surprisingly underused... suddenly I'm imagining how great it would be if the two of them had starred together as romantic leads in a series of sexy screwball spy comedies. Oh well... movie history is full of missed opportunities.
Since I'm already starting to ramble, let me continue in this vein and state for the record that I am officially uninterested in John Woo's forthcoming wuxia epic The Battle of the Red Cliff... huh?... but I am very concerned that there is no DVD release of Woo's early slapstick crime caper Follow the Star (1978), which stars Roy Chiao as an alcoholic car mechanic who ends up protecting pop star Rowena Cortes from a group of goofy gangsters. It's a wonderful showcase for Roy's comedic talent.
Rowena Cortes and Roy Chiao in Follow the Star (1978)
The more I find about Roy Chiao and the more of his films that I see, the more I like him. It's true, I was a little down on him for a while after watching him being such an uptight chauvinistic jerk to Grace Chang in Air Hostess (1959). And I despised him as the warlord in A Story of Three Loves (also for the way he treated lovely Grace). But hey... that's a testament to his performance skills. In real life (and this comes through in his more genial roles) he seems like he was a genuine nice guy, a true gentle giant. Paul Fonoroff, who met Roy while working on Jackie Chan's The Protector (1985), says that "Roy's life centered more on his family and faith than the entertainment world". Perhaps that is why Roy Chiao could claim the title of "happiest man in the world" (International Screen No. 27, January 1958).
