Before She Was a Vamp: Sweet Angela Yu

Wow... Angela Yu Chien sure was a sweetie before her tenure as Shaw Brothers sexpot.

My first encounter with the sexy Angela was in her role as the nymphomaniac rich girl in the 1969 melodrama Torrent of Desire, a Hong Kong version of Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind. Boy, did she burn up the screen in that film! As Oldflames so nicely phrased it, Angela was part of Shaw Brothers' "Bombshell Trinity" (along with Fanny Fan and Tina Chin Fei) during the late sixties. Although she was often cast in small roles as the sexy other woman, Angela always made an impression much bigger than the screen time allotted to her.

It came as a slight surprise to me when I discovered the sweet, pre-sexy Angela. One of her very first supporting roles was Betty Loh Tih's soft-spoken secretary in The Dancing Millionairess (1964). Angela was as sweet and gentle as the pastel yellow cardigan she wears in the film. Her next major role was backing up Lin Dai in The Blue and the Black. The film was scheduled for a 1964 release but was left unfinished by Lin Dai's death that July. It was finally completed and released in 1966, and the following year Angela received a much belated Best Supporting Actress award at Taiwan's 5th Golden Horse Awards. That should have propelled her into the top tier of Shaw actresses. But it was too late: by then Angela was already playing a sexy, man-eating spider demon in Cave of the Silken Web (1967) and dancing wildly, dressed in a fishnet bodystocking, in King Drummer (1967).

Somehow, Angela had been fast-tracked into becoming one of Shaw's resident sex bombs. She was clearly capable of other roles, but let's be honest — not every actress can play the bad girl. Angela was simply the best qualified candidate for the position. Can you imagine any of Shaw's other stars performing this role? Li Ching... too cute. Cheng Pei-pei... too wholesome, when she isn't scowling. Chin Ping... come on, the girl can't even crack a smile. Ivy Ling Po... don't make me laugh!

While I'm sure that being typecast is disappointing to an actor, perhaps Angela relished the uninhibited expressiveness afforded by her sexy roles. If the characterization of her as a naughty tomboy from the following interview in Southern Screen No. 78 (August, 1964) is true, then she probably would have felt constricted by the burden of being a jade girl. (The recent tribulation of Gillian Chung is proof that playing the jade girl is not without its pitfalls, even in the 21st century.)

"Cover Girl" Angela Makes Good

Few people know that before she joined Shaw Studio two years ago, Angela Yu Chien was a "cover girl". Her sweet, dimpled face adorned the cover of a popular women's magazine in Hong Kong.

A native of Tientsin, Angela was born to a large family. Though she has grown up into an enchanting young lady, she was considered by her mother a tomboy and one of the naughtiest of her children.

While studying in Taiwan, she decided to make acting her career and enrolled in the Shaw-operated Southern Drama Group in Hong Kong, from which she graduated with flying colours.

Since then, she has appeared in a number of Shaw productions, including "The Dancing Millionairess" and "The Story of Sue San".

Recently she guest-starred in a German-Swiss film called "A Melody of Hong Kong", playing an enchanting Oriental girl.

You can download a PDF (604 KB) of the original article here. As you can see from the photos, Angela is no less sexy for being sweet.