Angela Yu: Hong Kong Beach Bird

 from Hong Kong Movie News (August 1967)

Who's the Moddest Queen of All?

Why, it's Angela Yu, of course!

A great big thanks to Oldflames for sending this mad mod cover and providing the title of this post.

Angela Yu: Gear Girl

More mod fashion from Angela Yu Chien, this time from the August 1967 issue of Hong Kong Movie News.

Since when did girls start to paint lovely little things on their skin? It is surely the greatest discovery since Mary Quant's miniskirt and Sasoon's famous haircut. Angela Yu Chien does not wear a Sasoon haircut, but she wears a miniskirt and paints lovely little things on her skin. In short, she looks like a typical gear girl that one meets in London. As she walks, the dazzling eye on her arm seems to be staring at you and the lips in front seem to be saying "hallo!".

Click here for a scan of the original article.

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.

Hong Kong Mods: Angela Yu and Teresa Wong

Take a gander at mod girls Angela Yu Chien (left) and Teresa Wong Tin Lai (right) outside the 55th Street Playhouse in New York City in this picture from their 1965 tour of the United States. Go ahead... click on it! Angela in particular is very sharply dressed. I love her shoes.

And check out this photo of Angela sporting a bold "A" pendant. How cool is that?!

The following article about their trip appeared in Southern Screen No. 95 (January, 1966). You can view the original here.

Shaw Stars in the States

Vivacious Shaw actresses Angela Yu Chien and Teresa Wong returned from America early December after a three-month swing through 13 states. The girls were members of a Hong Kong trade mission under the sponsorship of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries to help promote the Colony to the Americans.

Of their experiences in the New World the girls had this to say: "We were absolutely overwhelmed; everywhere we went were royally entertained. We met many Chinese-American friends." The actresses enjoyed every minute of their hectic trip, from modelling cheongsams in Seattle to watching a rodeo in Kansas City, from touring the fabulous New York World's Fair to watching the spectacular Niagara Falls.

I'll have more to share about both Angela and Teresa in the coming days. Let me just end this post with a little bit of trivia. The 55th Street Playhouse was owned by California native Frank Lee, who also operated movie houses in Los Angeles and San Francisco. His son — Frank Lee, Jr. — currently runs three theaters in San Francisco, including the legendary 4-Star Theatre, one of the last venues in the U.S. to show new Hong Kong movies on a regular basis (although sadly, it's been less than regular in the past few years).

Shaw's Bathing Beauties

This picture from the August 1964 issue of The Screen & Stage Pictorial shows seven beauties who were being groomed by Shaw Brothers to become the new generation of starlets that the studio desperately needed at that time. Just one month previously, one of Shaws' greatest assets, box office queen and award-winning actress Lin Dai, killed herself from an overdose of sleeping pills. Her final completed film, The Last Woman of Shang, was released that August. Almost as if waiting in the wings for a chance to take center stage, all seven of these young ladies had bit roles in the film backing up Lin Dai as palace dancers.

Two months later, Cheng Pei Pei got top billing in Lovers' Rock. Three months after that, Li Ching starred alongside Ivy Ling Po in The Mermaid and became known as the "Baby Queen" of Shaw Brothers after receiving the Best Actress Award at the 12th Asian Film Festival for her performance in the film. And in October 1965, Chin Ping helped launch Shaw's "Action Era" with her lead role in The Temple of the Red Lotus. All three actresses became superstars during their tenure at the studio. As for the remaining four, Fang Ying, Angela Yu Chien, Margaret Hsing Hui, and Allyson Chang Yen, they never made it big. It's true, Yu Chien did win Best Supporting Actress Award in 1966 at the 5th Golden Horse Awards for her performance in The Blue and the Black, but after that she got stuck with supporting roles that only capitalized on her sex appeal.