Koo Mei and Kitten

 from The Milky Way Pictorial (July 1959)

All the Rage: Carrie Koo Mei

Here's a little something to follow up on my recent post about Carrie Koo's career as a painter. This lovely centerfold appeared in Southern Screen No. 81 (November 1964), accompanied by the English text below. Carrie looks exceptionally classy, don't you think?

That Singing Rage: Carrie Ku Mei

Countless moviegoers and song lovers have been thrilled by her sweet voice over the airwaves, on records and in movies.

She is none other than Ku Chia-mi, the Soochow beauty better known by her professional name of Carrie Ku Mei. Her fans will be delighted to learn that this lovely singer has been assigned by Shaw Studio to play the female lead in the forthcoming Eastmancolour / Shawscope musical "The Lark".

Carrie had her first taste of fame in 1955 when she appeared in the Shaw picture "Love and Duty" with Chang Yang and Shih Ying. In it she sang the theme song "Where is Mother?" which made her famous overnight. Other outstanding numbers which Carrie Ku Mei has recorded include "The Lass from Mount Ali" and "Love Without End", two haunting melodies frequently heard throughout Southeast Asia.

Carrie Ku Mei has appeared in such Shaw productions as "Red Chamber Dream", "Comedy of Mismatches" and "Blue and Black". She went to Bangkok to promote her picture "The Fair Sex" and stayed in the Thai capital for four years, returning to Hong Kong in 1961.

This charming songstress has spent most of the last 15 years in southern China, so it's not surprising her Cantonese is as fluent as her Mandarin.

Koo Mei: More than a Lark

Nicknamed "Little Lark", Carrie Koo Mei is one of the great Chinese songstresses of the 1950s and 60s — and is still fondly remembered today for singing the title song of that classic tearjerker Love Without End (1961) — but did you know that she is also a remarkable painter?

When I was in Hong Kong I had the rare opportunity to see an exhibition of her amazing work at the University Museum and Art Gallery. Believe it or not, Carrie has been painting since 1963, back when she was still singing and acting at Shaw Brothers. Her teachers included Chao Shao-an, master of the Lingnan School of Painting; Hu Nien-tsu; and Lui Shou-kwan, founder of the Zen-inspired New Ink Movement.

After learning from some of the best Chinese ink painters of the 20th century, Koo Mei charted her own course and developed a unique style that combines the realism of the Lingnan School with the free form of the New Ink Movement. The title of the exhibition, "The Cloud and Mist Weaver", perfectly describes the effortless and ephemeral beauty of Koo Mei's paintings. As Yeung Chun-tong, the director of the University Museum and Art Gallery, writes in his introduction to the exhibit:

Landscape painting offers a medium for Koo Mei to seek her personal ideal. All her compositions, be they depictions of actual mountains and rivers or of imagined scenery, reflect the beauty of nature as she sees it in her heart. Without deliberately painting abstract pictures, nor transforming majestic mountains and flowing streams into mere brush strokes and symbols, she simply expresses her emotions in the free-form clouds, haze, mist and fog, transporting her audience to the highest heaven, unrestricted by form, shape and colour.

Indeed, as I looked at the landscapes delicately woven by Koo Mei, I was transported from the hustle and bustle of one of the world's densest cities to a place of blissful solitude.

Here are two paintings from the show that I scanned from the exhibition brochure.


A Morning Rehearsal by Koo Mei


Cool Lighting by Koo Mei

If you'd like to see more of Koo Mei's paintings, you can visit her online gallery at the Hong Kong Art Archive.

P.S.: Did you notice Carrie's Spiderman shirt in the photo above?!

Shopping for Vintage Hong Kong Pop

Hong Kong is without a doubt a "Shoppers' Paradise". Even someone like me, an obscurely specialized bottom feeder in the chain of consumers, can satisfy their materialist cravings. Check out these cool CD reissues of three classic LPs from Hong Kong's Diamond Records label. Established in 1960, Diamond was known for producing albums that mixed Mandarin versions of English songs, English versions of Mandarin songs, and ‘bilingual’ songs featuring both English and Mandarin lyrics. Like hot coke with ginger, the Diamond sound is a reflection of the unique East-West mix that makes Hong Kong such a fascinating place.

For more information about the pop music scene of Hong Kong during the 1960s, I encourage you to peruse the following fantastic websites: QUESTING Bandstand and Hong Kong Pop: English Style. And click on the links below for more information about the singers or to buy the CDs, which are a steal at $7.99!




"Take Good Care of Him" by Kong Ling and The Fabulous Echoes
Buy the CD




"Tower of Gold" by Rebecca Pan
Buy the CD

Wong Kar-wai fans will recognize Rebecca Pan from her roles in Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love.




"Green Island Serenade" by Carrie Koo
Buy the CD

Click here for lyrics and the controversy behind the authorship and meaning of this song.

Crime-Fighting Ku Mei and Her Spicy Thai Kiss

Here's an intriguing piece that I found in The Happiness Movieland No. 19 (May, 1959):

Ku Mei in Thailand

Ku Mei, the little "Skylark", becomes very popular in Thailand as she leads the cast of the Siamese picture "The Steel-Arm Girl Knight-Errant". She speaks now fluent Siamese and has adapted herself to the customs of the land. Her kiss scene in the picture boasts to be the longest, the hottest, the wildest and the most tempting kiss in the history of Siamese movies.

I never expected to see Carrie Ku Mei — best remembered for providing Lin Dai's singing voice in Love Without End (1961) — show up in a 1950s Thai film as a pistol-packing masked crusader. Even more surprising was her kissing scene ("the longest, hottest, wildest and most tempting in the history of Siamese movies"!) with who appears to be Thai movie legend Mitr Chaibancha.


Mitr Chaibancha (?) and Ku Mei making Thai movie history.

How did Ku Mei end up making movies in Thailand? Well, she visited the country in 1956 during a promotional tour for her film A Thousand Flowers Bloom and was invited to stay and star in Thai movies. The Steel-Arm Girl Knight-Errant is evidently one of the films she made. That's about all I can tell you. Unfortunately, I can't find any more information about this or any other Thai films she might have made.

But there is a tantalizing reference to Ku Mei's Thai sojourn in the 1965 Shaw Brothers film The Lark, which is loosely based on her life. Peter Chen Ho plays a reporter who poses as a wealthy music promoter in order to get closer to Ku Mei and scoop the juicy details of the scandal that has prompted her return to Hong Kong. As Ku Mei starts falling for Chen Ho, she opens up about her life and shows him her photo album, which includes pictures from her tour in Thailand. Peter asks about a man in one of the photos. Ku Mei hesitantly replies, "He's the man in the so-called 'scandal', which everyone referred to.... It wasn't as complicated as everyone thought. Two men vying for my affection which resulted in murder". Hmmm... I guess that is pretty straight forward... however I'd love to know if it's true and, if so, who exactly were the two men?!