Remembering Fang Ying (1950-2010)

Sixties actress Fang Ying passed away on Wednesday. While I've never followed her the way I have her fellow Shaw stars, I've always thought there was something special about her. I'm not sure how to describe it: she had the spunky innocence of Li Ching and the cool sophistication of Lily Ho — but in a way that was so understated and natural it was completely disarming.

While Fang Ying rose to fame in Shaw's huangmei opera films, I will always associate her with veteran director Yueh Feng's superb social melodrama Auntie Lan (1967), in which she plays a young woman who struggles with being a single mother after her fiance dies in a plane crash. She also starred in a movie that is tops on my list of still unavailable Shaw films that I'm dying to see: the tantalizing Trapeze Girl (1967).


Fang Ying in Trapeze Girl

One of Shaw's "Seven Fairies", the first crop of starlets from its actor training school, Fang Ying was — along with Allyson Chang Yen — the first to disappear from the silver screen. She married in 1968 and made a few more films before retiring in 1970.

In the mid-80s, however, Fang Ying returned to the movie business, this time as an art director and costume designer. She was nominated for Best Art Direction at the 10th Annual Hong Kong Film Awards for Kawashima Yoshiko (1990) but gets a special award from me for her work on two of my favorite films: Deception (1989), a stylish thriller about workplace blackmail spun out of control; and Naked Killer (1992), a lurid girls-with-guns film inspired by Shaw's erotic wuxia classic Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972).


Pauline Wong, Brigitte Lin, and Elizabeth Lee in Deception


Carrie Ng, Simon Yam, and Chingmy Yau in Naked Killer

Let me end with this brief tribute with a wonderful clip from Auntie Lan showing off Fang Ying's unaffected charm.

Shaw's Four Fairies

From left: Fang Ying, Chin Ping, Li Ching, Margaret Hsing Hui

Here's a cute photo set from Southern Screen No. 74 (April, 1964) showcasing four of the first graduates of Shaw's "Southern Drama Group", the actor training academy started by the studio in October, 1961.

Of course, my favorite of the batch is the one above, with the girls making funny faces for the camera — that is, except for Li Ching, who takes advantage of the moment to give her sexiest look!

I'm undecided on best funny face; both Fang Ying and Hsing Hui are equally awesome with totally different styles. But poor pensive Chin Ping just doesn't have the joi d'vivre needed to make a good funny face.

You can download the original article (which has more pictures) here.

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.