Let's Go Lin Dai! Spring Is in the Air (1954)

There is one song inextricably associated with Lin Dai — played so often that you either weep with sympathy or grimace in pain — and that song is Carrie Ku Mei's evergreen hit "Love without End" from the 1961 movie of the same name. Carrie wasn't the only singer who provided the vocals for Lin Dai in her films. Tsin Ting famously sang for Linda in the huang mei opera films Diau Charn (1958) and The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959).

It may come as a surprise then, as it did to me a few years ago, that Lin Dai was herself a singer of great note, if not great skill, and was a popular Pathé recording artist during the 1950s. However, as my buddy Dev Yang has written on his blog The Golden Age of Chinese Language Cinema, although Linda's singing lacks skill and sophistication, there is a genuine sincerity that is quite endearing.

Linda did not sing the songs in her debut film, Singing under the Moon (1953), however, in an odd turn of events, she ended up recording them for Pathé. The albums were a bit hit. In fact, Linda's version of the song "The Hot Blazing Sun" broke record sales set by renowned professional singers such as Yao Lee and Chang Loo.

Keen to continue Linda's success as a songstress, her mentor and lover Yan Jun made sure to include songs in the subsequent films they made together. Her second movie Humiliation for Sale (released in Singapore in 1954 but not in Hong Kong until 1958) included three songs. And her third, Spring Is in the Air (1954), incorporated the plot device of students preparing for a musical. It was a device that would be recycled in her later films, such as Merry-Go-Round (1956), a color extravaganza shot in Japan that includes a whopping ten songs and fantasy musical sequences with the all-girl Shochiku Revue.

While Spring Is in the Air is apparently unavailable (not even on YouTube), we can at least still hum along with the songs from the film, such as this delightful number, "Lovely Springtime". ((LISTEN))

The innocent Lin Dai we hear in this song would eventually lose her voice during her intensive commodification at Shaw Brothers — as they strove to create the ultimate and perfect movie queen.

Call me unsophisticated, but I'll take the thin-voiced Lin Dai of Spring Is in the Air over the ventriloquized Lin Dai of Love without End any day of the week!

* A very special thanks to Gilbert Jong for providing the above image from the movie booklet for Spring Is in the Air. Check out his fabulous collection of Lin Dai photos at his Flickr stream Enjoy Yourself Tonight.

References

• The Age of Shanghainese Pops (2001) by Wong Kee Chee
• "The Legend and the Beauty: Exhibition on Lin Dai" by Tong Kim-hung, Hong Kong Film Archive Newsletter, Issue 50 (November 2009)

Cruising with Lily

Va-va-vroom! I wouldn't mind being Lily Ho's back seat rider.

I'm not sure when this was taken. Was it during the filming of Tropicana Interlude? Lily sure looks smart (and sexy) in her nautical get-up.

A very special thanks to Gilbert Jong for letting me post this fab photo — just one of countless treasures from his amazing collection.

The Fan Ho I Didn't Know

Fan Ho during his movie star days and at the opening last month of his latest exhibit

A few years ago I was surprised to discover that Fan Ho (surname Ho), whom I'd known only as the venerable monk in Shaw Brothers' four-film adaptation of Journey to the West, was also a highly acclaimed photographer. Even before he joined the Shaw studio in the early sixties, he had made a name for himself in international competitions, exhibitions, and salons. From 1958 — when he was just 17 years old — to 1965, Ho was named one of the Top Ten Photographers of the World by the Photographic Society of America.

An exhibit of his photographs is currently up at Modernbook Gallery in Palo Alto until August 2nd. I took a look a couple of weeks ago, and his work is simply stunning. Ho specializes in Hong Kong street scenes, and because the city has changed so much in the fifty-odd years since he shot them, the photos capture a world long vanished. But besides the obvious historical value of his work, Ho impresses with his mastery of light and shadow, his sensitivity to the drama of the street, his cutting social commentary, his love of the magic in everyday life, and his surprising flights into abstraction.

The nearly 150 photos on display are original prints made by Fan Ho himself during the fifties and sixties. This coming Friday, July 10th, the gallery is hosting a talk with Ho at 7pm. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, don't miss this chance to see him and his amazing body of work. If you don't live nearby — and even if you do — then consider buying one of Fan Ho's books, Hong Kong Yesterday and The Living Theatre. Both are handsomely designed and printed (the superb duotone printing really makes the photos come alive).

Here are a few of my favorites from Fan Ho's newly published The Living Theatre.


"Little Women"


"Multifunction Staircase"


"Renting to Read"


"The Other Side of the Theater"


"A Sad Sad Song"


"Day End Report"


"Back to Mother"


"Another Dimension"

If you want to see more of Fan Ho's work, here is a selection of images from Hong Kong Yesterday and The Living Theatre. Both books can be ordered from Modernbook Gallery.

* A big thanks to Enjoy Yourself Tonight for letting me use his personally autographed photo of Fan Ho and to Bryan and Danny at Modernbook Gallery for letting me use the recent picture of Fan Ho and the images of his work.