Happy Chinese New Year!

Shaw star Pat Ting Hung on the cover of The Young Companion (Feb. 1958)

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and prosperous Year of the Rabbit! I mentioned before that I had some unfinished blog business to wrap up before I finally call it quits. And so, later this month you can look forward to some vinyl delight from Singapore songstress Zhuang Xue Fang and a post about one of Anna May Wong's lost films. In the meantime, why don't you check out the latest episode of Lucky Cat's always entertaining radio podcast or the ear-opening new installment at Antique Shanghai Pop Music devoted to "The Gentleman Singers of Shanghai". See you again soon!

Ting Hung's Film Crush

 Hollywood star James Shigeta and Hong Kong star Pat Ting Hung

I was happy to find this little surprise in the May 1962 issue of Screenland. A scan of the original article is available here.

Pat Ting Hung Admits Admiration for American-Japanese Star

Pat Ting Hung, who doesn't have an intimate boyfriend yet, declares that she has found her ideal man. "But", she says, "it is a pity that I don't have the chance to meet him. I will try to find the chance."

Who is this man?

If you are a patron of American movies you may have seen "Bridge to the Sun", starring Carol Baker and James Shigeta. And James is the man Pat talks about. And he will appear on the Hollywood screen again in "Flower Drum Song".

Pat has seen "Bridge to the Sun" three times just to see James, and she says that she will do the same with "Flower Drum Song".

She also has learned, from different sources, that James is only twenty-five, unmarried, and doesn't even have an intimate girl friend. She herself is only twenty and doesn't have a boyfriend too.

But, the only thing is, does James know that he has such an admirer in Hong Kong?

To see why Ting Hung took such a fancy to James Shigeta, check out this video tribute which screened at the 2006 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival.

Buried Treasure: The Missing Shaw Films, Part 1

After I posted that tantalizing still from Dark Rendezvous in my recent entry about Tina Ti, my buddy Eddy sent me a link which reminded me about those last remaining Shaw Brothers films that have yet to be released on DVD. (Unfortunately, these do not include the titles which were not a part of Celestial Pictures' acquisition of the Shaw film library: namely the studio's Cantonese movies and black-and-white Mandarin movies from the late 50s and early 60s.)

Even though I cry in my soup every day about the injustice of not being able to see the early films of Patricia Lam Fung (who was known as the "Jewel of Shaw"), I console myself with the fact that Celestial is still sitting on a treasure chest of titles that are sure to be released sooner or later. It was rumored that they were going to be rolled out at the end of 2009. Obviously that didn't happen, but the release two weeks ago of Ann Hui's Shaw film Starry is the Night (1988) has got me crossing my fingers again.

Here are some of the Shaw movies that I'm hoping will pop out of the oven by year's end:


The Second Spring (1963)
This one was made by Lo Chen, one of Shaw's four "Ace" directors (the other three were Li Han-hsiang, Tao Qin, and Yueh Feng). As you can see, it stars the great Li Lihua. It also features Margaret Tu Chuan, who famously threw a fit at the 1963 Golden Horse Awards when she won Best Supporting Actress for her performance. The petulant Miss M evidently felt that her character was not a supporting role and that she therefore deserved Best Actress. Seems like the princess had her eye on the throne. But as I've mentioned here previously, the tale of little Miss Margaret did not have a happy ending.


The Black Forest (1964)
Shot on location in Taiwan, this big-budget romance between a lumberman and an aboriginal girl put Margaret Tu in the upper echelons of Shaw's galaxy of stars, alongside established movie queens Lin Dai and Betty Loh Tih. Also featured is Fanny Fan and a young Taiwanese star by the name of Chiao Chiao. These three ladies find themselves competing for the love of leading man Paul Chang Chung (who passed away just this last month).


Hong Kong, Manila, Singapore (1965)
This cosmopolitan confection was a co-production between Shaw Brothers and Filipino filmmaker Albert Joseph. Tao Qin, Shaw's master of musicals before Inoue Umetsugu took over the reins in the second half of the 60s, directed the Chinese version (starring Peter Chen Ho as a jet-setting womanizer), and Albert Joseph directed the Filipino version (with Néstor de Villa in the leading role). The three geographically discrete girlfriends were the same in both versions: Landi Chang, Angela Yu Chien, and Filipina actress Maggie dela Riva.


Squadron 77 (1965)
More than 40 years before The Message and Lust, Caution, Shaw Brothers made this spy thriller set in occupied Shanghai. Li Lihua stars as the woman who is thrust into the role of nationalist freedom fighter when she discovers that her husband is a collaborator with the Japanese.


Downhill They Ride (1966)
Filmed on location in the snow-capped mountains of Taiwan, this appears to be an early entry in Shaw's campaign to reboot the wuxia genre. Set in Northeast China during the early Republican Era, it stars Paul Chang Chung as a gun-toting knight-errant who helps defend Pat Ting Hung and her fellow villagers from a gang of bandits. In a contemporary review, it was disparagingly described as a hybrid of "Japanese samurai and American cowboy films... transplanted into the Chinese soil", but that actually sounds pretty good to me.

Stay tuned for more of Shaw's buried treasure!

Wolves with Cameras

"Man Lee-Hung [aka Fanny Fan] is seen in a swimming suit that reveals her shapely figure in full."

More goodness from Southern Screen No. 6 (May 1958). You can see the original article here.

WHEN PHOTOGRAPHERS MEET ACTRESSES

On a sunny May afternoon Shaw's film actresses Ting Ning, Ting Hung and Man Lee Hung were invited by members of The Hongkong Photographers Association for a photographic study at a country villa in the New Territories, Kowloon. Present were more than two hundred amateur and professional photographers who in three hours or so took more than 5000 pictures.

"Ting Hung serenely leans against a rattan chair awaiting to be photographed."


"Film actress Ting Ning meets a barrage of cameras and flash coming from every direction."

Pat Ting Hung, Please

This one goes out to whomever has made "pat ting hung" the number one keyword source of traffic to this blog. Every time I see those three words show up in my Google Analytics report, I feel a twinge of guilt for featuring so little of Pat Ting Hung. It's nothing personal against Pat, it's just that for some reason she never grabbed my attention in the way, for example, that Fanny Fan did. (Go ahead... call me shallow!)

Anyway, please accept this lovely picture of Pat from Southern Screen No. 6 (May, 1958) as a small first step toward rectifying her absence here at Soft Film.

A Dedicated Performer: Pat Ting Hung

This centerfold of Pat Ting Hung appeared in Southern Screen No. 92 (October 1965), accompanied by the following English text.

A Dedicated Performer: Pat Ting Hung

Pat Ting Hung is a rarity among dramatic actresses in Hong Kong filmdom in that she is both versatile and a sure fire box-office draw. In a comparatively short period she has essayed both costume and contemporary roles with equal ease to establish the dominant position she holds today.

Since her debut in "The Other Woman" some eight years ago, Pat has sky-rocketed to stardom and is in constant demand for all kinds of parts. Among her box-office successes may be numbered such films as "An Appointment with Death," "The Fair Sex," "The Revenge of a Swordswoman," "Dream of the Red Chamber," "Comedy of Mismatches" and "The Butterfly Chalice." Those who saw her sensitive portrayal of a pretty and scheming maid in the Lin Dai movie "Last Woman of Shang" are unlikely to forget how Pat almost stole the show from the late four-time Asian film queen. Pat is currently engaged in shooting "Downhill They Ride," "Blue and Black" and "Princess With the Magic Fan."

Although she has little time which she can claim as her own, there is one thing Pat never neglects: replying to her fan mail. This is perhaps one of the main factors behind her immense popularity. Born in China's Hunan province, Pat's real name is Wang Chan-hua. Hunan girls are said to be romantic and this is what Pat has to say on the subject: "Though marriage is important, the thing which means the most to me right now is my film career. Why, I haven't even got a steady beau!" Unromantic? Hardly. It merely reflects Pat Ting Hung's fierce dedication to her calling as an actress.