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| Raymond Chow |
Raymond Chow, a major figure in world cinema, died on 2 November 2018. He was the co-founder and public face of the Hong Kong based Golden Harvest Film Company. From 1970-2003, Golden Harvest produced approximately 600 feature films, and through its theatrical arm distributed nearly as many titles again. From the mid-1980s, Golden Harvest became the most prosperous and prolific movie business in South East Asia, supplanting the once all-powerful Shaw Brothers Studio.
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| Run Run Shaw, Run Me Shaw |
Raymond Chow and Run Run Shaw spent much of their professional life at first as trusted colleagues and later as commercial rivals. Both possessed brilliant business minds and that key ability to recognise and develop raw talent.
Chow had the demeanour and guile of a welcoming restaurateur. His heavy set glasses and easy smile were as much disarming to business acquaintances as they were reassuring to family and friends.
As a businessman, Raymond Chow had few peers in the Cantonese film industry. His planning and forward thinking had him at least five years ahead of his competitors - and they all knew it !
Raymond Chow Wai-Man was born in Hong Kong in 1927, and following his father's death the family moved to Shanghai where Chow spent his formative years. He attended the prestigious St John University where he studied English and Journalism. It was during these tertiary years he developed a life-long passion for Eastern and Western contemporary cultures, particularly cinema.
By the early 1950s, the daily grind and appeal of journalism was beginning to wear thin for Raymond Chow. He moved back to Hong Kong and began work in the more lucrative advertising industry.
In 1959, he was employed by the Shaw Brothers Studio in the marketing department. He rose quickly in the organisation and by the mid-1960s was Head of Film Production. Chow proved to be a very capable and loyal lieutenant to Run Run Shaw and his brother Run Me.
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| Raymond Chow, Bruce Lee |
In 1969, Raymond Chow first met Bruce Lee, whom he saw as having great potential as a future star and a figure to lead the studio into the 1970s.
Unfortunately, both Shaw brothers didn't envisage such a rosy career path for this “cocky TV-actor”. Chow described Lee as a game changer – something the studio was going to need in coming years. But the powers-that-be were set in their opposition to employing Bruce Lee – and their decision was final.
Raymond Chow was facing a major dilemma: to remain at the Shaw Studio as a well-paid functionary or to pursue Bruce Lee as an independent producer. As a middle-aged executive with a young family, the stakes were high.
Chow acted swiftly, and with Shaw Brothers colleague, Leonard Ho, set up the Golden Harvest Film Company. Veteran Shaw Brothers director, Lo Wei, also jumped ship and joined the new entity. It was a company without a studio, stars or produced films. But Chow did have a tentative arrangement with the now LA-based Bruce Lee to negotiate a possible contract with the newly formed Golden Harvest.
Raymond Chow and Leonard Ho knew it was vital to get Lee to sign with their company. Both executives decided to not be directly involved with the contract negotiations. Instead, Chow asked Lo Wei's wife, Lau Leung-Wah, would she speak with Lee. It turned out she was a close friend of Lee's parents.
In a short time, the “cocky TV actor” was on his way to Thailand to star in a Golden Harvest martial-arts / adventure pic, The Big Boss.
For the time being the banks were on side with Hong Kong's newest film company – a situation which could change very quickly.
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| Bruce Lee, The Big Boss |
Nearly everything rested upon The Big Boss being a commercial success. The production was fraught with problems, and early on saw Lo Wei replace the original director. The cast and crew disliked the primitive Thai locations, and Lee spent much of his non-film-making time fending off agents working for the Shaw Brothers who were now offering the actor big money deals to leave Golden Harvest and to work for Hong Kong's largest film studio. Lee told each of these carpetbaggers: “Raymond Chow is going to make me an international movie star.”
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| Fist of Fury |
Lee and Lo Wei went to work on their next pic Fist of Fury, whilst Raymond Chow was busy talking with Hollywood executives who were beginning to see what Bruce Lee could be capable of. It was with Warner Brothers and director Robert Clouse that a film project was being seriously discussed.
Fist of Fury repeated the box-office success of The Big Boss. Fist of Fury is Lee's masterpiece. It begins as a straight forward revenge movie but soon develops into a much darker narrative where Lee eschews the heroic for the psychotic. The final shot is a rabble rousing, visceral image which soon became an iconic freeze frame of 1970's world cinema. It is for many Asian people the highpoint of Bruce Lee's short cinema career.
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| John Saxon, Raymond Chow, Bruce Lee on location for Enter the Dragon |
The production of Enter the Dragon in Hong Kong by a major Hollywood studio was big news in the region. At the centre of this frenetic cinema activity were Bruce Lee and Raymond Chow. This was a gilded time for both where financial and artistic futures were often being considered. It was no secret that the Warner Brothers suits saw this rising star and Hong Kong producer as opening doors to audiences that had been previously closed to American film companies.
Fortune may favour the brave but it is the weavers of fate who decide our destiny. In mid-1973, Enter the Dragon was released world-wide and became a box-office phenomenon. Only six days before its US premiere, Bruce Lee was found dead in a Hong Kong apartment owned by a Canto starlet named Betty Pei-Tai. The news spread like wildfire and the circumstances surrounding his death were shrouded in official secrecy, creating a world of lurid rumours ranging from triad assassination to sex play gone wrong. Raymond Chow was also linked to the death as it was strongly suggested he and Lee had spent the day with the young actress. Chow denied this emphatically but did admit he was the first person Betty Pei-Tai contacted when she found Lee to be seriously ill that night.
The post mortem eventually showed the star died of a cerebral edema, triggered by a severe reaction to excessive use of pain killers and tranquilisers. The coroner ruled: death by misadventure.
The death of Bruce Lee demonstrated once again how a major star is often at the hub of the commercial film-making process. All the plans for Lee'
s future involving Hollywood, Raymond Chow and Golden Harvest were nothing more than ideas in the ether, without the star to bring it together and to make it happen.
On a personal and professional level, the loss of Bruce Lee was a body blow to Raymond Chow. To an outsider, such a tragic event for a fledgling film company could well be something the business might never recover from.
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| Angela Mao |
But from day one of Golden Harvest, Chow and Leonard Ho had invested wisely in talent and bricks and mortar. They had under contract a shrewd blend of young and veteran stars. For Hong Kong audiences Golden Harvest was producing a string of entertaining and profitable genre films. Ex-Shaw Brothers leading light, Jimmy Wang-Yu, starred in excellent martial-arts pics such as One-Armed Boxer and Beach of the War Gods. Taiwanese born Angela Mao Ying was a screen sensation in Lady Whirlwind and When Taekwando Strikes. Her brief but memorable stint in Enter the Dragon created a well-deserved star profile.
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| Poster for When Taekwando Strikes |
Editor's Note: This is the first of a four part series. John Snadden is a Melbourne cinephile, film distributor and writer with a longstanding interest in Chinese cinema. His notes on new Chinese films can be found throughout the Film Alert 101 blog.
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