Introduction
When I first came to Singapore and went to the cinema for the first time with my friends, we had no idea which cinema to go, so we tried different cinemas from Cathay to Shaw to Golden Village. Eventually we all found our preference, as Cathay equipped with the best sound system, Shaw has IMAX, Golden Village is always nearer. As a film student, I was particularly interested in Cathay and Shaw as they are the two main distributors, and how they started their business and built up their empires in Singapore, and some of the information I found out surprised me.
Back in the early years of Singapore cinemas, local filmmaking has been influenced by Malay, Indian, Chinese, British, as well as Middle-Eastern and Japanese. Singapore cinema also developed parallel with the social and political events in the 20th century, such as colonization, the Japanese occupation, autonomy from colonial rule, the short-lived integration into the Federation of Malaysia, independence, the 1997 financial crisis. All those made Singapore cinema a unique distinguish from the rest of the world.
Singapore filmmaking began in the mid-1920s to mid-1930s, from the early 1930s to the early 1970s, the cultural reference or root was almost always Malay. The predominate Malayness of Singapore cinema was simply due to the fact that the island was still very much part of a larger cultural and geographical entity at that time known as Nusantara. During the 1950s, the island’s population was predominantly Chinese, thus there was also few attempts in the 1950s and 1960s that made Chinese movies to serve the growing market. From the year 1947 to 1972, it became the golden age, a period known as the Studio Era due to the dominance of the Shaw and Cathay studios.
Shaw and Cathay, considering that they nurtured the film industry in Singapore as the leading forces, both built up studios for local Malay production. However, there was a major change in the film industry that happened between 1967 and 1972, due to a series of shifts in their movie production strategies, they abruptly stopped the production of Malay films and never resume.
Singapore cinema had completely disappeared by the late 1970s and was nonexistent through the 1980s, such a situation is very rare in the history of cinema. Even countries suffered major civil wars, such as China and Sri Lanka, or large scale international war such as Germany and Japan, never had a 12 to 15 years shutdown of their film industry. Although after the Studio Era, local filmmakers became more Chinese-focused, and a handful of more independently produced movies were shot in Chinese or even in English during this period.
This long shutdown of production erased Singapore from the map of world cinema, whereas the neighboring film industries were growing. Once it is off the map, it would be difficult to get back on as filmmakers in Singapore attempting to do so from the mod 1990s onwards but only a few directors have gained international recognition. Considering that Singapore film industry was once ranked among the top in Asia and was the leader in Southeast Asia from 1940s to 1960s. By 1972 at the end of the Studio era, Singapore had produced around 300 to 325 films, comparing to the situation after the shutdown between 1973 to 1978, less than 10 feature films were made.
In the Golden age, the Shaw and Cathay studios produced about 20 films per year, making profits not only locally but also in the oversea markets like Indonesia and Philippine. The influence grew along with the expansion of the business from Cathay and Shaw, these two companies were the driving forces behind the booming industry back then, where they were the market leaders.
Although film production was almost dead for 15 years, filmmaking still continued in a small way through video club and amateur home movies, it paved out the revival of filmmaking in Singapore in the mid 90s. The revival was not the work of the historical studios, Shaw did not produced any movie and Cathay produced only two movies in 90s, instead, the revival was the work of a totally new and independent generation, who inject fresh blood for the film industry in Singapore.
The Foundation of Shaw Brothers
In 1920, the film distribution business in Singapore were Australasian Films Ltd and Middle East Films Ltd, Far Eastern Film service Ltd, and Pathe-Freres Singapore, they were the key players back then, and they were mostly western. In the period 1922 to 1924, some of the new players entered. They were Chinese immigrants starting their own movie businesses, specializing in importing films generally produced in Shanghai. In a sense, they paved the way for the Shaw brothers, who would soon take over the market.
The Shaw brothers, Runje, Runde, Runme, Run Run and Runfun were the sons of Shaw Yuh Hsuen, who hailed from Zhejiang, China. Shaw Yuh Hsuen was a successful businessman who made his money from trading pigments. Four years after his death in 1924, his eldest son, Runje, decided to enter the movie industry in Shanghai. The brothers formed a company called Yian Yi Film Co. and soon started making silent movies which Shaw Runje is sometimes said to have directed himself.
The movie market being still rather small in China, the brothers sent Runme to explore new territories for the expansion of their business. Those were the days of silent movies, which made language barriers a non-issue, and the brothers felt that their movies could thus appeal to all Chinese, whether they spoke Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien or Teochew.
Runme, who was in charge of film distribution, travelled to Singapore in 1924 according to some accounts, in 1925 according to others. By then, Singapore was already predominantly Chinese. He settled down in the city and started distributing silent movies produced by his family in Shanghai.
In 1927, his young brother, RunRun, came to Singapore to help his expand the business. Both of them formed the Hai Seng company, which would later make way for Shaw Brother Pte Ltd. It was really Runme and Run Run who made a success of their family’s venture into Singapore, starting a branch that would eventually be a key player in the Shaw empire, and contributing immensely to the history of cinema in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Under the Hai Seng Company, RunRun and Runme developed their distribution business, at first screening their movies in cinema owned by other entrepreneurs, who were mostly Chinese of Hokkien or Teochew origin. However, these cinema owners refused to screen Shaw movies that were produced in Shanghai, preferring to exhibit films they imported directly themselves.
As the competition was fierce, the Shaws swiftly decided to add exhibition to their business. To do so, they teamed up with other local players throughout the whole Malaya. With some screening material brought from Shanghai, the brothers opened their first Singapore cinema in Tanjong Paga in 1927, just as the silent movie era was coming to the end.
Around 1927 to 1929, the real talkies as we know them today slowly appeared, gradually replacing silent movies. In 1931, the Shaw studio in Shanghai produced one of the very first Chinese talkies, GeChang ChunSe, which is said to have a huge success in China and all over Chinese-speaking region. For Runme and RunRun, having a supply of good movie benefited their southeast Asia distribution and exhibition businesses tremendously.
At the end of the 1930s, just before the start of World War two, the Shaw exhibition corporate with Malayan Theaters Ltd, owned no less than 139 cinemas in Malaya, Singapore, Thailand and parts of Indochina. To manage this growing empire, Runme took charge of the north while Run Run took charge of the south, including Singapore.
In Singapore and everywhere else in Malaya, the Shaws expanded their business either by building new venues, or by taking over existing ones, of which they renovated it and turned it into the one of the first air-conditioned cinema in Singapore and Malaya, thus gaining what was going to be a very useful competitive advantage for a short while.
The Foundation of Cathay
By the time of 1932, the Singapore movie exhibition industry comprised no less than nine main cinemas: the Alhambra(the oldest), the Capitol(the largest), the Marlborough, the Pavilion, the Roxy, the Wembley, the Tivoli, the Empire and the Gaiety. Movies were occasionally shown at the Victoria Theatre, as well as in temporary installations for itinerant screenings in the kampong. The average number of cinemagoers in Singapore was estimated at 2500 per day at that time. The market was large and stable enough to nurture local movie production.
Ten years after the Shaw brother set foot in Singapore, another family, the Lokes, entered the cinema industry. The father, Loke Yew, was born in China in 1845. He came to Singapore at the age of 13, and succeeded in his rubber, coconut and tin businesses. After his death, under his widow’s initiative, the family ventured into the movie business which was thriving at that time in South East Asia. His son, Wan Tho, who was 13 years old at that time, became the head of the Loke family.
Loke Wan Tho used to be a sportsman when he was studying in Switzerland, he had a very good body when he was young, he wanted to be a sportsman at first, but a injury of a broken ankle forced him to retired from the sports. Meanwhile his mother was planning the movie business in Kuala Lumpur, just after the Shaw brother had fully expanded their business by buying over Ho Ah Loke’s exhibition circuit in north Malaya. Mrs Loke decided in 1935 to incorporate a new company, Associated Theaters Ltd, which would operate under the name Cathay Organization after 1959, she registered Wan Tho as an absentee fourth founding partner along with her and two others from Britain, Max Baker, and a relative, Khoo Teik Ee.
Due to the absence of young Wan Tho, it was Khoo Teik Ee, who under the supervision by Mrs Loke, managed Associated Theaters Ltd before the World War two, and laid the foundation for what was to become the Cathay movie empire. Like what the Shaw brothers had done 10 years ago, Khoo Teik Ee first ventured into the distribution and exhibition businesses. Khoo managed the construction of the 1200 seat Pavilion cinema in Kuala Lumpur which opened in 1936, and coordinated the construction of Cathay Building in Singapore during the year of 1937 to 1939, with a 1300 seats capacity and air conditioning. This building was the first cinema complex as well as the tallest building in Singapore at that time. It is the same location as the current Cathay Building in Dhoby Ghaut, and it was consistently under renovation and modification, this place is one of my favorite cinema as well.
This building is Singapore’s first 16-storey skyscraper and soon became an important logo for the company. All Cathay-Keris movies made between 1953 and 1972 opened with a picture of this building. Most of the filmmakers who worked for Cathay studio in either Malay studio(Cathay-Keris) or Hong Kong studio(MP&GI), would usually include one or two shots of this building in their films.
First Move: Shaw
After a decade of establishment of the Shaw brother cinema empire based on movie distribution and exhibition, Runme and RunRun decide to diversify their revenue by adding film production to their business and became a major player in the cinema scene with a fully integrated movie business from production to distribution, just like the French studios Gaumont and the American studios like Paramount or MGM. With the support of their brothers’ studio back in mainland China, they got everything they needed to be a major regional player.
Shaw Brothers used to bring the films made in Shanghai or Hong Kong to Singapore and made money from them, however this time, instead of trying to make Chinese movies for the Chinese audience,the Singapore-based Shaw brother changed the strategy in order to win over the Malay audience.
The early Shaw Malay language feature films had love, adventure and horror theme, which were to be some of the key themes of the Malay films industry in the following decades to come.
Those early Malay films made by Shaw brothers in Singapore were very much inspired by their previous works in Hong Kong, and therefore the stories were not directly based on Malay stories but on Chinese ones. And it was a mixed up cultural confusion for both Malay audience, who were the target audience, and the Chinese audience, and hence were not successful in box office, some Malay viewers even rejected those films. Nevertheless it was a useful experiment for Shaw brothers and helped them to remain committed to local film production after the World War 2. Most unfortunately, all of the footage from the 1930s did not survive.
At the same time, Shaw Brothers also relied on the films they bought from Hollywood. In the late 1930s, Hollywood movies held 70 percent of the market, another 16 percent went to the British movies considering there was a large population of British at that time, and 13 percent from Chinese movies, Malay movies only accounted for 1 percent at that time.
Industry Turbulence: World War Two
During the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945, a large part of the movie industry very quickly collapsed. Some cinemas managed to carry on their own activities, and were sometimes forced to open their doors to Japanese troops. In November 1943, the Japanese decided to forbid the screening of Western movies, and allow only the screening of Japanese films, in an effort to eliminate the Western influences. The Japanese Broadcasting Department, the Military Propaganda Department and the Military Information Bureau were housed in the Cathay Building. Cathay Cinema had to change its name to Dai Toa Gekkyo and showed Japanese propaganda films, which featuring the Japanese victory over Alley and also encouraging locals to adopt Japanese culture such as Bushido, the code of honor and moral of the Japanese samurai, and meanwhile promoting the “Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” idea, as the Japanese called it.
When the British returned after the war, the first movie the brought in was also a propaganda film, Desert Victory, about British success in the North African desert campaign, in order to counter Japanese propaganda and restore British prestige.
After the war, the various cinema chains in Singapore slowly resumed their activities, removing all the propaganda films and replaced it with more entertaining movies from Hollywood, Bollywood as well as the Middle East. Those changes would influenced the Malay film industry that would soon bloom in its golden age.
The Golden Age
When the war was over, Shaw brothers reopened their studios, they incorporated a new company named Malay Film Productions while retaining Malayan Theatres Ltd as their exhibition arm. Until the end of golden age, Malay Film Production generated around 160 movies in its Singapore home base, making it the most prolific production unit ever in the history of Singapore.
The year 1952 was a record-breaking year, pioneered by the Shaw brothers and a few independent entrepreneurs, around 23 featured films were churned out just by one studio alone, Shaw’s Malay Film Production, and a handful of independent production houses. With Malay Film Productions, the Shaw brothers followed the successful example of Hollywood studios like Paramount and MGM, in which everything was integrated and producer-centered system. Production had to be fast and profitable, and even though artistic quality was not the main concern, the creativity of the Malay Film Productions would be a source of inspiration for Shaw RunRun when he went back to Hong Kong in 1958.
For Cathay, they did not screen Malay films at the beginning, due to the competitor Shaw Brother as the main distributor of Malay films. Hence Cathay distributed mostly Western and Chinese movies. But in order to maintain the competitiveness, Loke Wan Tho signed up an exclusive deal with UK-based Rank Organization to distribute and exhibit its productions in Singapore, Malaya, Thailand and HongKong. Cathay was also a pioneer in terms of cinema technology, Loke Wan Tho also introduced the first color movies to screen in Singapore which thrilled the audience in 1950.
Just like Shaws a few years before, Loke was observing the Malayan market, as in that time, that market was fast expanding, and had the highest potential for growth. Therefore, in 1953, Loke Wan Tho made his move to counterbalance Shaw, with the help of Ho Ah Loke, they together created Cathay-Keris, which was going to be Cathay’s production branch and the second movie studio in Singapore, as well as the first major threat for Shaw empire, signaling the beginning of what was going to be the golden age for the next 20 years.
The new company had its facilities on East Coast Road, supported by its own theater chains in Singapore and Malaya. This duopolistic studio system of just Shaw and Cathay was set up and replaced the period of highly competitive environment during the short while when the war was over.
Loke was a very passionate and organized man, he influenced the whole Cathay Organization with his personality. He visited studios in India to learn the first-hand how movie were made, and invited Hollywood experts to coach his newly hired stars. In his studio system, he encourage everyone to compete with each other, director to director, producer to producer, actor to actor, in order to bring the best of everyone. He had great belief in talent, and was ready to give his best director, actors and technicians whatever they needed to make their dream movie. Comparing Loke and the Shaw brothers, there was a significant difference based on their approach to moviemaking, as Loke was more artistic approach towards the film, and Shaw brothers was more towards profit-driven. Nevertheless, both of them established their own distinctive studio system structure, producing 15 to 20 films per year for the next 15 years.
Both the Shaw and Cathay studios had their own facilities, sets, laboratories, recording and editing rooms. The people who made the movies, whether actors or technicians, generally lived together in nearby housing estates provided by each company. Accommodation was free, with tenants only having to pay for water and electricity. Shaw’s Malay Film Production was on Jalan Ampas, with accommodation within distance on Boon Teck Road. Cathay-Kris had a similar set-up at its Jalan Keris Studio on East Coast Road. It was like living on campus, everything was done in-house.
The directors, actors, artists and technicians generally signed contracts for three to five years with the studio, and thus become full time salaried employees. Everyone focused only on the movies to be made. The pay was not high, but at least there was regular work, and making a living was no longer something they had to worry about. When Cathay joined the competition, the salaries raised as Cathay tried to attract talents. The studio employees were eventually paid bonuses based on the success of the film they worked on.
The true reason why Cathay and Shaw brother were so successful at that time was due to the fact that they were both real studios. They vertically integrated the whole industry, from production to distribution and then exhibition. Their cinema chains were their most profitable sources of revenue. From the mid-1940s to early 1970s, they consistently and continually expanded their exhibition circuits, revamping cinema halls and building new ones.
Next stop: Hong Kong
The demand for Chinese movies in Singapore was nothing new to players like Shaw and Cathay. Cathay was going to be one of the first to really make its move into massive production of Chinese movies. Loke Wan Tho, who had settled in Singapore to grow his empire, had also developed close ties with the Chinese film industry in the mid 1940s. Since many filmmakers in China went to Hong Kong when communist took over in 1949, Hong Kong became Cathay’s target.
Within three years, that is, 1953 to 1956, Loke Wan Tho had established two new studios, one in Singapore as Cathay-Keris, the other one was in Hong Kong, MP&GI. In doing so, he secured a steady flow of movies produced for his fast expansion circuit. Until early 1960s, MP&GI almost dominated in the Hong Kong production business. MP&GI had its best time for a while, until 1964, when Shaw Run Run lead his new established company Shaw Brothers showed up in Hong Kong, it became a painful time for MP&GI as the new Shaw Brother lead by Shaw Run Run was highly profitable as well as earning artistic recognition by winning awards at the 11th Asian Film Festival held in Taipei, that MP&GI suffered from fierce competition and started losing its market share. For the most unfortunately, Loke Wan Tho together with some of his staff, died in a plane crash during that same Taipei Film festival. In 1965, MP&GI renamed to Cathay Organisation HK, and in 1970, Choo Kok Leong, Loke’s brother-in-law who had succeeded him at Cathay, closed the Hong Kong studio, in the period when Hong Kong cinema was growing rapidly.
Shaw Run Run is a legendary figure in Shaw Brothers. The Shaw empire always kept a foot in China, originally in Shanghai, later in Hong Kong, and another in Singapore. While Shaw Run Run and Run Me stayed at Singapore to build Shaw’s empire, Run De was remained in Hong Kong. However, Run De never had as much success as his brothers in Singapore. During the time of mid 1950s, when the competition grew in Hong Kong, especially when Cathay’s MP&GI started their own production lines, Shaw Run De seemed to unable to cope with the fast changing paces and lost to MP&GI. This was the time for Shaw Run Run, who had been in Singapore for 30 years, decided to go back to Hong Kong. Shaw Run Run was an entirely different businessman from his brothers, he was a film buff who used to work as cameraman when he was young, he also possessed a lot of business savvy. In the year 1958, he took over the Hong Kong business, and started Shaw Brothers, went direct competition with Cathay’s MP&GI. He invested a lot of capital to build the infrastructure, recruited up-and coming artists and cultivate new talent in all aspects of filmmaking. By the end of 1961, Shaw’s brand new, gigantic studios opened in Hong Kong and started production. In a few years, RunRun revolutionized the way family did business, in a few more years, he would revolutionize Hong Kong cinema.
One thing to notice is that Shaw Run Run not only saved Shaw company, but also let Shaw Brother became a leader in Hong Kong martial art movies, which was significant to entire film history. It gained a lot of popularity worldwide and set up a new genre, even Hollywood started to pay attention to the Hong Kong films.
The beginning of the end
Major changes were going to happen in Singapore after the year 1965, Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong was about to find a new gold mine, a movie that would make history, the world-famous and now a cult Come Drink With Me (大醉侠) by King Hu, a Wuxia genre film that was considered one of the best Hong Kong films ever made, released throughout Asia in 1966.
The Shaw’s pragmatism and shrewd business sense led them make some dramatic changes in Singapore, as the success of the business in Hong Kong means less focus on Singapore production. The Singapore Studio at Jalan Ampas was abruptly shut down in 1967 by Shaw. Five years later, Cathay followed up and shut down their own studio as well. Most talents had to move to Kuala Lumpur in the early 1970s, and it marked the end of the golden age.
There were also other reasons for the close down of the film production. From the society perspective, the early to mid 1960s saw major upheavals for Singapore, becoming autonomous in the late 1950s, the island city tuned city state momentarily joined the Federation Of Malaysia between 1963 and 1965. Along the way, it encountered racial and social unrest.
It was also a period of modernization, television was becoming popular and slowly took the share from the film business. The audience was shifting from cinema to home television. In order to take attract the audience back to the cinema, film industry always used the state-of-the-art technology to compete with TV industry, as Hollywood used color films and wider screen to compete with the black and white TV programs at that time, which proved to be effective to counterbalance the popularity of television and attract more the audience to cinema. However, in Singapore, the film industry did not realize this strategic move, and thus reducing the capacity of local movies to compete with television, considering the fact that in the whole 1960s, only one color feature film was made in Singapore.
According to the statistics, the movie business was in fact doing quite well in Singapore in 1968, with attendance 28.2 million. However the blooming was benefiting mostly from Western and Hong Kong films, in fact, the box office for Singapore Malay movies had been declining since the mid 1960s, this down trend forced the Shaw brothers to take actions immediately. The decision to shut down the production was carefully made, due to the reason that Shaw Run Run had moved to Hong Kong and started a new Shaw Brothers there, the main focus of Shaw had shifted from producing Malay movies made in Southeast Asia to Chinese movies made in Hong Kong.
One of the last movies made by Shaw’s Malay Film Production was Raja Bersiong, as the only color films made in Singapore. It was the last testimony done by Shaw to test the local market, but the it proved to be major failure in box-office which never recover its costs, and it was the last straw that put the close down in action.
For Cathay, it took longer time for them to realize the reality. The sudden death of Loke Wan Tho in 1964 let Cathay lost its competitiveness over Shaw. And unlike Shaw, Cathay closed its production without any back-up plans. First they closed down the production in Hong Kong in 1970, then they closed down the production in Singapore in 1972. Cathay reconstructed its core business and concentrated only on exhibition and distribution, which were thriving. Ironically, in 1972 when Cathay shut down its production in Singapore, the local box-office boomed to 36.7 millions patrons, and the growth was mainly contributed by Hong Kong film industry. And surprisingly, Hong Kong’s films became the biggest supplier to Singapore market in the early 1970s, with imported Chinese movies from Hong Kong even outnumbering films coming from the Hollywood. Just like the old saying, “one man’s meat is another man’s poison.” The success of the Hong Kong film industry ended the golden age of Singapore film production.
New Beginning
During the best time of Singapore Malay films production, Singapore film industry had been a major regional player, however the influence only exist within the Malay world, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia. It hardly went beyond these and hardly seen any global impacts. One important phenomena of Singapore film production is that it was driven by the two large companies, Shaw and Cathay, as within that 25 years of best time, around 300 movies were made and 280 movies were from these two major studios. When Shaw found new gold mines in Hong Kong, they just left and gave up on Singapore. After the two studio had left Singapore, there was a vacuum. Until the 1990s, when Cathay reopened its production, produced six film including Army Daze: The Movie (1996), the first locally-made English- language film to gross more than $1 million at the Singapore box office, and That One No Enough, the feature debut of Singapore’s most successful director Jack Neo.
Nowadays, Cathay is predominantly involved in exhibition, distribution and property development. Inherited the spirit from Loke Wan Tho, Cathay Cinemas are always updated with the best cinema technology, such as 4K projection and Dolby Atmos system to rival with Shaw which is specialized in IMAX technology. The most recent news is that Cathay is going to return production for the movie “Sister Mambo” to celebrate its 80 years of operation.
Reference
Online source:
http://www.cathay.com.sg/corporate_milestones.html
Book: Singapore Cinema-Raphael Millet
