'SHE IS A BIT LIKE Hong Kong's Ginger Rogers,' says Hong Kong Film Archive (HKFA) programmer Law Kar. But she is, of course, everything like Hong Kong's Grace Chang.
The Shanghai-born movie star shone brightly over Hong Kong cinema during the 1950s and 60s, with her musicals capturing the imagination of the colony. Her career lasted only for about 15 years before she devoted herself to her marriage, but her legend lives on.
'She was so popular she was invited to Hollywood to appear in a cameo role in Clark Gable's Soldier Of Fortune [1955],' Law says. 'She was also invited to the US to appear a few times on Dinah Shore's television show, singing and dancing in the late 1950s. She was a huge star.'
A selection of her films - including the mega-hit Mambo Girl (1957) and perhaps her most famous work of all, The Wild, Wild Rose (1960) - will feature as part of the HKFA contribution to the 26th Hong Kong International Film Festival, which runs from March 27 to April 7. A total of 29 films will be screened.
They are part of the two-segment Back To Dreamland programme which showcases the work of Cathay Studios. Chang herself will be making a rare public appearance during a seminar on the studio's work in Hong Kong on April 11 following the festival, and the second section of the programme - and a total of 50 films - will run from April 26 to June 2.
'Cathay was a huge studio that first started in the 1930s in Singapore, and it branched out to film distribution in the 1940s,' Law says. 'They then set up a branch here in Hong Kong called the Motion Picture & General Investment Company in the 1950s.'