ow often does one find a poetry-loving film and cinema
magnate, philanthropist, respected ornithologist and
shutterbug all rolled in one? One such unlikely individual
was born to a famous millionaire father,
went to the VI back
in the twenties and owned a company that was a famous brand
name to the moviegoers of the fifties and sixties. Loke Wan
Tho was born on 14th June, 1915, the ninth of
eleven children of Towkay Loke Yew, one of the founders of
the school. His father, a self-made millionaire and household
name in Malaya at that time, died when he was not yet three.
Wan Tho’s education was at the old V.I., at the original
building in High Street. By the time he was thirteen, while
still in school, Wan Tho was already, through his trustees,
head of the Loke family. The exact year when he joined the
VI is not known but a reasonable guess would be 1922, the
final year of the School’s first headmaster, Mr B E Shaw.
Not much is known
of his VI activities except that Wan Tho was a Patrol
Leader in the Scouts and it is recorded that he was on
duty one March afternoon in 1929 when the present VI
building was opened amidst great pomp and ceremony.
For reasons of his delicate health he
left the VI in the early thirties to study at Chillon
College, an English school, in Montreux, Switzerland.
His health obviously took a turn for the better in the
cool mountain climate for he became Chillon’s Victor
Ludorum and captain of the school soccer eleven! He
was also the 1932 long jump champion of the Swiss county
of Vaud. His jump record stood for at least 30 years! Dr
Harold Abrahams the 1924 Olympic sprinter of Chariots
of Fire fame was so impressed by his athletic prowess
that he urged Wan Tho to take it up believing that he could
make a name for himself in the athletics world. Wan Tho
had made it to the Vaud athletics team when a broken ankle
forced him to retire from athletics for good.
Meanwhile, back in Kuala Lumpur, his
mother, sensing the potential of the movie industry in
Malaya, had other plans for him. In 1935, the twenty-year-old
Wan Tho, now in King’s College, Cambridge, felt the first
of many responsibilities on his young shoulders when his
mother, with two others, registered him as an absentee
fourth partner to found a chain of theatres called Associated
Theatres Ltd.
The forerunner of the Cathay empire,
the new company opened the 1,200-seat Pavilion cinema in
Kuala Lumpur in 1936 just as Wan Tho graduated with an
Honours degree in English literature and history. He had
initially expressed doubts whether these were suitable
subjects for someone going into the cinema business.
However, he found English literature a pleasure, and the
years ahead were to dispel any doubts about his choices.
Wan Tho was briefly at the London School of Economics
where he won the University badminton championship in
1937 and 1938. He had been smitten after having been
given a Brownie box camera when he was eight years old
and it was during a long vacation in rugged South Wales
that Wan Tho’s interest in photography intersected with
a new interest in birds. Thereafter, combining his love
of literature, his photographic-ornithological expeditions
also included a couple of his favourite anthologies tucked
in his kit.
Studies over, Wan Tho sailed back in
1939 to Malaya to administer his new empire and to expand
into Singapore. Singapore's and, for that matter, South
East Asia’s, tallest skyscraper of 17 storeys made its
debut when Wan Tho opened the Cathay Cinema complex with
much pomp and fanfare. The first film shown was Zoltán
Korda's Four Feathers on 3 October, 1939, and it
revolutionised the movie-going experience as the Cathay
Cinema was the first to offer its patrons a plush
air-conditioned 1,300-seat auditorium with spacious seats.
Wan Tho next acquired a chain of cinemas in Singapore and
Malaya. One of those was the Majestic cinema in Singapore
for the screening of Chinese movies.
Before long, however, war came to the
region. The Cathay cinema was converted to a Red Cross
casualty station in February 1942 and Wan Tho found
himself an evacuee on a ship fleeing Singapore. A
500-pound Japanese bomb was dropped on his ship and
Wan Tho had to fished from the sea, blinded and severely
burned in the face, chest and arms. As he recalled it,
he was "a curious figure, with almost no hair on my
head, protruding goldfish eyes and a baby-pink new
skin" in a Jakarta hospital. He was blind for a week
and eventually made his way to Bombay from Java.
"Shakespeare," he recalled later, "turned
out to be a gilt-edged investment after all" as Wan
Tho turned to reading the bard while recuperating.
"It gave me an inner clarity of vision almost totally
lacking in my clouded physical sight."
In India he was introduced to the great
naturalist-explorer, Salim Ali, and followed him on an
expedition to the Kutch desert which ignited a passionate
dedication to the hobby that was to make Wan Tho one of
the world’s finest bird photographers. As recalled by
Salim himself who later became his close friend and
companion on many expeditions, "he soon became an
exceptionally enthusiastic observer and collector of birds.
His unfailing courtesy and quiet good manner, friendly
disposition and capacity to mix at all levels were
qualities which made him a welcome adjunct to the field
camps. Never grumbling or complaining, ever ready to share
all physical hardships and deprivations, even with a show
of enjoyment, he was an ideal companion. Through it all
he never lost his capacity to look on the humorous side
of uninspiring situations."
During the Japanese occupation, the
Japanese Broadcasting Department, the Military Propaganda
Department and Military Information Bureau were housed
in the Wan Tho’s Cathay building but the cinema continued
its business under the name of Dai Toa Gekkyo
showing Japanese propaganda films. When the British
returned in 1945 to Singapore the first film that was
brought in was shown at the same Cathay cinema. (It was
a British propaganda film, The Tunisan Victory,
about their success in the North African desert campaign!)
Until 1946, the Cathay complex also served as the
headquarters for Admiral Lord Mountbatten, South-East
Asian Supreme Allied Commander.
In 1947, Loke Wan Tho returned
to Singapore, reclaimed his Cathay building and embarked
on an ambitious plan to rebuild the local film industry.
He signed a joint-venture partnership with J. Arthur Rank
Organisation and formed a company, Caravan Films, which
sent mobile film units into remote rubber estates,
factories and villages. Using the slogan "Cathay
for Comfort", he aggressively expanded his chain
of cinemas from Penang to Singapore, Thailand and Borneo.
He also set up studios to make films to feed into his
chain of cinemas, for, in the fifties, Malayans were
the world’s most avid per capital moviegoers. In 1953,
Wan Tho plunged into the making of Malay films to directly
challenge his Shaw Brothers rivals who had till then
cornered the market. Wan Tho partnered with the owner
of Keris Films, Ho Ah Loke, to set up Cathay Keris Films
to make their first Malay movie, in colour - Buloh
Perindu. He even visited studios in India to learn
firsthand how movies were made and invited Hollywood
personalities to coach his stars. In his studio system,
he encouraged everyone to compete with one another,
director with director, producer with producer, actor
with actor, so as to bring out the best in everyone.
Focusing on stories from the Bangsawan and Malay
folklore, Cathay Keris released about 10 films a year.
In 1960 it produced its first Chinese film, The Lion
City.
Wan Tho was very much involved in
setting up the film industry of Hong Kong as well. In
1949, with many of the Shanghai filmmakers moving to
Hong Kong to escape the Communist takeover, Wan Tho wrote
to one of them, Lee Tsu Yung, saying that he saw no reason
why Chinese films could not be made in Hong Kong, and that
he would welcome Lee as a partner. At first Cathay only
distributed films made by Yung Hwa Motion Pictures, films
like Rose Rose I Love You. However, in 1955 when
Yung Hwa faced insurmountable financial trouble, Wan Tho
had to take over the business to recover his investment.
He reorganised it the following
year as Motion Picture & General Investment Company
(later renamed Cathay Organisation (HK)). He refurbished
it with the latest in sound and film equipment, instituted
a proper studio system to produce quality Cantonese and
Mandarin films and marketed them creatively. The first films
made by Cathay that year were Miss Kikuko and Three
Stages of Love. Then Mambo Girl became Cathay's
first hit in the theatres in the region, propelling the star,
Ge Lan (Grace Chang), to superstardom. Sun, Moon, Star
was another classic that enhanced Cathay's growing film making
reputation.
In the next decade or so, over 250
films were produced by Cathay and distributed widely in
Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Many of the Hong
Kong films had Hollywood style plots; characters were
modern and smart. Everywhere, their glamorous stars
drew the crowds and were mobbed during personal appearances.
Recognition soon followed: Cathay was the first Hong Kong
studio to win a major prize at the Asian Film Festival in
1957 with Lin Dai's Golden Lotus. You Min's first
appearance in Her Tender Heart earned her the Best
Actress award at the sixth Asian Film Festival and, in
1958, Our Sister Hedy was the best film at the
Asian Film Festival. Back in Malaya, Cathay Keris’
Pontianak made Maria Menado a star. For his
contribution, Wan Tho was made a Dato.
As Wan Tho’s business empire grew,
public and private office was thrust on him by an
appreciative public and government: pro-chancellorship
of the University of Malaya, chairmanship of the Singapore
Telephone Board, Malaysian Airlines, Malayan Banking and the
Singapore National Library Board, and directorships of
numerous companies, including those with transportation,
insurance, communications, rubber and mining interests. Despite
these onerous duties, Wan Tho participated in the activities
of the Malayan Nature Society, the Rotary Club and the Singapore
Island Country Club as well. Not to mention the Presidency of
the Singapore branch of VIOBA.
Above all, he ensured that he always
had time for his two passions - ornithology and photography.
From the make-believe celluloid world and the man-made
business jungle of Singapore and Hong Kong, he would fly
away effortlessly to the world of nature. He went on
expeditions to the moss forests of New Guinea to photograph
birds of paradise, and to Sarawak, Cambodia, Sikkim,
Kashmir and Finland, to name a few exotic locations. He
became, in 1958, the first Asian member of the exclusive
Reindeer Club in Lapland, located north of the Arctic
Circle where endurance at subzero temperatures and
wanderlust were the principal qualifications needed.
Wan Tho once devoted weeks of patient
waiting to capture on film one single bird in its natural
habitat and on another occasion, in the Malayan jungle, he
dangled precariously with his camera in gusty wind from a
130-foot tower in order to overlook the treetop nest of a
white-bellied sea eagle. His articles and photographs were
published regularly from 1945 on in the journal of the
Bombay Natural History Society. He also began a tape library
of Malayan bird songs to augment his extensive ornithological
library at home. In 1962 he was the Malayan delegate at
Seattle to the Conference of the International Union for the
Conservation of Nature, and the First World Conference on
National Parks. His kindred affiliations included the British
Ornithologists' Union, the International Council for Bird
Preservation, the British Wildfowl Trust, and similar organizations
in the Far East. In addition to his many awards for his bird
studies, Wan Tho was also an Associate of the Royal Photographic
Society and the Photographic Society of America. His collections
of Chinese ceramics and books were among the best in Singapore.
And there was yet a third career for
Wan Tho, that of philanthropist, like his father before
him. Generous to a fault, whether he gave to state, charity
or institution, to aspiring artist or struggling student,
his gifts were made after careful consideration and always
with a minimum of ostentation. He took pleasure in assisting
scientific expeditions and other deserving causes with funds
or material contributions. Libraries, art groups, national
park associations and even the raising of funds to send a
chess champion to international matches all claimed his
attention. The VI, too, benefited from its illustrious
alumnus.
Loke Wan Tho inherited great wealth,
and yet his tastes were essentially simple, cultured and
humanistic and his love of nature an enduring passion. He
was a brilliant conversationalist and his repartee was as
sudden and as sharp as that of a duellist’s riposte. But,
typical of the man, he never talked over the head of his
audience nor talked down on them. He had known extreme
hardship and suffering during the war years and perhaps
that explained later unexpected gestures like sending out
tea and tarpaulins for rain-sodden pickets during a union
strike at one of his own studios.
And so when Wan Tho and Datin Mavis Loke
met an untimely end in an air crash in June 1964 in Taiwan
where he had gone to attend the Asian Film Festival in
Taipei, the loss was received with shock and disbelief
throughout the region. To honour its son, the VI sent two
detachments of its cadets to join the cortege in a sombre
two-hour procession through Kuala Lumpur streets to
the family burial grounds where Loke Wan Tho was laid to
rest with his father. Crowds lined the streets, three or
four deep, to pay their respects. The mourners included
the Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, cabinet ministers,
representatives from business, the government and the
diplomatic service, and film stars from Malaysia, Singapore,
Hong Kong and Taiwan. At the funeral service the Methodist
bishop stated that ostentation had been unknown to Wan Tho
and that he had never made any man feel inferior. That Wan
Tho delighted to assist and honour all who shared his interests
was less noteworthy than the fact that his household servants
and business employees obviously held him in great affection.
Three VI cadets sounded the Last Post over the caskets of the late
magnate and his wife.
What is one to make of this
many-faceted, versatile individual who was at once a
student of poetry and nature, a leading light of the
business world with a far-flung empire that weaved
celluloid dreams for the common man and yet gave away
pots of his money, one so cruelly taken away at the
height of his success? Summarizing his personal
philosophy in his own book, A Company of Birds,
Wan Tho wrote, "the love of books and the desire
to write, a deep interest in photography, the pleasures
of living in the country and visiting strange and
out-of-the-way places, the taste for mild adventure
– all these interests had now become fused by
ornithology into a coherent pattern of personal living
so that now, in my own humble fashion, I follow in
the footsteps of those great artists of China who
make the countryside and the birds a vehicle for
their self-expression."
Perhaps the Bard of Avon, whom he
enjoyed so much, best sums him up:
O good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed!
Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
Where none will sweat but for promotion,
And having that, do choke their service up
Even with the having: it is not so with thee.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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Since 1984 the Cathay Organisation
has been run by Wan Tho's niece,
Choo Meileen, as Chairman and
Chief Executive Officer. Miss Choo
herself was a Victorian from
1968 to 1969.
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