Tributes - 1998

Leonard Ho

Movie mogul and producer. Born China, 1925. Died Hong Kong, February 17, 1998, aged 72.

As President and co-founder of Golden Harvest Productions, Leonard Ho was one of the main players in the huge Hong Kong film industry. However, though his name appeared in the credits of over 500 movies, he somehow remained a private and humble person in a business where self-promotion seems to be a required skill.

Though well-known within the industry, Ho did not cherish his public profile like a Hollywood tycoon - preferring to allow his business partner, Raymond Chow, to be the public face of the company. Chow was therefore given more credit for the 'new wave' of the Hong Kong film industry, and for nurturing such stars as Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Maggie Cheung. However, according to Golden Harvest's Russell Cawthorne, Ho "looked after the studio side, the nuts and bolts". As a team, Chow and Ho turned Golden Harvest into Hong Kong's largest film studio.

Ho was born Ho Kwong-cheong in China, and was educated at the Chinese Institute of Journalism. He began his film career in 1960 - working for Shaw Brothers, Hong Kong's major film studio of the time. Despite the occasional quality material, the Shaws perfected the Hollywood-inspired art of assembly-line movie-making that has since characterised Hong Kong cinema. B-grade martial arts flicks were especially popular. Within a few years, Ho was a production manager - but not a particularly satisfied one.

In April 1970, he borrowed money from relatives and joined with Chow (Shaws' head of production) to form a rival company, Golden Harvest. After a slow start, they released a crude, low-budget movie called The Big Boss (1971) - which was not only a popular success, but would forever change the Hong Kong film industry.

The main reason was Bruce Lee, a former child actor, who had won some fame in America for his TV work and for teaching martial arts to Hollywood stars. The Big Boss was yet another Hong Kong martial arts movie, but it was the first one to focus as much on character and plot as it did on fight scenes. In Lee - an authentic master, who performed his own stunts - a new star was born.

The Big Boss returned about 500 times its cost at the box-office - one of the greatest profits in the history of movie-making. Lee became an international star in a rapid succession of movies, and guaranteed his cult status with his sudden death at the age of 32, only two years after becoming Hong Kong's most popular star.

Even without Lee, Golden Harvest had a number of successes. Money Crazy (1977) made a name for John Woo as a comedy director, some years before he would find his true calling with streetwise films like The Killer. The ghost story Legend of the Mountain (1979) turned actor-director Sylvia Chang into a major star. By far their most famous discovery, however, was the eccentric Jackie Chan.

After a number of unsuccessful films, Chan (another martial arts exponent) joined Golden Harvest in 1979, unleashing a style of violent slapstick which owed as much to Hollywood silent comedies as it did to his hero, Bruce Lee. He has since made dozens of movies for Golden Harvest, commanding salaries comparable to Hollywood's A-list. With his success throughout Asia, he can fairly be called the world's most popular film actor.

Ho's work was not limited to Jackie Chan movies. In 1989, he was nominated for a Hong Kong Film Award for Painted Faces, depicting the early lives of some of his actors. Chan, however, has been Golden Harvest's main drawcard to the west. Rumble in the Bronx (1995), produced by Ho, finally brought the company a major success in America - something which, for all his Asian fame, Chan had always craved.

Ho remained as President of Golden Harvest until his death. In his spare time, he was an avid supporter of charities in both Hong Kong and North America. The City of San Francisco recognised this in 1993 by proclaiming February 20 as Leonard Ho Day.

Ho's funeral on Tuesday was attended by a crowd so large that it had to be held back by police. For all his privacy, his work ensured such a memorial. At the same time that Australian cinema was undergoing its cultural 'renaissance', Ho was a major figure behind Hong Kong's popular renaissance, which resulted in one of the world's leading film industries.

He is survived by his wife Sheila and daughter Sharon.