FOR Mandarin musical fans, Mambo Girl and Grace Chang are synonymous. Hongkong's brightest singing movie star of the late 50s and early 60s, she is also the star of next month's Hongkong International Film Festival's retrospective: Mandarin Films and Popular Songs.
Eight of the 29 musicals in the series - including Mambo Girl (1957) - feature the classically-trained singer who, to her legions of fans from Singapore to Taiwan, was the personification of youthful Chinese exuberance.
She is also the star who sparked my interest in Hongkong cinema. I saw Mambo Girl in 1979 and was immediately hooked by the magic of Mandarin movies. Having admired her from afar for over a dozen years, I naturally jumped at the chance for an interview.
Ms Chang, whose stage name is Ge Lan, retired from the screen while still at the peak of her career in 1964. Since her debut in Seven Sisters 11 years earlier, she had cut dozens of records and starred in 34 films.
Of the many musicals screened at the film festival, she admits that Mambo Girl is one of her favourites. ''Mambo Girl was a real breakthrough for my career. A lot of fun to do, and a very big hit. Another favourite is Wild, Wild Rose, where I played a 'bad girl' role that was a total change from anything I had done before.'' Ms Chang's image is so inextricably linked with Mandarin movies and Mandarin songs that it comes as a surprise to hear her speak fluent Cantonese. The Nanjing-born, Shanghai-raised Ms Chang lived briefly in Hongkong while still an infant, her family having moved to the colony after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. They soon returned to Shanghai, but moved permanently to Hongkong in 1949, when she was in high school. So why didn't she pursue a career in Cantonese movies? ''I just never felt comfortable acting in Cantonese. I might say the line properly in conversation, but once the camera started rolling, the words would come out in Mandarin,'' she said.
Mandarin music may no longer have the same audience appeal in Hongkong that it did during the 50s, and 60s, but many of her hit songs have been adapted into Cantonese and are still popular today. A tune she introduced in Air Hostess (1959), for instance,became a tremendous success again last year when it was performed by Tony ''The Lover'' Leung in '92 the Legendary La Rose Noire. A Cantonese version of Jajambo, originally featured in Wild, Wild Rose (1960), is the theme song of the new Hongkong comedy Tom, Dick and Hairy.