Raymond Chow

A native of Guangdong province with Hakka roots, Golden Harvest studio president Raymond Chow was born in Hong Kong and considered to be a role model for success as a product of the parochial Catholic education system from China's past. Having first attended the legendary St. Stephen's College Preparatory School for Boys in the Stanley peninsula, Chow would migrate to Shanghai after his father's death during his middle school years to attend Shanghai's prestigious St. John's Secondary school and then on to college as a journalism major at St. John's University prior to returning to Hong Kong in 1949. A notable item in Chow's early resume prior to show business was his working in the audio visual department for the US Foreign service where he was later promoted as the radio program coordinator for the Voice of America in Hong Kong. This exposure landed Chow into the Hong Kong offices of the Shaw family from Singapore to direct their newly formed public relations and publicity operations in anticipation of usurping market share domination for the former island colony's entertainment dollar firmly held by their big studio rival Cathay/MPG&I studios run by the Loke family also of Southeast Asia. History has it that Chow would be the key catalyst in helping elevate Shaw Brothers as the new corporate 'Taipan' studio that would go on to dominate Hong Kong entertainment circles for the next twenty five years that is, until Chow himself who along with his defecting publicity apprentice Leonard Ho, would leave Shaws in 1970 to found the upstart Golden Harvest studios across town ironically at the newly defunct Cathay/MPGI studios compound. Having recruited other past Shaw alumni like directors Lo Wei, Huang Feng, Wu Chia Hsiang, Wu Ma and John Woo and stars like Cheng Pei Pei, Wang Yu, Michael Hui, Bruce Lee and a young stunt player named Jackie Chan, Raymond Chow and Company along with a reach that would extend across the pond to Hollywood, would quickly rise to become Shaws' main rival as a serious contender to dominate the box office for at home and abroad from the mid-1970s to the present.