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Blooming
Success (1966-67)
These two years were a diverse and prolific period
during which Connie’s talent, skills, and popularity reached full
bloom. In 1966, her most frequent onscreen partner was Josephine Siao,
who had also studied opera under Fen Juhua. The two were often cast as disciples
of the same master and sometimes—when Connie played the male lead —as
young heroes in love. Capitalizing on their chemistry, veteran director
Lee Tit gave them the lead roles in Eternal Love, his remake
of a popular opera from the 1950s. Even more successful was Chan
Wan’s Colourful Youth, which became the
box office champ of the year and set the trend for Western-style musicals
in Cantonese cinema. From then on, Connie and Josephine appeared
increasingly in films with contemporary settings but less frequently
in each other’s company. Both of them were paired off with a
variety of leading men in a profusion of comedies, musicals, romances,
and action movies. Movie-Fan Princess was a prototype
combo of all four genres and, more significantly, the beginning
of Connie’s four-year onscreen romance with her most popular leading
man, Lui Kei. And then there was Lady Bond, Cantonese cinema’s
answer to 007 that spawned three sequels and fueled the transition
from traditional martial-arts pictures to contemporary action movies. more
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