Chan King-sam was born in Hong Kong to a Xinhui, Guangdong family; his father Chan Kei-yui was a well-known film set designer. He worked on sets with his father while still at school, and after finishing secondary school joined the trade as his father's assistant, drawing sets and construction plans. Hung Suk-wan's Wild Flowers are Sweeter (1950) was his first credited work. Through the 1950s and 1960s he freelanced on Cantonese pictures for Union, Kong Ngee, Ling Kwong and Sin Hok Kong Luen, including Parental Love (1955), Kids from the Poor Family (1960), The Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre (1963) and The Wolf Village (1968). In 1962 he joined Shaw Brothers as a set and art designer, becoming head of the set-design department and studio manager; Li Han-hsiang prized him and used him repeatedly on The Warlord (1972), The Last Tempest (1975), The Last Days of the Qing (1976), The Dream of the Red Chamber (1977) and Tiger and Widow (1981). The sets of Chor Yuen's Killer Clans (1976) and Sun Chung's The Avenging Eagle (1978) were also his. From Golden Harvest's founding to the early 1980s he worked anonymously or under aliases such as Chin Sam and Lu Ma on The Big Boss (1971), Way of the Dragon (1972), Enter the Dragon (1973) and Project A (1983), and anonymously on Tsui Hark's Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983). Over his career he designed sets for more than five hundred Mandarin, Cantonese and Chaozhou-dialect films and won Best Art Direction at Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards five times. After retiring from Shaw Brothers in the mid-1980s he remained a consultant to Television Broadcasts Limited.
Building sets by hand-drawing and construction, Chan King-sam worked on more than five hundred Mandarin, Cantonese and Chaozhou-dialect films, making him one of the most important art directors of the Hong Kong studio era. He won the Golden Horse Best Art Direction award five times, and his palace sets for Li Han-hsiang's The Last Tempest and other court films defined the look of Shaw Brothers period pictures.
Achievements
- 1950 · Received his first credited set-design work on Hung Suk-wan's Wild Flowers are Sweeter.
- 1975 · Won his first Golden Horse Award for Best Art Direction for The Last Tempest.
- 1984 · Won his fifth Golden Horse Best Art Direction award for An Amorous Woman of Tang Dynasty.