Wang Zhibo (1924–1964) was born in Shanghai and earned an arts degree from St. John's University and a law degree from Soochow University. A practised calligrapher who published several books on the art, he was invited by Louis Cha to brush the masthead of Ming Pao at the newspaper's founding, and it is still used today. He wrote his first screenplay, for a 1952 film, and between 1952 and 1964 drafted about a dozen scripts for Yung Hwa, Hsin Hwa and Shaw Brothers, among them Spring is in the Air (1954), The 72 Martyrs of Canton (co-written, 1954) and Yang Kwei-Fei, the Magnificent Concubine (1962). From the 1950s he joined the production department of MP & GI, rising to production supervisor and overseeing its scripting, while penning seven more scripts for Cathay affiliates such as Rain Storm in Chinatown (1956), Nonya and Baba (1956), The Magic Lamp (1964) and Fairy, Ghost, Vixen (1965). He also appeared as an actor in The Heroine (1959) and in the stage play Sorrows of the Qing Court. On 20 June 1964 he died in the air crash at Shenkang, Taiwan, together with studio chief Loke Wan Tho and other film figures; his last script, Passion, reached the screen in 1967. His wife, Weng Mulan (1927–1998), was a painter and actress.
Wang Zhibo brought his calligraphic craft into film writing, drafting nearly twenty scripts for Yung Hwa, Hsin Hwa, Shaw Brothers and Cathay between 1952 and 1964 and long overseeing MP & GI's production department; the Ming Pao masthead he brushed for Louis Cha is still in use, and the 1964 Shenkang crash robbed Cathay of a production and scripting mainstay.
Achievements
- 1952 · Wrote his first screenplay, beginning his screenwriting career
- 1954 · Scripted Spring is in the Air and co-wrote The 72 Martyrs of Canton
- 1959 · Brushed the masthead of Ming Pao at Louis Cha's invitation
- 1962 · Wrote the screenplay for Shaw Brothers' Yang Kwei-Fei, the Magnificent Concubine