Ricky Chan Ka-suen (9 January 1946 – 8 September 2019) was a Hong Kong film director, television director and pop musician who in later life hosted a nostalgic music programme on Chinese-language radio in Canada. Raised in Mong Kok and Ho Man Tin, he was the eldest of five children; his younger sister, Chan Wing-han, became the Golden Harvest star Nora Miao, known for her role in Fist of Fury. In the mid-1960s he was the keyboardist of Teddy Robin and the Playboys, a band formed with Teddy Robin, his brothers, Norman Cheng and others that was billed as Hong Kong's Beatles and stood among the first generation of local pop groups. In the early 1970s he joined Television Broadcasts as a director, working on the long-running variety show Enjoy Yourself Tonight and co-writing the comedy programmes whose success he later turned into features. His directing credits include his 1977 debut, the comedy hits of 1980, and further pictures in 1982 and 1984, the last starring Shek Kin. In 1980 he became general manager of a film company, overseeing the production of Tsui Hark's The Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind; the following year he set up an advertising and production company with Miao, wrote and directed a nostalgic music film in 1982, and planned another picture the same year. He was the first husband of the 1973 Miss Hong Kong, Winnie Suen, though the marriage lasted only two years. He emigrated to Toronto in the 1990s, where he hosted the long-running programme Days Gone By on the Chinese radio station am1430, introducing listeners to Hong Kong's earlier popular songs. He died of cancer in Toronto on 8 September 2019, aged seventy-three.
Ricky Chan was one of the few figures to move from pop band and television direction into film. By carrying Enjoy Yourself Tonight-style comedy onto the big screen he embodied the interplay between Cantonese film comedy and television in the late 1970s, and after emigrating to Canada he kept Hong Kong's popular-song memory alive through his radio programme.
Achievements
- 1977 · Released his first feature, adapting his Television Broadcasts show for the screen.
- 1980 · Became general manager of a film company and oversaw production of Tsui Hark's The Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind.
- 1982 · Wrote the nostalgic music film, a look back at Hong Kong's earlier pop era.