In her heyday, Mona Fong was a star in Singapore and Malaysia, with her expressive voice drawing crowds
The late singer turned television producer toured the world in the 1950s and 1960s, with audiences in Asia charmed by her English and Mandarin love songs
While the late Mona Fong Yat-wah’s expressive singing brought her many fans in Hong Kong, her lilting voice and charming looks also made her a hit elsewhere in the region in the 1950s, especially in Singapore and Malaysia.
Newspaper articles from Singapore described Fong, who died on Tuesday aged 83, as vivacious and with a “sultry voice”, singing both Mandarin and English romantic love songs while wearing either a cheongsam or a western-style dress.
Mona Fong, widow of Hong Kong movie mogul Sir Run Run Shaw, dies aged 83
The September 6, 1953, edition of The Straits Times cooed over Fong and another Hong Kong singer, Lo Ling, saying that with the duo performing at restaurants with a live band, the number of men eating at those places had gone up.
Indeed, it was Fong’s Shanghai-style singing in Singapore, featuring strains of Chinese folk and European jazz, that caught the attention of revered Hong Kong movie mogul Sir Run Run Shaw in 1952.
Fong later became Shaw’s close friend and the chief lieutenant of the late mogul’s extensive empire, but the two only married in 1997, 10 years after Shaw’s first wife died.
Watch: Mona Fong performing in 1957