What entertainment was like in the 1950s
Published on: Sunday, April 05, 2020
By: Nicholas Chung
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Tawau town in the 1950s.
There were the two long established but primitive cinema theatres, the Empire and Empress. These two Panggung between then screened mainly Cantonese and Mandarin feature films in black and white.
But later, they started to screen technicolour movies from Hollywood. I remember watching Esther Williams in her stunning swimming costume. There was also the musicals starring Doris Day and others. There were also Western movies starring Alan Ladd, Robbert Taylor and John Wayne (real name Marion Morrison) with his inimitable gait with swagger the way he twisted his hips when walking, gun in hand, to confront the bad-guys.
These films among other Cowboy films were extremely entertaining and memorable to me and my siblings.
These two cinemas in between them will occasionally show Malay movies mainly to cater to the need of the Malay populace.
There were also the Operas, the Cantonese and Teochew ones from Hong Kong and Singapore. They catered to the sectarian audience and not really very popular.
In the mid-1950s, to my great excitement a Circus came to perform in the town. This was the ‘Tah Tian Chew’ troupe. It was a large and well-organised circus. They put up a large tent complete with generator, as electricity supply had not been made available at that time.
The circus always performed to a full house as people came not only to the show but to see the animals. For many of us it was the first time we ever saw live horses, elephants, tiger, lions and bears, not to mention different breeds of monkeys.
To put the animals on show, they first erected a metal enclosure in the middle of the tent. The animal tamers were very impressive with their gladiator type attire and a great big long whip with a loud crackling noise when waved with great force in the air.
The animals, including lions and tigers, were highly trained and performed according to direction. And then, there were trapeze artists with their daredevil mid-air performances. There was also a troupe of dancing girls who performed to the can-can tune of the ‘Moulin Rouge’ in the background. And so the spectators were enthralled and they packed the seats every night. This circus moved to other town after about a month in Tawau.
Then came a second circus – the “Shen Chang Fook”. This was a smaller circus. They didn’t have as many variety of animals nor did their performances match those of ‘Tah Tian Chew’ and thus their spectators were much less but they stayed in town longer than their predecessor.
There was a locally raised and little known small group of musicians in town at the time. They were a five-men group of musicians who performed more to amuse themselves than for public entertainment.
The leader of this ensemble was a gentlemen called Chong Pit Siew, an accomplished violinist and an electrical wireman. His other companion was Ismail Khan, another violinist, other members comprised of a guitarist, a saxophonist and a drummer. They performed every Saturday evening in a private house located near the present day St Patrick’s School. Few people knew about the existence of this little band and hence the audience were just a handful including this writer.
Their music was first class and the regular fare consisted of melodious tunes made popular by conductors like Victor Sylvester, Billy Vaughn and James Last. They also played tunes from Malay movies and Bangsawan.
During their performances, I always sneaked in and sat quietly, in a far comer of the hall and enjoyed an evening of good music.
The late Chong Pit Siew, apart from being a professional wireman, and part-time violinist was a motorcycle enthusiast. He owned a shaft driver Norton bike with which he was often seen riding around town.
Ismail Khan was a seaman and later promoted to take charge of the Governor’s official launch. the ‘Petrel’ which was based in Kota Kinabalu. Unfortunately, there was no trace of the other three members of the ensemble.
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