Loke Wan Tho
Encyclopedia
Loke Wan Tho born in Kuala Lumpur
(now in Malaysia), was a cinema
magnate, ornithologist, and photographer. He was the founder of Cathay Organisation
in Singapore
and Malaysia, and Motion Picture and General Investments Limited (MP&GI) in Hong Kong
.
. Loke Yew had come to Malaya in 1858 as a poor youth of 11 years of age and by his death had amassed a fortune to make him one of the richest men in Malaya. Wan Tho was 2 years old when his father died. His early education was at Victoria Institution
, Kuala Lumpur, a school set up by the British for Chinese boys which counted Loke Yew as one of its founders.
By reason of his delicate health, he was taken by his mother Mrs Loke Cheng Kim together with his two younger sisters to school at Chillon College in Montreux, Switzerland in 1929. He was the Swiss County (Vaud) long jump champion in 1932. He then went up to King's College, Cambridge where he obtained an Honour's degree in English Literature and History in 1936. English literature and poetry henceforward became his steadfast companions throughout his life and it was known that in his minimal personal kit on all his ornithological expeditions was always to be found some of his favourite anthologies. For a brief period after that, he was at the London School of Economics. However the winds of war were blowing in Europe and he returned to Malaya just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Escaping the Japanese in February 1942 on a ship called Nora Moller, Dato Loke Wan Tho did not escape unscathed as a bomb from a Japanese aircraft sank his ship in the Strait of Banka. He was rescued from the sea, temporarily blinded and severely burned. He was hospitalised in Batavia (Jakarta) and then evacuated to India. However, he was fortunate in that shortly after he arrived in Bombay, he was introduced to the famous Indian ornithologist Dr Salim Ali
, who was to become a lifetime friend and a frequent companion on many major expeditions. It was to Dr Salim Ali's credit that Dato Loke's passion for ornithology developed. As Dato Loke himself wrote in his book "A Company of Birds" of his friend" : "Under the guidance of an expert (Salim Ali) my interest in birds which hitherto had been but of a dilettante kind blossomed into a deeper passion."
in 1959.
By 1953 Dato Loke and Ho Ah Loke had started production of Malay films at the Cathay Keris Studios which were purpose built. Many a classic film has come from these studios located out in East Coast Road Singapore - Pontianak, Orang Minyak, Bawang Puteh Bawang Merah, Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat and many more.
Dato Loke also bought over an existing film studio in Hong Kong in 1955 and started to produce a library of Chinese films to supply to his chain of cinemas which stretched from Singapore, Malaya and Borneo to Bangkok. The films were also distributed to the region and Cathay stars like Ge Lan, You Min, Lin Dai and Yeh Fung became household names in Indochina, Thailand, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Sarawak, Borneo and of course Singapore and Malaya.
The Cathay Organisation, of which Dato Loke Wan Tho was its Chairman, not only owned and operated cinemas and film studios, produced Malay and Chinese films but also owned and operated hotels and restaurants in Singapore (The Cathay Hotel and Ocean Park Hotel and their attendant restaurants) and Fiji (The Grand Pacific Hotel Suva
and The Cathay Hotel Lautoka). He also had interests in rubber, palm oil and coconut plantations in Malaysia.
From the end of the war Dato Loke had become increasingly caught up in the business world. Besides his own companies, he was Chairman of Malayan Airways Ltd, Singapore Telephone Board, Malayan Banking and was on the board of directors of numerous companies including Wearne Brothers, Sime Darby, Kwong Yik Bank (Loke Yew was one of its founders), Great Eastern Life, H A O'Connors Ltd, Straits Steamship Co Ltd and Rediffusion (Singapore) Ltd.
In his lifetime Dato Loke Wan Tho was honoured by the state of Kelantan in Malaysia from whom he received his Datoship, Cambodia, Japan and Malaya. Always the philanthropist he supported many charities, associations and educational institutions.
Dato Loke Wan Tho was an unusual man for his time—a Renaissance Man ahead of his time in a world that was once the backwater of an Empire—he was an ornithologist and lover of Nature long before it became popular to care for the environment; he was a man of the word whilst many were still unschooled; a sportsman who played for the love of the sport despite his poor health and he was a collector of art in its many forms whilst many did not know how to appreciate it.
His greatest legacy, however, was to his family: he set a priceless example to many of us and today we owe our love of fauna and flora, our various interests in sport and academia, our passion for collecting art and our contributions to society to his direct influence. He was a man of many interests that ranged from books to collecting art to golf. He was very supportive of local art and sponsored many artists particularly Cheong Soo Pieng and Thomas Yeo.
He played a good game of golf and became the first President of the Singapore Island Country Club after it was merged. He had a love for cars and imported the second Porsche into Singapore but he also took pleasure in simple things like ice cream and his dogs. However his greatest passion was photography and ornithology. This passion took him on great expeditions to Papua New Guinea to photograph the Birds of Paradise, Cambodia where a firm and lasting friendship with King Sihanouk was forged, India, Pakistan, the Hindu Kush, Kashmir, Sikkim and the wild yonder, always with his camera and Dr Salim Ali for company.
As one writer said of him, "Generous to a fault, whether he gave to State, Charity or Institution, to aspiring artist or struggling student, his gifts were made after careful consideration and always with the minimum of ostentation. Indeed, it was his tact, conscientiousness and complete integrity and efficiency with which he discharged all his functions which won him the respect and admiration of all."
. Nine months later on a flight to Taiwan to attend at the Asian Film Festival, Loke and his wife Mavis were killed in the crash of Civil Air Transport Flight B-908
, along with his chief executives. It was on 20 June 1964, just 6 days after he had just turned 49 years old.
Text by Malcolm MacDonald， with chapters including “The History of Khmers”。“The Ruins of Khmers”。
111 Black and White Plates of Angkor Wat， taken by Loke Wan Tho
and M.MacDonald。
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur is the capital and the second largest city in Malaysia by population. The city proper, making up an area of , has a population of 1.4 million as of 2010. Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as the Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.2 million...
(now in Malaysia), was a cinema
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
magnate, ornithologist, and photographer. He was the founder of Cathay Organisation
Cathay Organisation
Cathay Organisation Holdings Limited is one of Singapore's leading leisure and entertainment groups. It has the first THX cinema hall and digital cinema in Singapore. The group has operations in Singapore and Malaysia.-The early years:...
in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
and Malaysia, and Motion Picture and General Investments Limited (MP&GI) in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
.
Earl Years
Born in Kuala Lumpur on 14 June 1915, Dato Loke Wan Tho was the 9th child of Loke YewLoke Yew
Loke Yew , CMG, LL.D. was a famous businessman and philanthropist during the British Malaya era. He was regarded as the richest man in Malaysia during his time and played a significant role in the growth of Kuala Lumpur and was also one of the founding fathers of Victoria Institution, Kuala...
. Loke Yew had come to Malaya in 1858 as a poor youth of 11 years of age and by his death had amassed a fortune to make him one of the richest men in Malaya. Wan Tho was 2 years old when his father died. His early education was at Victoria Institution
Victoria Institution
Victoria Institution is a premier secondary school for boys and one of the oldest schools in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The school is widely known as V.I. and a student of Victoria Institution bears the name Victorian....
, Kuala Lumpur, a school set up by the British for Chinese boys which counted Loke Yew as one of its founders.
By reason of his delicate health, he was taken by his mother Mrs Loke Cheng Kim together with his two younger sisters to school at Chillon College in Montreux, Switzerland in 1929. He was the Swiss County (Vaud) long jump champion in 1932. He then went up to King's College, Cambridge where he obtained an Honour's degree in English Literature and History in 1936. English literature and poetry henceforward became his steadfast companions throughout his life and it was known that in his minimal personal kit on all his ornithological expeditions was always to be found some of his favourite anthologies. For a brief period after that, he was at the London School of Economics. However the winds of war were blowing in Europe and he returned to Malaya just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
Escaping the Japanese in February 1942 on a ship called Nora Moller, Dato Loke Wan Tho did not escape unscathed as a bomb from a Japanese aircraft sank his ship in the Strait of Banka. He was rescued from the sea, temporarily blinded and severely burned. He was hospitalised in Batavia (Jakarta) and then evacuated to India. However, he was fortunate in that shortly after he arrived in Bombay, he was introduced to the famous Indian ornithologist Dr Salim Ali
Salim Ali (ornithologist)
Sálim Moizuddin Abdul Ali was an Indian ornithologist and naturalist. Known as the "birdman of India", Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped develop ornithology...
, who was to become a lifetime friend and a frequent companion on many major expeditions. It was to Dr Salim Ali's credit that Dato Loke's passion for ornithology developed. As Dato Loke himself wrote in his book "A Company of Birds" of his friend" : "Under the guidance of an expert (Salim Ali) my interest in birds which hitherto had been but of a dilettante kind blossomed into a deeper passion."
Business Career
Although Dato Loke had inherited a vast fortune of tin mines, plantations and properties from his father Loke Yew, he went on to grow the company which his mother had formed together with him in 1935 called Associated Theatres Ltd. The Pavilion Cinema in Kuala Lumpur and the Cathay Cinema in Singapore were built. Partnerships were forged with Mr Ho Ah Loke and others to form the Cathay cinema circuit that counted 80 cinemas at its peak. Associated Theatres Ltd later changed its name to Cathay OrganisationCathay Organisation
Cathay Organisation Holdings Limited is one of Singapore's leading leisure and entertainment groups. It has the first THX cinema hall and digital cinema in Singapore. The group has operations in Singapore and Malaysia.-The early years:...
in 1959.
By 1953 Dato Loke and Ho Ah Loke had started production of Malay films at the Cathay Keris Studios which were purpose built. Many a classic film has come from these studios located out in East Coast Road Singapore - Pontianak, Orang Minyak, Bawang Puteh Bawang Merah, Hang Tuah, Hang Jebat and many more.
Dato Loke also bought over an existing film studio in Hong Kong in 1955 and started to produce a library of Chinese films to supply to his chain of cinemas which stretched from Singapore, Malaya and Borneo to Bangkok. The films were also distributed to the region and Cathay stars like Ge Lan, You Min, Lin Dai and Yeh Fung became household names in Indochina, Thailand, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Sarawak, Borneo and of course Singapore and Malaya.
The Cathay Organisation, of which Dato Loke Wan Tho was its Chairman, not only owned and operated cinemas and film studios, produced Malay and Chinese films but also owned and operated hotels and restaurants in Singapore (The Cathay Hotel and Ocean Park Hotel and their attendant restaurants) and Fiji (The Grand Pacific Hotel Suva
Suva
Suva features a tropical rainforest climate under the Koppen climate classification. The city sees a copious amount of precipitation during the course of the year. Suva averages 3,000 mm of precipitation annually with its driest month, July averaging 125 mm of rain per year. In fact,...
and The Cathay Hotel Lautoka). He also had interests in rubber, palm oil and coconut plantations in Malaysia.
From the end of the war Dato Loke had become increasingly caught up in the business world. Besides his own companies, he was Chairman of Malayan Airways Ltd, Singapore Telephone Board, Malayan Banking and was on the board of directors of numerous companies including Wearne Brothers, Sime Darby, Kwong Yik Bank (Loke Yew was one of its founders), Great Eastern Life, H A O'Connors Ltd, Straits Steamship Co Ltd and Rediffusion (Singapore) Ltd.
In his lifetime Dato Loke Wan Tho was honoured by the state of Kelantan in Malaysia from whom he received his Datoship, Cambodia, Japan and Malaya. Always the philanthropist he supported many charities, associations and educational institutions.
Dato Loke Wan Tho was an unusual man for his time—a Renaissance Man ahead of his time in a world that was once the backwater of an Empire—he was an ornithologist and lover of Nature long before it became popular to care for the environment; he was a man of the word whilst many were still unschooled; a sportsman who played for the love of the sport despite his poor health and he was a collector of art in its many forms whilst many did not know how to appreciate it.
His greatest legacy, however, was to his family: he set a priceless example to many of us and today we owe our love of fauna and flora, our various interests in sport and academia, our passion for collecting art and our contributions to society to his direct influence. He was a man of many interests that ranged from books to collecting art to golf. He was very supportive of local art and sponsored many artists particularly Cheong Soo Pieng and Thomas Yeo.
He played a good game of golf and became the first President of the Singapore Island Country Club after it was merged. He had a love for cars and imported the second Porsche into Singapore but he also took pleasure in simple things like ice cream and his dogs. However his greatest passion was photography and ornithology. This passion took him on great expeditions to Papua New Guinea to photograph the Birds of Paradise, Cambodia where a firm and lasting friendship with King Sihanouk was forged, India, Pakistan, the Hindu Kush, Kashmir, Sikkim and the wild yonder, always with his camera and Dr Salim Ali for company.
As one writer said of him, "Generous to a fault, whether he gave to State, Charity or Institution, to aspiring artist or struggling student, his gifts were made after careful consideration and always with the minimum of ostentation. Indeed, it was his tact, conscientiousness and complete integrity and efficiency with which he discharged all his functions which won him the respect and admiration of all."
Death
Loke married his third wife, Mavis Chew in September 1963 in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Nine months later on a flight to Taiwan to attend at the Asian Film Festival, Loke and his wife Mavis were killed in the crash of Civil Air Transport Flight B-908
Civil Air Transport Flight B-908
Civil Air Transport Flight B-908 was a Curtiss C-46D operated by the Taiwanese airline Civil Air Transport that on 20 June 1964 crashed near the village of Shenkang in western Taiwan, killing all 57 people aboard. Among the dead were 20 Americans, one Briton and members of the Malaysian delegation...
, along with his chief executives. It was on 20 June 1964, just 6 days after he had just turned 49 years old.
Publications
- A Company of Birds. Michael Joseph, London 1959
- AngkorAngkor WatAngkor Wat is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation – first Hindu,...
, by Malcolm MacDonald and Loke Wan Tho, Jonathan Cape, London, 1958,59,60.
Text by Malcolm MacDonald， with chapters including “The History of Khmers”。“The Ruins of Khmers”。
111 Black and White Plates of Angkor Wat， taken by Loke Wan Tho
and M.MacDonald。
Loke Wan Tho Memorials
- Loke Wan Tho Photography Exhibit is housed on 3rd floor of Singapore Photography Society
- Loke Wan Tho Library in Singapore Jurong Bird Park
- Wan Tho Avenue in Sennet Estate, Singapore
- Loke Wan Tho Star, #38 Avenue of Stars, Hong KongAvenue of Stars, Hong KongThe Avenue of Stars , modelled on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is located along the Victoria Harbour waterfront in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. It honours celebrities of the Hong Kong film industry.-History:...
- Museum open to the public housed on 2nd floor of The CathayThe CathayThe Cathay is a mixed-use 17-storey cinema, shopping mall and apartment building located at Handy Road and Mount Sophia in the Museum Planning Area of Singapore. Owned and managed by Cathay Organisation, the building originally opened in 1939 as Cathay Building. In 2000, it closed for redevelopment...
