Albert Odell

Albert Odell was a British citizen, born in Hong Kong. His father was a Russian Jew, and his mother was from the French province Alsace-Lorraine. A few years after World War II Odell went to work for Republic Pictures' distribution office in Singapore. In 1951 he quit his job and joined the Singapore-based Cathay Organisation. When Cathay established International Films Distributing Agency (a few years later to be restructured into Motion Picture & General Investment Co., Ltd.) and started film production in Hong Kong, Odell became the manager of the production company. He was credited as producer in the company's films, but most of the money he produced for came from his boss Loke Wan Tho, who was the owner of the company and the boss of the Cathay Organisation. However, Mr. Loke was just financing the films by forwarding money to Hong Kong from his office in Singapore, and seemed to feel that he was not much involved in the actual production, so in his usual gentlemanly way he let the producer credit go to his manager in Hong Kong. Odell also acted as Mr. Loke's contact in the legal actions against Zuyong Li and his Yung Hwa studio, which Loke had invested in after Yung Hwa faced bankruptcy. When Li refused to release the films, and started to burn prints and negatives, Loke had to take action against him to protect his own interests, with Odell as his representative in Hong Kong. Loke won the case and took over the studio, but he eventually had to build a completely new Yung Hwa studio at Hammer Hill Road, and Albert Odell supervised the construction work for him. When completed Odell became the manager of the studio, but in 1956 he was transferred back to Singapore, and Robert Chung replaced him as Cathay's manager and producer in Hong Kong. In 1957 Odell left Cathay and joined Shaw (later Shaw Brothers) for three years. He did not seem pleased with the treatment he got there, and as soon as his contract expired he left and had various jobs for others, mainly film distribution related, but he never seemed to stay very long in the same job. Among others he worked as MGM's representative in Vietnam, and then from 1965 to 1971 he was representing the Walt Disney company in Singapore. In the 1970s he turned to the home cinema market, films on videotape, and he ended his working days running a video rental store in Singapore for several years.