Chapter 2 - P. Ramlee, the star: Malay stardom and society in the 1950s–60s

Summary

Although P. Ramlee died in 1973, he has attained legendary status in modern day Malaysia. His songs are still played on the radio, his films are still shown on television, he has streets named after him and two memorial museums devoted to him: one in Penang where he was born and one in Kuala Lumpur in the house where he spent the final years of his life. There is even a stage musical devoted to his life called P. Ramlee: The Musical. While his lasting fame in modern day Malaysia presents a somewhat distorted picture of the period's Malay stardom, with Ramlee almost completely eclipsing its other performers, many of whom also attained huge levels of fame during the ‘golden age’ of Malay cinema (1950s–60s), he was nevertheless its biggest star. He appeared in over sixty films, most in the lead role, and he was the highest paid performer at Malay Film Productions (Sulong 1990: 130), albeit in part because he took on multiple roles in the filmmaking process: he was actor, writer, director, composer and musician. He also appeared ubiquitously in newspaper articles and the period's fan magazines, some of which I discuss in this chapter.

While Ramlee made his most famous films in Singapore, it is Malaysia that has mainly claimed him as its own. This stems in part from the fact that he was born in Penang and died in Kuala Lumpur, after moving there from Singapore. It is also related to issues of race: while Malaysia is multiethnic, consisting of Malays, Chinese, Indians and Orang Asli, Malays are the largest group and this has shaped the nation's politics, including its attitude to culture and the arts. There have been many national efforts over the years to promote the Malay filmmaker Ramlee, which Ahmad and Lee (2015) see as part of a broader agenda relating to the ‘Malaynisation’ of Malaysian society.