Nguyen Chanh Tin's years in prison and illegal singing

Nguyen Chanh Tin, a name that was once the pride of Vietnamese cinema. However, few people know that he was once imprisoned and had to rely on cinema to be released.

When mentioning Nguyen Chanh Tin, people think of Nguyen Thanh Luan in "The Upside Down Card Game". This movie was so famous that, decades later, it is still a "golden work" of the country's cinema.

However, the interesting thing is that the cast of this film have never studied cinema, except for Thuong Tin. Chanh Tin said happily that "All the actors who played Van bai lat ngua are... uneducated but everyone put their heart and soul into their roles".

He said, from the character Nguyen Thanh Luan, Ms. Thanh Lan, Ms. Thuy An who sells sugarcane juice (Vuong Hong Sen's wife) none of them studied anything related to cinema.

Cai Van My is a businessman in real life, Lam Binh Chi plays Ngo Dinh Nhu, a jeans seller, and priest Ngo Dinh Thuc is a poet and writer.

Later, among the actors in "The Upside Down Card Game", only two men named Tin (Chanh Tin and Thuong Tin) remained active in the film industry while the others returned to their old jobs. Occasionally, everyone met each other, but mainly at the drinking table, because each person had their own job.

Nguyen Chanh Tin then and now.

In prison, released just to... make a movie

Chanh Tin said that from the beginning, he was not chosen for the role of Nguyen Thanh Luan but someone else. The reason was because the government chose people with good backgrounds, coming from revolutionary actors, and Chanh Tin did not belong to this category.

Mr. Huynh Ba Thanh was one of the people who worked undercover in the South during the old regime. Mr. Thanh was an insider so he knew Saigon and Pham Ngoc Thao very well. He was also handsome so he was chosen first for this role but could not play it.

The show had filmed one episode but it was not good enough and had to be abandoned. Later, other actors were chosen, such as The Anh, Lam Toi, etc., but the central government did not agree.

At that time, Chanh Tin was an actor of the Bong Hong Drama Troupe and was a famous person among the youth. But because of too much poverty and hardship, unable to bear it, Chanh Tin escaped the country. But the trip was not successful, he had to return to report and was arrested and imprisoned.

At that time, Mr. Sau Thao, also known as Duong Dinh Thao, Director of the Department of Culture and Information of Ho Chi Minh City, felt very sorry for Chanh Tin. He told the leader, "There is a young boy who might be able to pay, but now he has committed a crime and is in prison. Now let him try to pay. If he can pay, then his prison sentence will be lifted so he can redeem his crime."

Thanks to that, the Department of Information and Culture asked the police to come in and take Chanh Tin out. Chanh Tin believed they were moving him to the prison, but it turned out he was taken to the film studio.

The role of Nguyen Thanh Luan in a lifetime by artist Chanh Tin.

Seeing that, Chanh Tin was so happy. Like a drowning person grabbing a life buoy, he immediately grabbed it. He said, "Let me go home for a few days to read the script," so they let me go home.

However, the time Chanh Tin spent reading the script was essentially house arrest. He was not allowed to go anywhere for several days after reading the script. After reading it, he went straight to filming. He filmed a few scenes and then went back to prison to wait there.

Chanh Tin honestly said, "The Central Government did not know that I was in prison, because if they knew I was in prison, who would rate me? Mr. Sau Thao felt sorry for me, pretended that it was true, sent my test film to the Central Government, and then the Central Government would rate me! So my prison sentence was lifted, and I went out to make films."

Sharing about the salary from the movie, Chanh Tin said, at first it was three hundred dong for 6 months of work, without any other necessities.

He said, "If I calculate, I get about 2 dong a day, and by the time I finished filming episode 1, I got about 6 dong a day. At that time, 6 dong was enough to buy about 2 bowls of pho, and if I ate pho in the alley, it was 1 dong per bowl."

Too poor so have to sing illegally

But acting in movies was allowed, but singing in Chanh Tin was still forbidden. Although his wife was the daughter of a government official in Saigon, at that time, to have money for the family, singer Bich Tram had to do laundry and ironing for several clothing companies.

Nguyen Chanh Tin on the music stage.

Later, musician Trinh Cong Son introduced the book translation job at the Literature and Arts Association to Chanh Tin's wife, but the money was not much.

Chanh Tin said, "One page cost a few cents, translating a whole bunch of books, eyes always white, only earned a few thousand dong. There were times when the family went 3 months without a piece of meat. If we wanted to eat meat, we had to cycle to the music troupe, but at home we only ate rice mixed with pork fat."

After finishing episode 1, Chanh Tin asked for the ban to be lifted, as a way to atone for his sins. He said, "I work in the arts for the state, with a meager salary, but if you ban singing, how can I live? My wife just gave birth."

After that, the ban was lifted. Chanh Tin started singing again. At that time, Saigon only had one or two music venues like 126 and the Television Station.

Singing in a troupe, Chanh Tin earned 7 or 8 dong a night, but singing alone he earned twenty or thirty dong.

He said, "Life was like that, just a miserable day-to-day existence. At that time, the government had a timekeeper. I was a vedett but only got 20 dong, which meant I was an A-list singer; and a B-list singer got 5 dong less, which was very unfair, even though on stage I sang dozens of times better than B-list singers."

Due to economic turmoil, in 2014 Nguyen Chanh Tin and his wife returned to the music stage.

Chanh Tin even had to sing illegally. At that time, many localities organized programs to attract artists, they paid him two to three hundred dong per night.

At a time when the highest salary in Saigon was 80 dong, many provinces paid him up to 500, even 700, 800 dong. Thanks to that, Chanh Tin's life became less miserable.

"Later, I both sang and acted in movies and saved some money. I bought land to build a house. Before that, my wife and I lived in a tiny room given to us by my father-in-law," Chanh Tin said.

According to Tin Tuc.VN