Curtains down on kung fu king

Run Run Shaw, the colourful Hong Kong media mogul whose name was synonymous with low-budget Chinese action and horror films - and especially with the wildly successful kung fu genre, which he is largely credited with inventing - died on January 7 at his home in Hong Kong. He was 106.

Born in China, Shaw and his older brother, Run Me, were movie pioneers in Asia, producing and sometimes directing films and owning lucrative cinema chains. His companies are believed to have released more than 800 films worldwide.

After his brother's death in 1985, Shaw expanded his interest in television and became a publishing and real estate magnate as well. For his philanthropy, much of it going to educational and medical causes, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and showered with public expressions of gratitude by the Communist authorities in Beijing.

Shaw enjoyed the zany glamour of the Asian media world he helped create. He presided over his companies from a garish Art Deco palace in Hong Kong, a cross between a Hollywood mansion and a Hans Christian Andersen cookie castle. Well into his 90s he attended social gatherings with a movie actress on each arm. And he liked to be photographed in a tai chi exercise pose, wearing the black gown of a traditional mandarin.

Asked what his favourite films were, Shaw, a billionaire, once replied, "I particularly like movies that make money."

Run Run Shaw was born Shao Yifu in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, on November 23, 1907. As a child, he moved to Shanghai, where his father ran a profitable textile business. According to some Hong Kong news media accounts, Run Run and Run Me were English-sounding nicknames the father gave his sons as part of a family joke that played on the similarity of the family name to the word rickshaw. Evincing little interest in the family business, Run Run and Run Me turned instead to entertainment. The first play they produced was called Man From Shensi, on a stage, as it turned out, of rotten planks. As the brothers often told the story, on opening night the lead actor plunged through the planks, and the audience laughed. The Shaws took note and rewrote the script to include the incident as a stunt. They had a hit, and in 1924 they turned it into their first film. After producing several more movies, the brothers decided that their homeland, torn by fighting between Nationalists and Communists, was too unstable. In 1927 they moved to Singapore, which was then part of British colonial Malaya.

The brothers also imported foreign movies and built up a string of theaters. Their business boomed until the Japanese invaded the Malay Peninsula in 1941. But according to Run Run Shaw, he and his brother buried more than $4 million in gold, jewellry and currency in their backyard, which they dug up after World War II and used to resume their careers.

With the rise of Hong Kong as the primary market for Chinese films, Run Run Shaw moved there in 1959. In Hong Kong, he created Shaw Movietown, a complex of studios and residential towers where his actors worked and lived. Shaw went on to plumb the so-called dragon-lady genre with great commercial success. Movies like Madame White Snake (1963) and The Lady General (1965) offered sexy, combative, sometimes villainous heroines, loosely based on historical characters. And by the end of the 1960s, he had discovered that martial-arts films in modern settings could make even more money.

His Five Fingers of Death (1973), considered a kung fu classic, was followed by Man of Iron (1973), The Shaolin Avengers (1976) and many others. Critics dismissed the films as artless, but spectators crowded into the theaters to cheer, laugh or mockingly hiss at the action scenes. Shaw's chain of cinemas grew to more than 200 houses in Asia and the United States. "We were like the Hollywood of the 1930s," he said. "We controlled everything: the talent, the production, the distribution and the exhibition."

Other Hong Kong producers, directors and actors called Shaw's methods iron-fisted. In 1970, Raymond Chow, a producer with Shaw's company, Shaw Brothers, left to form his own company, Golden Harvest, which gave more creative and financial independence to top directors and stars.

Chow's biggest success, and Shaw's most notable loss, was his decision to bankroll Bruce Lee. Lee initially approached Shaw Brothers, which turned down his demand for a long-term contract of $10,000 per film. Golden Harvest then offered Lee creative control and profit-sharing.

The Big Boss, better known as Fists of Fury, was Lee's first film with Golden Harvest, and it broke all Hong Kong box-office records. Other big-name actors and directors flocked to Golden Harvest, breaking Shaw Brothers' virtual monopoly.

© 2014 The New York Times