Sir Run Run Shaw (1907–2014), born Shaw Ren-leng and known as Six Uncle, was a film and television producer, entertainment tycoon and philanthropist from Zhenhai, Ningbo, Zhejiang, born in Shanghai. His father Shaw Hang-ngan ran a dyeworks there, and in 1925 his eldest brother Shaw Zui-weng founded the Tianyi Film Company; as a schoolboy Shaw helped shoot the two-part Pearl Pagoda and Sun Wukong Fights the Leopard (both 1926). After secondary school he went to Singapore to help his third brother Runme expand overseas distribution, and in 1930 the brothers set up the Shaw Brothers company there; in 1931 he travelled to the United States to buy sound equipment and helped his eldest brother make the Cantonese sound film The White Gold Dragon (1933). Moving to Hong Kong in 1957, he bought an 800,000-square-foot plot at Clear Water Bay for HK$320,000, founded Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd in 1958 and recruited talents such as Raymond Chow, opening the Shaw Studio there in December 1961. It went on to produce more than a thousand Chinese-language films — among them The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959), The Love Eterne (1963) and the martial-arts hit The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) — building the largest Chinese movie empire of the day; Shaw Brothers was listed in 1971. He was a co-founder of Television Broadcasts Limited, which began broadcasting on 19 November 1967; in 1980 he became its largest shareholder and chairman, and TVB long dominated Hong Kong television, while film production was sharply cut back from 1987. He was made a CBE in 1974, knighted in 1977, awarded the French Legion d'Honneur in 1991, and received the Grand Bauhinia Medal from the Hong Kong SAR government in 1998. A lifelong donor to education, medicine and science, he left schools and universities across mainland China with buildings bearing his name, and in 2002 he established the Shaw Prize, often called the Nobel of the East, whose first awards were presented in 2004 for mathematics, life science and medicine, and astronomy. He married Mona Fong in 1997, gave up in 2011 the Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) holding that controlled TVB shares and stepped down as TVB chairman in 2012 to become its honorary chairman; he received the Hong Kong Film Awards' lifetime achievement award in 1983 and its century of cinema achievement award in 2007. He died peacefully at his Clear Water Bay flat on 7 January 2014, aged 106.
Shaw's studio system and star-making machine helped make Hong Kong one of the production centres of Chinese-language cinema, and Shaw Brothers' musicals, Huangmei operas and martial-arts pictures became markers of an era. The television station he led trained a large pool of actors and backstage talent and shaped the look of Hong Kong popular culture. His long record of giving to education and medicine left buildings bearing his name across mainland China and Hong Kong universities. The Shaw Prize he founded in 2002 also made Hong Kong a home for an internationally recognised science award.
Achievements
- 1958 · Founded Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd and later built the Shaw Studio at Clear Water Bay
- 1967 · Co-founded Television Broadcasts Limited, which began broadcasting on 19 November
- 2002 · Established the Shaw Prize with awards in astronomy, mathematics and life science and medicine