Lee Yi Nin (1912–1950), born Lee Chor-hing, was a Cantonese film actress of the 1930s and 1940s. She idolised Ruan Lingyu and, at nineteen, travelled from Hong Kong to Shanghai to audition for the Lianhua company without success. In 1934 she applied to the Grandview Film Company, was judged promising and signed a three-year contract; her screen debut the following year, a 1935 talkie, was a great success. She went on to appear for Grandview in The Lingering Song (1935), The Modern Bride (1935), The Shandong Robber (1936), The Flirtatious Miss (1936) and Gossip Is a Fearful Thing (1936), while a 1935 patriotic film opposite Ng Cho-fan earned her the nickname 'patriotic film queen'. After her Grandview contract ended she worked with the Nanyang and Tianyi companies on films released in the late 1930s and 1940, gaining the title 'queen of southern cinema'. In 1940 she was invited to Shanghai by the Yihua Film Company and made several Mandarin films there, including The Empress (1940) and Liang Hongyu (1940), but their reception fell short of expectations and she soon married and retired from acting. After the war she returned to Hong Kong cinema with a handful of films in 1948–49. In 1950 she formed the Qi Guang touring company and went on a performance tour of Southeast Asia; on 4 November that year she took her own life in Haiphong, Vietnam, aged thirty-eight.
A leading Cantonese actress of 1930s Hong Kong, Lee Yi Nin came to fame in talkies and patriotic films, and her later move to Shanghai and post-war Southeast Asian tour trace the mobility of film people between Hong Kong, the mainland and the region during wartime.
Achievements
- 1935 · Made her screen debut in a 1935 film that brought her stardom
- 1935 · Earned the title of 'patriotic film queen' for a 1935 patriotic film opposite Ng Cho-fan
- 1940 · Was invited to Shanghai by the Yihua company to make Mandarin films