Yung Siu-yi (1921 – 17 March 1974), born Yung Kam-chi in Shanghai to a Zhongshan family, was a Hong Kong film actress of the 1930s to 1950s. Passionate about singing and dancing from childhood, she and her elder sister Yung Yuk-yi joined the Plum Blossom Song and Dance Troupe at fourteen and toured Southeast Asia; her skill in many dance styles made her a leading performer known as the 'Little Queen of Singing and Dancing', and the two sisters later both went into films. When the troupe disbanded in 1937 she planned to return to Shanghai via Hong Kong, but the outbreak of the Battle of Shanghai stranded her in the city, where Nanyang Film Company hired her for The Purple Cups (1938), her first film. Her first leading role came in Breaking Through the Bronze Net (1939), a martial-arts film directed by Hung Suk-wan, followed by the Mandarin Ten Thousand Li Ahead and the Cantonese Song of Retribution, both released in 1941. During the Japanese occupation she performed stage dramas with her husband Lee Ching in the unoccupied interior, and after the war she resumed her film career with works including Yonder My Love (1947), Fellow Sufferers in the Same World (1948) and The Guerrilla March; known for her tap dancing, she married the actor Lee Ching in 1941 and had one son and two daughters. In 1952 she joined a group of filmmakers to found the Union Film Enterprise — launched by figures such as Ng Cho-fan, Pak Yin, Cheung Ying and Lee Sun-fung, and committed to realistic, purposeful pictures — in which she starred in Family (1953), Spring (1953), Autumn (1954), Father and Son (1954) and An Orphan's Tragedy (1955). She often played wilful young ladies or seductive women, became a familiar face in Cantonese cinema after the war, and also appeared from time to time in Mandarin films. She died of leukaemia in Hong Kong on 17 March 1974.
Yung Siu-yi was an actress active in both Cantonese and Mandarin films before and after the war, and a member of the group that founded the Union Film Enterprise in 1952; the company's literary adaptations such as Family, Spring and Autumn pushed Hong Kong cinema towards realism in the 1950s.
Achievements
- 1938 · Was hired by Nanyang Film Company and appeared in her first film, The Purple Cups
- 1939 · Took her first leading role in Breaking Through the Bronze Net
- 1952 · Co-founded the Union Film Enterprise with a group of filmmakers