Template:Chinese name

Run Run Shaw
Shaw's star on the Avenue of Stars
Chinese	邵逸夫
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Wade–Giles Shao I-fu Yale Romanization Shàu Yìfū IPA [ʂâʊ îfú] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Siuh Yaht Fū Jyutping siu6 jat6 fu1 IPA [ɕìːu jɐ̀t fúː]

Sir Run Run Shaw GBM CBE (23 November 1907 – 7 January 2014) was a Hong Kong media mogul and philanthropist. He was one of the most influential figures in Asia entertainment industry.^[2] He founded the well-known Shaw Brothers Studio, which was one of the largest film production companies in the world and the Television Broadcasts Limited, which remains the dominating television company in Hong Kong.

Born Shao Ren Leng in Ningbo, Zhejiang of the Qing Empire in 1907, he was the youngest of the six sons of a Shanghai textile merchant, Shaw Yuh Hsuen (1867–1920).^[3] According to A&C Black published Who's Who 2007, he was born on 14 October, but his wife Mona Fong declined to confirm this.^[4]

In 2007, his great-nephew said Shaw's birthday was actually 23 November, which corresponded with the 14th day of the 10th month of the Chinese calendar.^[5] According to Rita Gourlay, a Hong Kong-based secretariat at his company Shaw Foundation, Run Run Shaw was born in November 1907.^[1] He was sent by his father to receive education in American-run schools in Shanghai.^[6]

At age 19, during his summer holiday in 1923, he went to Singapore to assist his third elder brother Runme Shaw in their business venture there, initially to market films to south-east Asia's Chinese community.^[7] They established the company that would later become the Shaw Organisation, and were involved in distributing and producing silent film. Besides setting up a chain of cinema theatres including Singapore's first air-conditioned cinema at Beach Road, they also established a number of amusement parks including the Great World Amusement Park at Kim Seng Road.^[8]

The Shaw brothers founded in 1924 the Tianyi Film Productions (also called the Unique Film Productions) in Shanghai to produce silent films, and they also produced what is consider the first sound-on-film Chinese talkie.^[9] They produced a Cantonese film in 1932 which proved successful, and a branch of the Unique Film Productions was established in Hong Kong in 1934.^[10] They later moved the entire operation from Shanghai to Hong Kong and reorganized it as Nanyang Productions, which later became Shaw Studios.

By 1939, they owned 139 cinemas across the region,^[11] as well as a number of amusement parks throughout the entire region, including Borneo, Thailand and Java.^[12] He himself was credited with scripting and directing one movie in 1937, a comedy called Country Bumpkin Visits his In-laws.^[8] In 1941, the Japanese invaded the Malay Peninsula and stripped their theaters and confiscated their film equipment. According to Run Run Shaw, he and his brother buried more than $4 million in gold, jewelry and currency in their backyard and dug it up after the war to resume their careers.^[13]

After Shaw moved to Hong Kong, where was the centre of the Chinese film industry at the time and established the Shaw Brothers in 1958.^[14] Run Run Shaw copied Hollywood by setting up a permanent production site where his actors worked and lived on 46 acres purchased from the government in Clearwater Bay. At the opening of the Shaw Movietown in December 1961, Shaw Studios had the world’s largest privately owned film-production outfit with about 1,200 workers shooting and editing films daily.^[14] Shaw productions ran up to two hours and cost as much as $50,000, a lavish sum by Asian standards in the 1960s.^[13]

By the 1960s, Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd. was Asia's biggest producer of movies, including The Magnificent Concubine, which took the Grand Prix at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival and the 1967 The One-Armed Swordsman, which broke the box office records.^[15] Shaw's companies in Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong made more than 1,000 movies, with annual production peaking at 50 pictures in 1974 when Shaw was entitled the "Czar of Asian Movies".^[16] The Shaw Studios popularised the kung fu genre that had great influence on many Hollywood directors such as Quentin Tarantino.^[2][17]

The studio's decline in the 1970s due to the challenge from the Golden Harvest, formed by his ex-employee Raymond Chow with the rising kung fu star Bruce Lee, whom Shaw Brothers initially turned down. Shaw then focused his efforts on television.^[1] Shaw also looked for opportunities in the United States and produced a handful of U.S. films, including the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner.^[2]

In 2000, through his company, Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Limited, he sold his unique library of 760 classic titles to Celestial Pictures Limited. Continuing to show perseverance, Shaw Studios entered a new era with Shaw's majority investment (through his various holding companies) in the US$180,000,000 Hong Kong Movie City project, a 1,100,000 square feet (100,000 m²) studio and production facility in Tseung Kwan O.^[18]

In 1967, he launched the Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), the first free- to-air television station in Hong Kong, growing it into a multi-billion dollar TV empire with channels broadcast in 30 markets including the U.S., Canada and Taiwan, making it the world's largest producer of Chinese-language programs. Shaw Brothers leased most of its filmmaking facilities to TVB in 1983, after Shaw became chairman of the TVB in 1980. Under Shaw's chairmanship, TVB successfully launched the careers of international stars such as Chow Yun-fat and Maggie Cheung and singers like Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui. In 2006, TVB had 80 percent of Hong Kong's viewers and 78 percent of the city's TV advertising market.^[1]

In December 2011, Run Run Shaw retired as chairman of the Television Broadcasts Ltd. at that age of 104 after more than 40 years at Hong Kong’s biggest television company,^[19] after selling all his controlling stake to a group of investors including HTC Corporation chairman Cher Wang and ITC Corporation chairman Charles Chan for HK$6.26 billion in March.^[14][20] He was then renamed chairman emeritus.^[17]

Shaw was also one of the largest shareholders in Macy's after he bought 10 percent of its preferred shared for U.S. $50 million when it was nearly bankrupt in 1991.^[13]

Sir Run Run Shaw was advocate and financial supporter of the Hong Kong Arts Festival in which he became the first chairman of the Festival. He was also the chairman of the Hong Kong Arts Centre's Board of Governors.

Sir Run Run Shaw was the member of the Board of Trustees of United College, one of the colleges of the Chinese University of Hong Kong when the university began in 1967. He became the vice-chairman of the Board of Trustees in 1972 and appointed to the University Council of the Chinese University in 1977.^[12][21]

Other public posts he held including vice-president of the Hong Kong Girl Guides Association and the Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation, as well as president of the Hong Kong Red Cross, in which he was the first Chinese to hold that post. He had also been a leading figure in the fund raising of the Community Chest of Hong Kong since its inception.^[12]

Over the years, Sir Run Run had donated billions of Hong Kong Dollars to charity, schools and hospitals. His name is on many buildings in Hong Kong and China mainland due to his generous donations. The fourth constituent college of the collegiate Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shaw College is also named after Sir Run Run, whose patronage made the establishment of the college possible.^[22]

In 1990 Run Run Shaw donated 10 million pounds to help establish the Run Run Shaw Institute of Chinese Affairs at Oxford University.^[13]

After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, he donated HK$100 million for disaster relief .

He was the youngest of the six sons in the Shaw family, and was nick-named Uncle Six (Luk Suk). He had also two sisters. His three elder brothers, Runje Shaw, Runde Shaw and Runme Shaw were all heads of the Shaw Studio. Runme Shaw, the third elder brother who co-founded the Shaw Studio with him, died in 1985.

His first wife, Lily Wong Mee-chun, died at age 85 in 1987. He remarried to Mona Fong (formerly Fong Yat-wa), in Las Vegas in 1997. A former singer, Mona Fong joined TVB as a procurement manager in 1969 and became the deputy chairman of TVB since 2000.^[14][3] Shaw had four children with Lady Liliy Shaw, sons Vee Meng and Harold, and daughters Violet and Dorothy.^[14] All of his children studied at Oxford University.^[13] His eldest son, Dr. Shaw Vee Meng, heads the Shaw Foundation in Singapore.

Shaw was a lover of Rolls-Royce limousines.^[17] According to a 1966 Life magazine, he would rise at 6 a.m., eat a breakfast of noodles and tea, practice Chinese calisthenics and read a script or two before heading to the studio in one of his Rolls-Royce cars. After lunch and a nap, he would return to the office to work until midnight.^[14]

Shaw was known to be a keen practitioner of qigong. According to former TVB general manager Ho Ting-kwan, Shaw began practising qigong in his 60s and he did it first thing in the morning. Ho said he ate very little each meal and went to bed early, which was his secrets to longevity.^[20] He was known to regularly consumed expensive ginseng, costing him close to HK$300,000 a year.^[6] The then TVB general manager Stephen Chan Chi-wan also revealed that Mr. Bean was Shaw's favourite show.^[6]

He died at his residence on 7 January 2014 at the age of 106 (or 107) with his family by his side.^[23][24]

In 1974, Sir Run Run was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He received a knighthood in 1977 from Queen Elizabeth II and the Grand Bauhinia Medal (GBM) from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government in 1998.

He was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Social Science by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1981 for his contribution to the university and community.^[21] In 1984, he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws by the University of Hong Kong to honour an outstanding contribution to applied visual arts, as well as to the community and cultural developments.^[12]

2899 Runrun Shaw, a small main belt asteroid, which was discovered by Chinese astronomers in 1964 is named after Sir Run Run Shaw.

In 2007, coinciding with his 100th birthday, he was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards.^[10]

In 2013, Sir Run Run received the BAFTA Special Award for his outstanding contribution to cinema.^[25]

He established an international award, the Shaw Prize, for scientists in three areas of research, namely astronomy, mathematics, and life and medical science. The award is up to US$1 million. The press called it the "Nobel Prize of the East".^[26] The first prize was awarded in 2004.

• 詹幼鵬、藍潮 (1997). 《邵逸夫傳》. 藍潮傳記作品 (in Chinese) (First ed. ed.). HK: 名流出版社. ISBN 962-928-017-5. ((cite book)): |edition= has extra text (help)

• Asteroid 2899 Runrun Shaw
• Brothers Runje Shaw, Runme Shaw and Runde Shaw
• Cinema of Hong Kong

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Run Run Shaw.

• Run Run Shaw at IMDb
• TVB (Television Broadcasts Limited)
• Shaw Studios
• Shaw Prize
• Shaw Tower at Cathedral Place (Vancouver, Canada)
• Life of Shaw brothers
• Celestial Pictures Limited
• My Life's Pleasure

Authority control databases
International	FAST ISNI VIAF WorldCat
National	Spain Germany United States Australia Netherlands
Other	SNAC
Warning	Local parameters are deprecated. Please move values to Wikidata.

Template:Persondata