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The Shaw Brothers In Front Of Their Jubilee Park Theatre.
The picture shows The Shaw Brothers, Shaw Run Run and Shaw Run Me,who founded the Shaw Organisation in 1924. They are in front of their own Jubilee Park Theatre.
The Jubilee Park was Ipoh's foremost entertainment centre, a four-acre open-air amusement park owned by the Shaw Brothers. The Grand Theatre, the Chinese Concert Hall and the Jubilee Cabaret were the main attractions for the general public. Male patrons, particularly the British Forces, frequented the Ronggeng Kiosk for thrills with 'Taxi Dancers'. Bangsawan stars employed to perform under contract in these amusement parks were later engaged by Shaw Brothers to act in the movies.
The website http://www.hkcinema.co.uk/Articles/shawbronews.html gives a great deal of information about the Shaw empire, it is introduced thus:
The Early Years:
The Shaw Organisation began in 1924, with operations in Singapore screening their own brand of silent movies. Frustrated by local distributors, they set up their own cinema, “The Empire”, to screen their movies. Led by brothers Run Run and Runme Shaw, they began to branch out into Malaysia building new cinemas and operating a mobile cinema for rural areas. However, it was only with the advent of sound that movies began to really launch themselves – by 1933 the Shaw’s had produced the Cantonese opera film ‘Normal Dragon’ which proved a breakthrough for them in both Singapore and Hong Kong.
In the following years, the Great Depression led to a decline in cinema attendance. The Shaw’s began to produce films locally to minimise costs and also diversified into themes parks and other live attractions. By 1939, the Shaw’s had amassed an empire of 139 cinemas across South East Asia. However, by the time of the War, these Japanese invaded Singapore and seized most Shaw assets. They were then forced to use their cinema to display pro-Japanese propaganda movies throughout the occupation. Following the War, the Shaw’s regrouped and their operations once again expanded into more cinemas and increased film production.
The Years of Dominance:
By the early sixties, the Shaw Empire incorporated 35 companies, owned 130 cinemas, 9 amusement parks and 3 production studios. It was during this period that the Shaw began to dominate the box office and set new standards in film-making. However, it also marked the end of their relationship with Malaysia as their studio, Jalan Ampas, closed in 1967 after 160 films due to declining attendances and striking.
Please go to the hkcinema website for more information.
ipohgal also adds this snippet to the background of the famous brothers:
"My Dad once told me about the Shaw Brothers. He remembered that around the 1920s when my Dad was a boy of 8 or 10, these two young brothers toured Malaya on a bicycle with a wooden box at the back.They came all the way from Shanghai. And they would go to every nook and corner of SEA.
For 1 cent,you can peep into a small hole in the middle of the box and one of the brothers would wind the handle at the side. You could see black and white pictures! And that was before the cinemas came into the picture in Perak! My dad also told me he patronised the Shaw Bros magic box on the bicycle twice in Batu Gajah.It was at a Chinese opera and a circus in the Kuan Ti Temple grounds. Both times one of the brothers was there personally to wind the pictures for the kids. They were in their early 20s,tall and thin then."
Ken Chan also enlightens us:
"The two enigmatic brothers were pioneers in the movie entertainment business and their modus operandi was to bring the magic of motion pictures to cities as well as the remote villages through mobile cinemas. If the response from a particular area is consistently favorable, then they would acquire the land to build a brick and mortar movie house. Not only that, they also believed in buying up the extra land around the movie theater and the rationale behind this move was that when the cinema makes money, the value of the land around it would also appreciate. The brothers were known for their astute business acumen and they also had a keen eye for tapping the latent talents of relatively unknown actors and actresses or discovering diamonds in the rough, so to speak. However, Run Run Shaw was quite off the target when he turned away a budding Chinese American actor who subsequently became the world’s 1st mega kungfu star. Of course, that actor was Bruce Lee and the rest was cinema history.
Run Me Shaw was in a coma for more than two years after an accidental fall and he passed away in 1985 at the age of 84. Meanwhile, Run Run Shaw is still (2011) going strong at 103 years young and ever since Shaw Studios had ceased movie production in the mid 80’s, he has focussed his attention on TVB (Television Broadcasting), which has flourish to become one of the five largest television production companies in the world. In addition to living a full and fruitful life, the brothers were also well-known philanthropists who donated millions to charitable causes."