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Legendary Hong Kong film producer Raymond Chow, who introduced the world to Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan and brought the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the big screen, died at age 91.
Hong Kong 'secretary for trade and economic development, Edward Yau, said in a statement Friday that Chow "helped nurture a pool of Hong Kong talent and brought them to the international stage."
Chow was a journalist who became a publicist for Shaw Brothers Studios, which churned out hundreds of movies and popularized the kung fu genre. Studio founder Run Run Shaw chow to the production side of the business Chow complained that the movies – made on low budgets – were not good enough.
"I did not think I could keep my job because the pictures were so bad," Chow told Asiaweek magazine in 1983. Frustrated with Shaw Brothers' assembly-line ethic, he created his own production company, Golden Harvest, in 1970.
He soon outmaneuvered his gigantic old to grab the actor who would become synonymous with kung fu movies. Chow signed Bruce Lee in 1971 after seeing him on Hong Kong television variety show.
"Facing you on the screen, you are very powerful, very powerful," Chow told The Associated Press in 2005.
Golden Harvest signed up for a three-picture deal, with each breaking all Hong Kong box office records.
Those movies were followed by "Enter the Dragon," the first Chinese martial arts movie to be produced by a Hollywood studio major, Warner Bros. It cost $ 500,000 and earned $ 40 million at the box office. Tragically, Lee died days before the film's release in 1973.
Lee's death left for kung fu heroes in Hong Kong's film industry that young performers were eager to fill. Chow signed one of them, to form stuntman named Jackie Chan, in 1979.
Chan's first taste of success in Hong Kong had come the year before with the movie "Drunken Master." After signing with Chow, he made a number of highly popular Chinese-language action-comedy movies that made him a superstar in Asia.
Chow in plenty of time and effort. Chan to Western audiences. He arranged for the first time in Los Angeles learning English and star in his first English-language film, 1980's "The Big Brawl," which flopped. A year later, Chow gives him a minor role. Top Hollywood names in "The Cannonball Run." But it was 1995's "Rumble in the Bronx" that catapulted Chan to worldwide fame. The film was released on 1.700 screens in North America and grossed $ 32.4 million, becoming the most successful Hong Kong movie released in the US Three years later, Chan teamed up with Chris Tucker in 1998's "Rush Hour," becoming a Hollywood A-list actor .
Chan the debt he owed to Chow's grooming.
"Mr. Chow gave me a chance to follow my dreams," he told Variety in 2000. "I think today that without Golden Harvest, there is no Jackie Chan."
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which has become a comic book and then has become an animated kids' TV show with a cult following. Intrigued by the name, Chow agreed to produce a live-action movie based on the crime-fighting, human-sized turtles after the Hollywood rejected the idea.
The movie about the pizza-eating, surfing-lingo-spouting terrapins named after renaissance artists became a worldwide smash.
Chow said that he made his choice based on a "gut feeling."
"It's very weird, very unique and very interesting … You have to be unique to a big success."
Chow was born in Hong Kong to a nationalistic father skeptical of Western influences. Following his father's wishes, he completed his secondary and university studies in Shanghai.
As a journalist, Chow worked in Hong Kong, including United Press, which later became United Press International; The New York Times; and Voice of America.
Chow, an avid bridge player, told Forbes in 1990 about the business he learned playing cards.
"When you're lucky, you're going to be able to watch yourself, minimize your losses, so that you do not get killed."
Golden Harvest made its last film in 2003. Chinese businessman, who changed the name to Orange Sky Golden Harvest.
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