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Li Lili (; 2 June 1915 – 7 August 2005) was a Chinese film actress and singer. Her films Little Toys, The Great Road and Storm on the Border were blockbusters of the 1930s and 1940s.Elaine Duan, Top 10 legendary Chinese women in the 1930s: Li Lili, China.org.cn, 2011-08-15. Retrieved 2012-05-06. She was sometimes called "China's Mae West".
Her films Volcanic Passions (1932), Playthings ( Little Toys) (1933), Daybreak (1933), Sports Queen (1934), and The Great Road ( The Big Road
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The troupe was very popular in 1920s Shanghai. Li Lili, Wang Renmei, Xue Lingxian (薛玲仙) and Hu Jia (胡笳) were known as Bright Moon's "Four Divas" (四大天王).* After troupe was merged into the Lianhua Film Company in 1931, Li became an actress. She starred in Sun Yu's 1932 Loving Blood of the Volcano, set in the South Seas with plenty of dancing, which allowed Li to play to her strengths. She and Wang Renmei then acted together in Poetry Written on the Banana Leaf.
Sun Yu wrote Sports Queen and The Big Road for her to star in, and she won audiences with her fashionable and energetic image, gaining the nickname "Sweet Big Sister". Sun Yu's Daybreak (1933) was one of her early star vehicles. Magazines characterized her as being interested in music and books.
Li Lili, together with Wang Renmei and Xu Lai, her former colleagues at the Bright Moon Troupe, were the earliest stars to portray the energetic, wholesome, and sexy "country girl" prototype, which became one of the most popular figures in Chinese cinema, and later inherited by the cinema of Hong Kong.
After war with Japan broke out in 1937, she joined the China Film Studio in Chongqing, China's wartime capital. There she met and married Luo Jingyu, a section head, who became head of the studio. In 1939, she filmed Cai Chusheng's Orphan Island Paradise in Hong Kong; it was another hit. Back in Chongqing, she starred in another hit film Storm on the Border, for which she was highly praised.
Li travelled to the United States in 1946, studying acting at The Catholic University of America in Washington, language and singing in New York, and make-up at the University of California. She also observed filmmaking in Hollywood.
She returned to China, and to acting at the Beijing Film Studio. In 1955, she studied at Beijing Film Academy, and later taught in the acting department. Her son, Luo Dan, married the daughter of Marshal Ye Jianying; Ye became China's head of state in the late 1970s.
During the Cultural Revolution, Li and her husband, Luo Jingyu, were denounced and tortured on the orders of Mao's wife Jiang Qing. Li had acted with her, and outshone her, in films such as Blood on Wolf Mountain. Li later told her family that she refused to denounce anyone.
In 1991, she was given the "Special Honour Award" by the Chinese Academy of Motion Picture Arts.
By the end of her life, Li Lili was the last living Chinese movie star from the silent film. She died of a heart attack in Xuanwu Hospital, Beijing on August 7, 2005, aged 90.
Michael G. Chang (Yingjin Zhang) (1999). 9780804731881, Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804731881 From 1935 to 1937, she starred in eight more films with the Lianhua Film Company. Top 10 women of old Shanghai: Li Lili, China.org.cn. Retrieved 2012-05-06.
Filmography
Lost uncredited Lost Segment 6: "Ghost" (鬼) Part 3: "Song & Dance Class" (歌舞班) Assistant director
External links
Categories: 1915 Births, 2005 Deaths, Catholic University Of America Alumni, Singers From Beijing, 20th-century Chinese Actresses, Chinese Torture Victims, Victims Of The Cultural Revolution, Chinese Film Actresses, Singers From Shanghai, Actresses From Shanghai, Actresses From Beijing, 20th-century Chinese Women Singers, Chinese Silent Film Actresses
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