Background
Chen Yumei was born in the town of Menghe (孟河) in Changzhou, Jiangsu province in 1910.
陳玉梅
Chen Yumei was born in the town of Menghe (孟河) in Changzhou, Jiangsu province in 1910.
In her heyday she was one of the biggest stars in China, crowned "Movie Queen" in 1934. She was nicknamed the "frugal star" for her efforts at promoting the virtue of frugality. Her name at birth was Fei Mengmin (费梦敏).
Chen made her film debut at age 13, playing a minor role in the film Song Bai Yuan (松柏缘) made by the film division of the Commercial Press in Shanghai.
In 1926 she joined Tianyi, the film studio recently founded by Shaw, and was selected by Shaw to play the starring role of Qiu Xiang in the film The Flirting Scholar (唐伯虎点秋香). The film was not a great success, and Chen remained a secondary star of Tianyi after Hu Die (Butterfly Wu) and Wu Suxin (吴素馨).
She starred in more than 30 movies made by Tianyi, most notably A Girl Named Yunlan (芸兰姑娘, 1932), Livelihood (生机, 1933), and The Struggle (挣扎, 1933). Many of her roles were of a tragic nature.
During an interview, she named Livelihood, a progressive movie banned by the Shanghai Municipal Council, as one of her favourite films.
She sang many of the theme songs in her movies, several of which topped the charts, and she released a record by Pathé Records. Chen Yumei was known for extolling the virtue of frugality and was nicknamed the "frugal star". She frequently appeared in public wearing a cheongsam made of plain cloth, and was once seen smoking a very cheap brand of cigarettes at a high-profile party.
In the same year Tianyi expanded to Hong Kong and built a studio in Kowloon.
Shaw went to Hong Kong to supervise the company"s operations, and Chen accompanied him there. After the Second Sino-Japanese War destroyed Tianyi"s business in Shanghai and the subsequent Communist victory in China, Shaw retired from film-making and later died in Shanghai in 1975.
Chen kept a low profile and reportedly died in 1985.