Liu Zhonghao (1910 - ?)

Liu Zhonghao 柳中浩 (1910 – ?) was born in Shanghai, his ancestral home being Yin Country, Zhejiang.   His father Liu Yutang 柳钰堂was from Ningbo, a city whose natives are renowned for their business shrewdness.  In the late 19th century, Liu Yutang found work on a boat that shipped duck eggs to Shanghai, and seized that opportunity to rise rapidly to the top levels of the industry.  Although he died young, he left his three sons a sizable inheritance.  In 1926, Liu Zhonghao and elder brother Liu Zhongliang 柳中亮 established the World Theater in Nanjing as a cinema house, and by 1934 Liu Zhonghao had amassed enough capital to found the Gold City Theater in Shanghai, to specialize in showing Chinese-made films.  In 1937 he established the Gold Capital Theater, which also specialized in Chinese productions.  In 1938, he and Liu Zhongliang started the Guo Hua 国华 ("Chinese Language") Film Company, and in less than 4 years their studio turned out more than 40 motion pictures, most of them in ancient costume.  When the Pacific War erupted in December, 1941, the Liu brothers refused to cooperate with the Japanese army, so their studio was shut down and the two theaters converted to stage production facilities.  After the war, the brothers established a new film studio, Guotai 国泰 (National Safety).  In 1948 the brothers agreed to part ways commercially, with Liu Zhonghao continuing to operate "Guotai" and Liu Zhongliang setting up a new studio, "Datong," (Great Unity) in partnership with his son Liu Heqing 柳和清.  The two studios continued after the founding of the People's Republic, until January 1, 1952, when as part of its transition to socialism the new government ordered all private and jointly state-private studios be consolidated into one studio, which eventually became the Shanghai Film Studio.