Raymond Chow, Hong Kong producer who found Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, dies  

Legendary Hong Kong film producer Raymond Chow, who introduced Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan to the world and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the big screen, has died at 91, the Guardian reports.

Chow “helped nurture a pool of Hong Kong talents and brought them to the international stage”, said Edward Yau, Hong Kong’s secretary for commerce and economic development in a statement on Friday.

Chow was a journalist who became a publicist for Shaw Brothers Studios, which churned out hundreds of films and popularised the kung fu genre. Studio founder Run Run Shaw soon moved Chow to the production side of the business after Chow complained that the movies – made on low budgets and short schedules – weren’t good enough.

“I said 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 outmanoeuvred his former employer to grab the actor who would become synonymous with kung fu movies. Chow signed Bruce Lee in 1971 after seeing him on a Hong Kong TV variety show.

“Facing you on the screen, you feel his presence is very strong, very powerful,” Chow told the Associated Press in 2005.

Golden Harvest signed Lee to 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 film to be produced by a major Hollywood studio, Warner Bros. It cost $500,000 and earned $40m at the box office. Lee died days before the film’s release in 1973.