April 22 is the birthday of Bai Yang, one of the 22 stars of New China, and this year is her 100th birthday.
Bai Yang, formerly known as Yang Chengfang, was born in Beijing in 1920 in Xiangyin, Hunan. His father, Yang Zhenhua, graduated from Beijing Normal University (the predecessor of Peking University), and successively founded the Xinhua Business Training Institute, xinhua business college and the first private university in China, Beijing Xinhua University, which cultivated many new-style business and financial talents for the country. He was clever and business-minded, and in the name of education, he raised a large number of donations, bought a lot of land at a low price in Luanping County, Rehe Province, and collected peasant rent to maintain the operation of the school, and he himself soon developed and became a large landlord. After that, he gradually indulged in the sound and color of dogs and horses, regardless of the family's age.
Poplar and poplar
Bai Yang's mother, named Ding Fengyi, was born in a scholarly xiangmendi in Pingjiang County, Hunan Province, and had studied at the Changsha Girls' Normal School. Ding Fengyi gave birth to a son and three daughters for Yang Zhenhua, Bai Yang is the oldest, the eldest brother Yang Chengxun, 18 years older than Bai Yang, the eldest sister is Yang Mo, who wrote the "Song of Youth", formerly known as Yang Chengye, and there is a second sister named Yang Chengliang.
Among the three sisters, Yang Chengliang is the most beautiful, she ran to apply for the Shanghai Lianhua Film In Beijing film talent training institute, and also registered for the third sister, the result of the exam day she was pulled by the fan friends to sing, missed the opportunity. Later, she got acquainted with a judge surnamed Luo, and became the aunt of the family, moved to Changchun, but unexpectedly had a short life, and returned to the west at the age of 20 and died.
It is said that Bai Yang could not wait for the second sister outside the examination room, and when he was preparing to leave, the chief examiner Wang Ruilin accidentally found her and pulled her into the examination room. The examiners were all attracted to this little girl with two dimples in laughter, so they left her and gave her a stage name Yang Junli. Soon, at the age of 11, Bai Yang participated in the filming of "New Grievances in the Forbidden City" and played a little girl in it.
Poplar starred in the drama "Horn"
Two years later, Bai Yang participated in the performance of the drama "Horn", and during the rehearsal break, everyone talked about the topic of stage names. Bai Yang said: "When we performed at the Baoliba Opera Club, everyone gave me a nice name called LuKa, which means red in Russian, but many people don't understand it. ”
Director Yang Cunbin, who knew Russian, smiled and said, "They call you a red poplar tree." ”
Poplar suddenly remembered the scene of playing under the poplar trees in the countryside when he was a child, so he blurted out: "I prefer poplar." ”
As a result, in the promotional poster of the "Horn" performance, she used the name Poplar and used this stage name to complete the 63 years of her flourishing acting career.
With the performance of "Horn", Bai Yang broke through the Fame of Beiping Opera, during which time she also met her first husband, Ma Yanxiang. Ma Yanxiang has been a well-known figure in both theater and opera from the 1930s until the 1960s and 1970s, but he also has a nickname called "Marriage Maniac". He had 5 marriages in his lifetime, and the five wives were Shen Ying, Bai Yang, Fudan alumnus Lin Feiyu, Peking opera actor Yun Yanming (Zhou Xinfang's dry daughter) and Tong Baoling (the sister of Tong Xiangling, played by Yang Zirong in "Wise Tiger Mountain", and the widow of the drama emperor Shi Hui).
Ma Yanxiang and Shen Sakura (left one, two)
Shen Ying, the first translator of Zweig's novel Letter from a Strange Woman, married Ma Yanxiang at the end of 1929 and divorced in 1933. The reason why Ma Yanxiang divorced Shen Ying was because he was introduced by Yu Shangyuan, a professor at Peking University, to Bai Yang, and the two fell in love at first sight, so they moved to Nanjing in August 1935 to get married, when Bai Yang was only 15 years old, 13 years younger than Ma Yanxiang.
Bai Yang's marriage to Ma Yanxiang lasted only one year, and in this year, her star path has undergone earth-shaking changes.
In 1935, the Shanghai Star Film Company organized the second factory, Zhou Jianyun went to Nanjing to recruit new actors, and the veteran playwright Hong Shen solemnly recommended Poplar to him. In November of the same year, the eldest sister of the star company, the movie queen Hu Die, got married and announced that she would temporarily suspend the film, and the boss Zhang Ishikawa was eager to find someone to fill her vacancy, and this candidate was Bai Yang.
As a newcomer, the treatment of Bai Yang's first entry into the star company can be described as not cheap, the monthly salary is 120 yuan, which is half more than Zhang Manping who entered the company at the same time, the company also provides free accommodation, and there is a remuneration of 200 yuan after each drama.
However, the poplar known as "Miss Peking" is definitely a raw face for The Shanghai audience, and the star company has racked its brains to design a high-profile marketing model for the launch of poplar.
First of all, to make a fuss about plastic surgery, the company sent a message saying that "poplar has recently come to Shanghai to repair facial shortcomings, concave nose, convex lips, facial freckles have been modified", "cut the eyelids, repaired the tip of the nose, poplar and sacrificed two pieces of plump flesh", described in detail the plastic surgery after the poplar "looks more beautiful and beautiful than before", when the plastic surgery is still a rare thing, after such publicity, the audience can't wait to see the appearance of poplar after plastic surgery.
Then, the star company turned public attention to Poplar's private life, saying how Ma Yanxiang opposed Poplar joining the film circle, and then said that Poplar had a new lover, a blonde foreigner, the two had already lived together, and then debunked the rumor that Poplar just moved into an apartment in the French Concession, the owner of the apartment was a foreigner, Poplar quarreled with the owner of the apartment for a small matter, and moved out of the apartment in a huff, in fact, these are all publicity for Poplar's first movie after entering the star, "Cross Street".
However, it is a fact that Bai Yang and Ma Yanxiang broke up, and when they separated, Ma Yanxiang stood in the perspective of a friend and said to her: "I hope you don't enter the film industry, if you must enter, or choose a star!" To a certain extent, this statement is also advertising to star companies.
At that time, the "Qingqing Film" magazine revealed the real reason why the star praised poplar: "The star company invited poplar to join because it needed a westernized fleshy star, and the contract stipulated that 'when filming, the costume should be open to the chest and shoulders, and it must not be rejected to ensure its beauty.'" ’”
Therefore, it is easy to understand why Yang Zhiying, a female worker played by Bai Yang in "Cross Street", is full of student popularity, but there is a classic "traviata" love dream, the delicate Yang Zhiying's short hair curls in the dream, the long black skirt is low-cut and open-shouldered, swaying with the swing.
Fortunately, the progressive film "Cross Street" does not use westernization and flesh to please the audience, the film mainly depicts a group of patriotic and rescue intellectual youth, they have different personalities, different life paths, and eventually they are out of school, unemployed, so they are depressed, wandering, wandering, eager to find a way out, which obviously has a positive role in the 30s when national contradictions and class contradictions are becoming more and more acute.
"Cross Street" made Poplar a hit and became the idol lover of middle school students at that time. A film review article in Shanghai's Mainland Daily said: "Ms. Bai Yang is likely to become China's new film queen - although she is only seventeen years old and of medium stature, her beauty, magic, charm and artistic genius are beyond everything else." The British newspaper The Times, published on the same day, also said: "Many Chinese fans feel that they have found a 'Chinese garbo', that is, Lady Poplar." In her recent starring role in "Cross Street", she showed the same characteristics as Garbo. ”
Star boss Zhang Ishikawa deliberately let the company make a 9-storey propaganda poster, standing in the center of Shanghai, hype, and increased the monthly salary of Poplar to 300 yuan, which was a very high amount at the time.
In fact, Bai Yang originally had the opportunity to star in another film of the star company that is now regarded as a classic, "Road Angel", but director Yuan Muzhi insisted on using Zhou Xuan of Yihua Company to play the singer Xiaohong, and finally the star company exchanged Poplar for Zhou Xuan. Bai Yang went to Yihua to shoot a "Mysterious Flower", and his influence was obviously inferior to that of "Road Angel".
(From left) Qin Yi, Bai Yang, Zhang Ruifang, Shu Xiuwen
If it were not for the serious damage of the star company in the August 13 war, The future of Poplar in the Shanghai film industry is immeasurable. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, she went to the mainland with Shanghai filmmakers to perform dramas, and her acting skills were further honed. In Chongqing, together with Zhang Ruifang, Shu Xiuwen and Qin Yi, she is known as the "Four Famous Dans" on the drama stage.
In 1943, Bai Yang met her second husband in Chongqing, Zhang Junxiang, a famous director who graduated from the drama department of Yale University in the United States. Zhang Junxiang has long had a heart of admiration for Bai Yang, and Bai Yang Xiao Zhang Junxiang is 10 years old, facing this erudite and upright man, he can't help but be attracted to him, and the two have been interacting with each other ever since.
Immersed in the sweetness of love, Zhang Junxiang, with his ears and eyes when he was studying at Tsinghua University and what he saw and heard during the War of Resistance, wrote a drama "The Table of The Master of Ten Thousand Worlds" for Bai Yang, Bai Yang is the heroine of his script, Fang Er Nu Rou, in the play, he pinned his sincere and beautiful hopes for Bai Yang, hoping that they can get along with each other and grow old. On the title page of the play, he affectionately wrote the words "Dedicated to ChengFang" and signed his own favorite pen name Yuan Jun.
In the spring of 1945, the newspaper published a marriage notice for Zhang Junxiang and Bai Yang, and the couple was regarded as a model of langcai and female appearance at that time.
After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Bai Yang returned to Shanghai and ushered in another peak of her screen career, she and Shu Xiuwen jointly performed "A River of Spring Water Flows East", the two famous Dan were one and the same, the image of Bai Yang's wife and mother was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and Shu Xiuwen also portrayed the image of the social flower with a fierce heart and eight exquisite faces.
From October 1947 to January 1948, "A River of Spring Water Flows East" was screened in Shanghai for more than three months, with an audience of 710,000 people, and the total number of viewers in the country exceeded 1 million, setting a record for the highest attendance rate of domestic films during the Republic of China.
Golden Flame and Poplar, "Riding the Dragon"
With the change of the drama path, Bai Yang has also become a good wife and mother in the eyes of the media, and it has been reported that "last week, Zhang Junxiang took the illness to direct the director's work in the photography field in order to catch up with the filming of "Riding the Dragon Fast Son-in-Law", and Bai Yang acted as the heroine of the film on the one hand, and on the other hand, he accompanied the care of her husband's body, taking care of everything."
Tao Jin and Poplar "Cremation"
In 1948, the couple went to Hong Kong together, where they collaborated on "Cremation", and after liberation, they returned to Shanghai together and entered the Shanghai Film Studio.
In 1950, just as Zhang Junxiang's "Victory Reunion" was preparing for filming, the two went through divorce procedures. Soon, Bai Yang came together with Jiang Junchao, who was an actor. While in Hong Kong, Jiang Junchao was in Yonghua Company with Bai Yang and Zhang Junxiang, he was very business-minded, and after returning to Shanghai, he was responsible for taking over the "Chinese system" left by the Kuomintang and managing the set as the production director.
Jiang Junchao and Bai Lu co-starred in the last film "Children of the Troubled World"
Jiang Junchao's ex-wife is the film actor Bai Lu, they gave birth to two daughters, originally an enviable couple in the film industry, but Bai Lu died in an elevator accident at the Shanghai International Hotel in 1947.
Therefore, just when "Victory Reunion", written by Zhang Junxiang, directed by Tang Xiaodan and starring Feng Zhe, was shining in front of the national audience, Bai Yang and Jiang Junchao held a heavy and lively wedding ceremony in the conference room downstairs of the Shanghai Sino-Soviet Friendship Association.
After marriage, Jiang Junchao bought a garden house of more than 400 square meters for Bai Yang on Huashan Road in Shanghai, named "XiaobaiLou", and there was a 100-square-meter garden on the north side of the house, which made his peers very envious.
Here, Bai Yang and Jiang Junchao had a son and a daughter, the son Jiang Xiaosong is a cultural man, industrialist, the main planner and promoter of the Boao Forum for Asia, who produced the TV documentary "Chalet" and won the 28th New York International Film Festival Television Director Award, and his daughter Jiang Xiaozhen graduated from the Beijing Film Academy Directing Department, and then went to the San Francisco Academy of Fine Arts in the United States to study, directed the film "New Cross Street", and worked as a producer in Spielberg's "Sun Empire".
Bai Yang's highest achievement in the new Chinese film industry is to play the image of Lu Xun's Xianglin sister-in-law in "Blessing", which can also be called the supreme classic in her entire acting career. The film industry's evaluation of her is: "The image of women from all walks of life in China, Bai Yang has played, which is rare in the history of Chinese cinema." ”
Bai Yang died in 1996 at the age of 76 and was buried with Jiang Junchao in Binhai Ancient Garden, the largest cemetery in Shanghai. At that time, the China Youth Daily used such a headline to report the news of Poplar's death, "A river of spring water flows, and the eight thousand miles of road is completed", which is concise and meaningful.