Cho Tat Wah
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- This is a Chinese name; the family name is Cho.
| Cho Tat Wah | |
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 Cho Tat Wah in one of his movies |
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| Born | September 15, 1915 Taishan, Guangdong Province, China |
| Died | January 10, 2007, aged 91 London, England |
Cho Tat Wah or Tso Tat-wah (traditional Chinese: 曹達華; simplified Chinese: 曹达华; pinyin: Cáo Dáhuá) (September 15, 1915 - January 10, 2007) was a movie actor of Hong Kong, most famous for the roles he played in a number of wuxia films shot in the 1950s and 1960s.
The two names Cho Tat Wah and Shih Kien were synonymous to "good and evil" in the colloquial language of Hong Kong because of the roles the two actors played in those movies. Yu So Chow co-starred many of Cho's movies. The two names Cho Tat Wah and Yu So Chow symbolized a perfect couple. His well-known roles include Loong Kim-fei (龍劍飛), Leung Fuen (梁寛) and Detective Inspector Wah (華探長).
A native of Taishan, Guangdong, Cho began his actor career at the age of 15, and eventually starred in more than 700 movies. He was a compulsive gambler. Legend has it that he lost the Wah Tat Studio, which produced most of his movies at the time, at the gambling table. However, it is not certain whether the studio was owned by him.
He emigrated to London, England, with his son in 1990, but returned to Hong Kong to join TVB in 1993. He went back to England in 1997 as his wife was then suffering kidney disease. When she died in 2000, he returned alone to Hong Kong. In August 2006, he was hospitalised for a month after falling down stairs at his home. He returned to England in November of that same year, and died of haemorrhage of stomach two months later in a hospital. He is survived by a son in England, and a daughter in the United States. One of his goddaughters is Connie Chan Po-chu.
[edit] References
- Apple Daily [1], January 16 2007
- South China Morning Post, January 16 2007
