Quick Facts
Biography
Cho Tat-wah (or Tso Tat-wah) (15 September 1915 – 10 January 2007) was a film actor of Hong Kong, most famous for the roles he played in a number of Wuxia films in the 1950s and 1960s.
The 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 Lung Kim-fei (龍劍飛), Leung Foon (梁寛) and Inspector Wah (華探長).
A native of Taishan, Guangdong, (Spoke Chinese Cantonese, and Chinese Taishenese) 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.
Filmography
- Tears of the Reed Catkins (1936)
- Little Guangdong (1940)
- Roar of the People (1941)
- Gone Are the Swallows When the Willow Flowers Wilt (1946)
- How Ten Heroes of Guangdong Slew the Dragon (1950)
- Story of the Vulture Conqueror (1958/1959)
- Sword of Blood and Valour (1958/1959)
- The Legend of the Condor Heroes (1976)
- The Return of the Condor Heroes (1976)
- A Deadly Secret (1980)
- Tai Chi Master (1980)
- The Duel of the Century (1981)
- Aces Go Places (1982)
- Carry on Pickpocket (1982)
- Aces Go Places 2 (1983)
- Winners and Sinners (1983)
- A Friend from Inner Space (1984)
- Aces Go Places (1984)
- My Lucky Stars (1985)
- Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars (1985)
- The Legendary Prime Minister – Zhuge Liang (1985)
- Lucky Stars Go Places (1986)
- Mr. Vampire 2 (1986)
- Rise of the Great Wall (1986)
- The Romance of the White Hair Maiden (1986)
- Aces Go Places 4 (1986)
- The Millionaire's Express (1986)
- The Family Strikes Back (1986)
- Three Against the World (1988)
- Return of the Lucky Stars (1989)
- Funny Ghost (1989)
- The Iceman Cometh (1989)
- Aces Go Places 5: The Terracotta Hit (1989)
- Demoness from Thousand Years (1990)
- It's a Wonderful Life (1994)
- How to Meet the Lucky Stars (1996)
- A Gambler's Story (2001)