 Cho
Tat Wah or Tso Tat-wah 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, Leung Fuen and Detective Inspector Cho.
A native of Taishan, Guangdong, Cho began his actor carreer 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 hospitalized for a month after falling down stairs at his
home. He returned to England in November of that same year, and died of
hemorrhage 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.
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