Walter Tso | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
曹達華 | |||||||||||
 Walter Tso Tat-wah (right) in one of his films | |||||||||||
| Born | 15 September 1915 Taishan, Guangdong, China | ||||||||||
| Died | 10 January 2007 (aged 91) London, England | ||||||||||
| Other names | Cho Tat-wah, Tso Tat-wah | ||||||||||
| Years active | 1936–1997, 2001 (62 years) | ||||||||||
| Awards | Hong Kong Film Awards – Professional Spirit Award, 2003 Lifetime Achievement Golden Bauhinia Awards – Life Achievement Award, 2001 Lifetime Achievement | ||||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 曹達華 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 曹达华 | ||||||||||
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Walter 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.