TVB Acting Classes: 2nd Year Artists List – Class of 1973 (Part 3 in a series)

Here is part 3, which covers the 2nd year acting class (for those who didn’t get a chance to read the first 2 parts, you can do so here: Part 1 & Part 2). The date range is 1972-73 (those who entered the class in 1972 and graduated in 1973). The reason why I did the dates this way is because depending on which source you read, some will refer to the classes by the year the artists entered the class while others will refer to the year they graduated. Therefore, to avoid confusion, I decided to list both.

** Note 1: The artists’ names listed in BOLD are the ones who were actually active in the HK entertainment industry (as far as I know) and /or ones whom most audiences will probably be familiar with.

** Note 2: Under the “Summary & Thoughts” section, I’ve listed various tidbits as well as other descriptive info about some of the artists that I’ve highlighted in BOLD.

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TVB 藝員訓練班（第二期）- 1972 -73年
TVB’s Acting Class – 2nd year (1972-73)

宋豪辉 (Song Hao Fai)、伍衛國 (Lawrence Ng Wai Kwok)、盧宛茵 (Angelina Lo Yuen Yan), 梁鴻華 (Leung Hung Wah)


SUMMARY & THOUGHTS:

.—First of all, I must say that I was surprised to see only 4 names for the class of 1973. I actually checked a few lists and did some additional research, but everything I found only had the same 4 names. However, none of the sources stated whether there were only 4 names because that year, there were only 4 people in the Acting Class (which is sort of hard to believe) or whether there were actually others in the class, but for some reason, only 4 are listed, perhaps because the others were not recorded down somehow (or perhaps were not worthy of mention?).

.—One theory for why only 4 names are mentioned is that this particular year’s acting class is considered ‘the calm before the storm’, as the artists to come out of the classes for the next 10 years following this one will be the ‘most well-known’ – they are also the ones responsible for ‘creating’ the Golden Era of HK entertainment.

.—Out of the 4 names listed, I actually only know 3 of them, so that’s where my focus will be for the purposes of this post. Though I’ve never heard of Song Hao Fai, I did look him up and basically all I know is that he is a director as well as a songwriter – that’s as far as my knowledge goes though.

.—Lawrence Ng Wai Kwok should be a familiar name to most of today’s audiences, as he had participated in a handful of TVB series these past few years, including “The Drive of Life” (2007), “The Silver Chamber of Sorrows” (2008), and “The Season of Fate” (2010). Of course, his roles in each of those series were only supporting, but actually, back in the day (in the 1970s at TVB as well as Commercial Television and in the 1980s at ATV), he played mostly first male lead roles – to the point that he was nicknamed ‘Ng Siu Sang’. He was actually one of the few artists who worked for all 4 major TV stations in HK (Commercial TV, Rediffusion TV, TVB, ATV) at different points in his career. Another ‘record’ that he set was for being one of the few artists who has returned to TVB the most times : he started off at TVB in the 70s, then went to Commercial Television in 1976 – unfortunately, Commercial TV closed down in 1978, so he went to Rediffusion Television in 1979, continuing there even when RTV became ATV in 1982 and staying with ATV into the 90s. In 1993, he returned to TVB and participated in a few series, but then left again, as he was in ‘half-retired’ mode and moved his career to Mainland. It wasn’t until 2007 that he returned to TVB for the 3rd time.

I personally have not watched majority of Lawrence’s series from the 70s, 80s, or 90s, so I can’t really comment on his acting. I did watch his performance in “The Drive of Life” though and felt that he was quite good. Apparently, he was quite popular back in the day, so those who are interested in knowing more may want to ask your parents, as I’m sure they probably know who he is.

.—Angelina Lo should also be a familiar name to most audiences, as she has been consistently active at TVB for the past 3 decades, participating in countless series. 80s audiences are probably most familiar with her breakthrough role as ‘Third Auntie’ in the classic series “The Seasons” (1988) – that role pretty much made her a household name in HK. That was actually the first series that I watched of Angelina’s and she definitely left quite an impression on me – that role was one that audiences pretty much ‘loved to hate’….she wasn’t a villain by any means – it’s just that her character was bossy, loud-mouthed, annoying, rude, and always seemed to ‘hurt’ people with her words (though sometimes not intentionally). She played numerous ‘mother’ roles after that throughout the rest of the 80s, 90s, and 00s, however in my opinion, none of her subsequent roles were able to top her ‘Third Auntie’ role. In the 90s, her best role (in my opinion) was in the sitcom “Family Squad” (1992) where she played the mother of Anita Lee, Lai Hoi Shan, and Joe Tay. In the ‘after 2000s’ era, her most memorable role (again, my opinion) is probably as Roger Kwok’s mother in “Square Pegs” and “Life Made Simple”.

.—Leung Hung Wah is one of those actors whose face I recognize, but never knew his name. He was most active in the 80s, where he participated in numerous series (especially ancient series), but almost all were small roles that couldn’t even be considered ‘supporting’. If I recall correctly, I believe the biggest role in his entire acting career was in “The Return of Luk Siu Fung” (1986) – but it was still a lesser supporting role compared to others in that series. There actually isn’t a whole lot of information about Leung Hung Wah out there, but the little I was able to find pretty much stated that later on in his career, he became a director focusing on horror movies – it didn’t sound like he was too successful, as many of his films – especially later in his career – basically flopped at the box office.

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Stay tuned for part 4….if most of the names in the first few parts did not sound familiar to you, the ones starting with the next post (Class of 1974) definitely will!