Oh snap, curse has stroke again and a couple of days after watching a movie its famous main actor died, last time it was Von Sydow or Chan Sing.
Zhengquan Wang, better known as Jimmy Wang Yu, was probably the most famous chinaman actor in the west, or even in his home turf until Bruce Lee broke the scene in 1971, or shortly before in some other regions with Lieh Lo, but still that is from 1967 to 1971 aka the first years of Hong Kong breaking the international scene.
Trained actor but untrained action stunt (although supposedly a prolific bar brawler and successful trained swimmer) he somehow made his fame via action movies from the famous Hong Kong action director Chang Cheh, notably due to his resolute, solemn characters that are hard to dislike due to their unpretentious nature but who are, in context, somewhat sluggish compared to other stars who were untrained actors but well-trained stuntmen.
Despite losing some steam in terms of fame he stood out from the vast majority due to his seemingly good business savviness/connections, acting as a producer (sometimes even writer and director) to his own projects that were sold with the intent of distributing overseas and having good criteria in selecting quality specialists from time to time, most of these in his homeland of Taiwan which was the origin base of many 70's kung fu stuntmen and actors, some of his picked people even went on to become stars on their own years later. This because he realized, sans studio sets, he could make any movie he wanted as he found the movies they made were too basic in terms of planning and that the specialists usually made the bulk of the contribution, when he started to do his own thing (aka messing with the direction) the studio attempted to strong arm him and he resisted, the result was chaotic and he was essentially expelled from the island and exiled to Taiwan where he bagged more money than before and lived to tell it, unlike Lee who crossed not one but two studios and got his head stomped to the ground while being written-off as a stroke some year or two later.
These specialists made him look physically way better than he really was due to good set planning, notably in the ending sequence of Master of the Flying Guillotine (One-Armed Boxer pt. II), but these projects were depending on the producing and distributing company and as they could be big, like said movie, they could also be very low-budget and quickly done like Tiger & Crane Fists which went on to become what is better known in the west as Kung Pow, with Steve its silly producer/director/writer/voiceover/protagonist digitally replacing Wang Yu's original character.
In some way his work can be compared to George Lazenby's, a man not really trained for his surroundings but with the wits and guts to stand out, such comparison even made a coincidental encounter when they both decided to collaborate and create a Hong-Kong/Australian action movie early in the Aussie's own cinema wave with The Man from Hong Kong, an aussie Dirty Harry-esque product about a chinaman tackling an australian crime kingpin. But surely this fella's career will be always defined by his portrayal of the eponymous One-Armed Swordsman, the movie that cemented the all-encompassing one-man army kung fu sub-genre and considered one of the most important works of Hong Kong alongside A Touch of Zen despite, in my opinion, not being as close in terms of quality or acting but certainly a fun venture with said protagonist being hard to dislike even if still being not really a charismatic figure. Lee himself barely scrapped off his fame due to months previously Yu acting in The Chinese Boxer, one of the first "modern" (full color, set designed) famous movies focusing on unarmed hand-to-hand combat, which was surpassed later by Lieh Lo's King Boxer (or known better in the west as The Five Fingers of Death).
In my opinion, the movie that can define the guy's acting career is the movie he was doing at the very same time he did OAS, 1967's The Assassin, a pretty basic, traditional and predictive item that still was executed practically without flaws other than not explaining how the guy pulled a supernatural move in the end without the viewers knowing it previously and which in latter years has been subject to renewed cult status (for the second time) in the Hong Kong youth due to its unapologetic message about chopping and butchering higher authorities who do not hesitate to sell their own people. Jimmy Wang Yu could've probably been famous even if he didn't act in One-Armed Swordsman due to The Assassin being released shortly after, if not then perhaps due to his brash moves he could've still been cast for The Chinese Boxer but due to his enterprising and networking nature he probably could've been famous anyways even if he didn't act as a protagonist at all.
With his demise we now might hear even more classic chinese whisper legends regarding his antics, if he really did pay the triads aka producers money to have them stop pushing Jackie Chan around which in turn made him finally switch studios and become an established actor, if he won a drinking contest against Lazenby (a first for an asian to beat an anglo-saxon) if he knocked Oliver Reed out in a brawl or simply smashed his nose bloody, if the Coffin Drinking Tale was true, if he married a girl and killed his husband who was a director at the time as revenge for him kicking her around all the time, if he killed a dude in a Thailand bar brawl from a palm strike, if his rich family bought him a spot in the studio, if his links to the port authority triads made him that spot, if he really stole hundreds of documents and burned them all before going to Taiwan which led to a contract crisis in the studio which in turn led to many actors roaming free to join Golden Harvest or call it quits due to many of these being "forced contracts", if he banged Brigitte Lin who was deemed the unbangable one and, usually what many mention, is if he really was one of the unarmed henchmen in Taiwan's famed Bamboo Union which also made him easily recruit trained street urchins as stuntmen (many who have later admitted to having been gang members) and export them to Hong Kong who somewhat purged them in the 80's when the studios switched to a more cantonese-focused market with more businessmen/bureaucracy involved. Certainly the man's life is stuff for books and now somewhat with his death the stuff of legends, at least in the east asian underworld.