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He spoke Mandarin with Keanu Reeves in “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” He backflipped his method out of a struggle in “Wayne’s World 2.” He was the supportive, noodle-loving Mr. Ping in “Kung Fu Panda.” On tv, he was the maître d’ in the episode of “Seinfeld” titled “The Chinese Restaurant.”
Without exaggeration, Hong may be probably the most prolific actor in Hollywood history. With more than 600 credit to his title, he might lay declare to probably the most credit of any actor, residing or lifeless.
Hong’s path to stardom began, as many do, as a baby training in entrance of a mirror. But he saved his performing aspirations from his mother and father.
“Well, you know, Chinese parents want you to do some professional jobs rather than be an actor,” Hong says. “Being an actor is like the last rung in the ladder of professions. They don’t even call it a profession because it’s shameful to demonstrate your feelings in front of an audience. You were taught to be kind of quiet and to keep to yourself.”
Still, he obtained a few of his favourite performing inspiration from his father’s herb store in Minnesota.
“All the laundrymen from Minneapolis had nothing to do on weekends, so they would gather at my father’s store, herb store,” Hong recollects. “I remember that, because we’d have those little wooden stools and they all gathered there, and they hired these Chinese opera people from San Francisco to come and do their thing … I was only a little boy. You watch them with wide eyes, ‘Wow! What a profession.'”
He began his profession as a civil engineer
To please his mother and father, Hong graduated from the University of Southern California with a level in civil engineering. While working for Los Angeles County constructing roads, he continued to attempt to discover work as an actor and comic.
His large break got here on a TV present referred to as “You Bet Your Life,” hosted by Groucho Marx.
“I did impersonations of Groucho, James Cagney, and so forth,” Hong mentioned.
His look was a success. “I got the second-biggest fan mail ever on the Groucho Marx show,” he mentioned.
That TV look landed him an agent, and with it, the beginning of a profession in Hollywood.
“All of a sudden, they wanted me to be in a movie,” Hong mentioned. That film was “Soldier of Fortune,” a 1955 movie starring Clark Gable.
“It was just some kind of experience I never forgot, to act with Clark Gable. Then, right after, I got my union card and I started one after another. I had to quit civil engineering,” Hong mentioned.
Soon sufficient, he was performing alongside the likes of John Wayne, William Holden and Jennifer Jones.
Hong battled stereotypes alongside the best way
“From then on, it was 10 movies or TV [shows] a year,” Hong recollects. Those early roles, nevertheless, had been limiting, to say the least.
“Asians were put into a movie or TV mainly as a gimmick,” Hong mentioned. “We were never thought of playing the main roles, the leading people. That’s the way it was.”
Hong started his profession throughout an period of flagrant yellowface in Hollywood, the place white actors would typically play Asian characters. Marlon Brando performed an Okinawan native in “The Teahouse of the August Moon,” Mickey Rooney performed the bucktoothed Mr. Yunioshi in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” and John Wayne performed Mongol emperor Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror.”
Even in “The New Adventures of Charlie Chan” — against the law TV collection in which Hong performed a supporting position — Irish American actor J. Carrol Naish performed the lead as a Chinese American detective.
“Any other movie that demanded an Asian lead most of the time was played by Caucasian actors with their eyes taped up and their little teeth,” Hong mentioned. “I ended up in the early career mostly playing laundrymen, or persecuted Chinamen … it was tough, very tough, to get out of the mold.”
But Hong did not let Hollywood’s slim lens restrict his talents.
“I did the best as an actor to overcome the cliché-ness because I had to in order to keep working,” Hong mentioned. “I took those roles and then I used what my teachers had taught me and put the real feelings, even if it’s a villain … I try to find what makes the person really that person.”
That doesn’t suggest Hong did not additionally rise up towards misrepresentation. In 1962, he was given a script for a movie referred to as “The Confessions of an Opium Eater,” directed by Albert Zugsmith.
“I read the script, I said, ‘This is terrible,'” Hong mentioned. “All the roles were the opium dope people and the prostitutes and so forth.”
He organized a gaggle of individuals to method Zugsmith’s workplace to make a case for a rewrite.
“I said, ‘This is not a good image of the Chinese … You’ve got to improve the image of the Asians here,” Hong mentioned. Zugsmith, nevertheless, wouldn’t be satisfied, and the film continued on with manufacturing.
It led him to start out his very personal theater firm
Realizing that Hollywood would not be capable to present the roles Asian Americans deserved, Hong got down to carve his personal house. Along with actor Mako Iwamatsu, Hong helped arrange an Asian American performing group in Los Angeles. Their first manufacturing was “Rashomon,” a stage play primarily based on two brief tales written by Japanese creator Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and tailored into movie by Akira Kurosawa.
“That started the industry noticing who we were,” Hong mentioned. “We weren’t just extras, or gimmick people. We were in a play that we organized. We were the main, lead people. We were the actors. And we commanded attention.”
That performing group became the legendary theater group, East West Players.
“East West Players were formulated to showcase works by Asians, who wrote the play, who designed the stage, who act in the play,” Hong mentioned. “It was all done by Asian people, professional people.”
And Hong is aware of higher than anybody the significance of getting an area for Asian American creatives in Hollywood, the place roles are nonetheless missing.
“Even though the actors and singers have talent, they can’t move forward because there are not enough roles,” Hong mentioned. “That’s a shame, because it’s a waste of good talent. We can’t express ourselves in the way we want to in the mainstream movies and TV because it’s controlled by somebody else.” But he’s nonetheless assured that change is coming quickly.
“Asians are beginning to do their own plays and own TV series and movies and getting big box office. So it’s only a matter of time.”
Helped usher in new generations of Asian American actors
East West Players has nurtured nice expertise over its 55 years. Actors comparable to Randall Park, George Takei, John Cho and Daniel Dae Kim have all been related to the theater. And in response to East West Players’ present inventive director, it’s thought that at one level, 70% of Asian American actors in Hollywood had a connection to East West Players.
“You know, seeing this thing grow as it is to what it is … I still can’t believe it,” Hong mentioned of the theater firm. “I have to be proud of what I’ve done. But you can’t be too proud, because there’s too much work to do.”
Even at 91 years previous, Hong is not able to decelerate any time quickly.
“I could just retire on my pension, my (Screen Actors Guild) pension, and go to Europe and tour, and India,” Hong says. “But something inside me, inside of James Hong, wants to keep on going and do more movies and progress … I’m going to do other movies until I can’t walk anymore and can’t talk anymore. Then, I’ll take that tour.”
As of July 2020, Hong has 469 TV credit, 149 function movies, 32 brief movies and 22 video video games to his IMDB web page. That makes for a complete of 672 credit, and a wide ranging legacy that may stay on in Hollywood history.
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