Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance

Introduction: The Life and Death of a Hollywood Asian

INTRODUCTION The Life and Death of a Hollywood Asian G RACING THE COVER OF THIS BOOK is an image of a “Hollywood Asian” whose face may be familiar to many classic film fans but whose name may escape some of them. The performer in question is Philip Ahn (1905–1978), a prominent Korean American character actor of classical Hollywood cinema who portrayed a diverse cross-section of roles in over 200 films and television programs1—from the first Asian American romantic hero of the sound era in Paramount’s Daughter of Shanghai (1937) to sadistic Japanese officers in World War II propaganda films; from a wronged Chinese merchant in an episode of NBC’s Bonanza (1950–1973) to a superstitious South Korean farmer in an episode of CBS’s M*A*S*H (1972–1983). Despite his reputation as one of the finest supporting actors in the history of American motion pictures and television, Ahn’s career has largely been neglected in cinema studies, mentioned only in passing within the critical confines of World War II film studies and Anna May Wong biographies. Nevertheless, Philip Ahn is posthumously enjoying a sort of cult stardom among film buffs, fans, and critics who have a vested interest in overlooked genres and early Asian American screen icons. Charlie Chan fans rhapsodize about the radical difference between Ahn’s two roles in the series—the amiable yet nerdy son-in-law Wing Fu of Sidney Toler’s Chan in 20th Century-Fox’s Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938) and the shrewd, sinister murder suspect Captain Kong in Monogram’s The Chinese Ring (1947). Anna May Wong aficionados remember Ahn for playing opposite the Chinese American goddess, who was rumored to be his real-life romantic partner. For American war-film specialists, Philip Ahn is “the most soughtafter villain of all, with his nasal, flat voice and his masklike face that looked as if it had been carved out of India rubber.”2 Fans of the ABC television series Kung Fu (1972–1975) remember him as Master Kan, who tests young Caine, the Eurasian protagonist, with a physical/philosophical mind game: “As quickly as you can...snatch the pebble from my hand.... When you can take the pebble from my hand, it will be time for you to leave.” This celebrated scene from the pilot episode was habitually repeated in the credit sequence throughout the series’ first-season run, making Ahn’s phrase, “Snatch the pebble from my hand,” one of the most frequently quoted lines of the 1970s. Some readers might wonder why there should be a book-length treatment of an actor who, with few exceptions, played bit parts and secondary roles in classical Hollywood films and television programs. Let me first define the premise and purpose of this book to avoid any misunderstanding. Put bluntly , this is not a biography of Philip Ahn, although I do provide substantial details of his life and career. It is, rather, a discursive critical biography of a “Hollywood Asian,” one that highlights Ahn’s career as an anchoring case study while tracing the trajectory of Asian and Asian American representations from the 1930s to the 1970s within broader historical, industrial, and cultural contexts, as well as providing theoretical examinations of crossethnic performativity and bicultural spectatorship. The value of Ahn’s career for this particular study is thus not measured by the size of his roles, the length of his screen time, or the extent of his stardom, but rather by its functionality as an indicator of what types of roles were allowed and disallowed for Asian American actors at given historical periods and how depictions of Asia in American film and television were transformed over the course of four decades. In his entry on Asian Americans in The Columbia Companion to American History on Film, Terry Hong lists Philip Ahn along with Sessue Hayakawa and Anna May Wong as one of “three Asian American actors [who] managed to establish long-standing careers during the twentieth century,” attesting to his canonical place in the history of Asian Americans in Hollywood.3 Ahn remains a true pioneer, one of the few performers of Asian descent to survive the racist casting politics of studio-era filmmaking and make a successful transition to the Television Age. Although more iconic Asian American stars existed in the silent period (Tsuru Aoki and Hayakawa) introduction xii | and during the Cold War...