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

1. Portrait of a Patriot’s Son: Philip Ahn and Korean Diasporic Identities in Hollywood

1 PORTRAIT OF A PATRIOT’S SON Philip Ahn and Korean Diasporic Identities in Hollywood O VER THE PAST DECADE, Korean faces have become ever more conspicuous in American mass media and popular culture. For example, veteran film comedian Pak Chunghun played Yi Il-sang, an ex-soldier of fortune in the Bosnian War in Jonathan Demme’s The Truth about Charlie (2002).1 Originally conceived as Japanese, this substantial supporting role was rewritten as Korean at the request of Pak, whom Demme had grown fond of after seeing him in director Yi Myŏng-se’s Nowhere to Hide (Injŏng sajŏng pŏlgŏt ŏpda, 1999), a stylistic police thriller that had become a Sundance Festival sleeper. Two Korean American actors, Rick Yune and Will Yun Lee, were cast as sinister North Korean villains in the twentieth installment of the James Bond series, Die Another Day (2002)—roles that had been turned down by several South Korean stars, including Ch’a Inp ’yo, Ch’oe Min-su, Song Kang-ho, and Ch’oe Min-sik. Although criticized by South Korean boycotters for collaborating in Hollywood’s representation of North Korea as an “Axis of Evil,”2 Yune, in particular, made a strong impression on international Bondophiles for his iconic incarnation of a classic Bond nemesis. Margaret Cho, another high-profile Korean American player, has made a successful comeback with a series of independently produced concert films—I’m the One That I Want (2000), Notorious C.H.O. (2002), CHO Revolution (2004), and Magaret Cho: Assassin (2005)—after her ABC sitcom All-American Girl (1994–1995) was unceremoniously canceled after its first season. With candid, innuendo-sprinkled humor and biting yet witty criticism of institutional racism, Cho has established herself as a leading Asian American standup comedian. More recently, John Cho joined the club of Korean American stars when he played Harold, one of the two leads in New Line Cinema’s unconventional buddy film, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), establishing a new role model for up-and-coming Asian American actors. Korean Canadian actress Sandra Oh has likewise gained mainstream exposure with two popular roles—as the sultry winery worker Stephanie in Alexander Payne’s Sideways (2004) and as the sassy surgical intern Cristina Yang in ABC’s hit hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy (2005– ). In 2004, the producers of another ABC show, Lost, created a fully developed, three-dimensional Korean character specifically for bilingual actress Kim Yun-jin, who had earlier starred in the popular Korean blockbuster Shiri (Swiri, 1999). But despite this recent emergence of Koreans and Korean Americans in Hollywood and network television, few younger audiences today know their precursor, Philip Ahn, the first actor of Korean descent to become a Hollywood “star.” I put the word star in quotations, since mainstream audiences were more likely to label Ahn a supporting or character actor. He was certainly no Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck, Humphrey Bogart, or John Wayne, although he shared screen time with these and many other Hollywood stars. Despite being promoted as an ethnic star at various points in his career (especially during his early years at Paramount Studios), Philip Ahn never achieved the status of a top-billed star, which was a “whites only” club in classical Hollywood cinema. In this chapter, I hope to critically recuperate his unsung stardom in relation not only to the pioneering roles he played in both the U.S. and South Korean film industries but also to his familial role as the heir of an indisputable celebrity in modern Korean modern history: Tosan An Ch’ang-ho. As the first and most historically significant Korean American actor to work in the film industry, Philip Ahn has been undeservingly neglected in film and media studies. The discipline of Korean studies has been equally negligent in exploring the intersecting legacies of Tosan and his son Philip Ahn in the formation of Korean American nationalism. Tosan’s name is a hagiographic fixture in the annals of Korea’s tumultuous twentieth-century history, yet many scholars in the field are oblivious to the fact that his son was once called an “Oriental Clark Gable” in Hollywood,3 where he played lead roles opposite Anna May Wong, and was a distinguished character actor until his death in 1978. chapter 1 4 | I argue that Ahn’s career can and should be recuperated as part...