Hangin’ with James Hong

February 22 is the birthday of respected veteran character actor James Hong (b. 1929). He’s 95 as I pen this, and still toiling at what he loves, which is pretty incredible.

Hong’s father owned a Chinese restaurant in Minneapolis and was the leader of the local Tong. Hong was born and raised in that city, although some of his early schooling was in Hong Kong. (Consider this starting fact — Hong was 20 years old when China fell to the Communists 75 years ago!) Hong served in the U.S. army during the Korean War, and became an engineer, a trade he originally plied while pursuing his acting career on the side. One of his very earliest appearances was on You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx!

With over 600 credits Hong may have the record for the most prolific actor on this blog. I certainly can’t remember ascribing a larger number to anyone here, although I would imagine that some from the early silent era approach or exceed it, when you consider the days of one reel pictures and barnstorming with stock companies. Naturally, we’ll hit just a few of Hong’s key credits here.

In 1957 he was a regular on the TV series The New Adventures of Charlie Chan with J. Carrol Naish (as Chan’s Number One Son). Yes, he played the son of an Anglo actor in yellowface. He had to endure a lot of that kind of thing throughout his career. Obviously, any TV series that needed Asian actors provided him with lots of work, and so he made multiple appearances on shows like The Hawaiian Eye, Hong Kong, Hawaii Five-O, and Kung Fu (amazingly, he appears never to have been on M*A*S*H). He was on cop shows like The Streets of San Francisco and McMillan and Wife. He was on The Outer Limits, Tales from the Darkside, and The X Files. And of course that famous 1991 Seinfeld episode “The Chinese Restaurant”, just as he had been on a Chinese restaurant episode on All in the Family two decades earlier — and was in dozens of such episodes on as many shows.

Early movies include Flower Drum Song (1961) and The Sand Pebbles (1966). He plays Faye Dunaway’s butler in Chinatown (1974), though not the gardener (that was Jerry Fujikawa). He’s also in the sequel Two Jakes (1991). In Airplane! (1980) he’s at the center of a sight gag as a Japanese soldier who commits hari-kari rather than listen to Robert Hayes drone on about his past. Other major films included Blade Runner (1982), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), The Shadow (1994) and Balls of Fury (2007). Voice-over work in animated features includes roles in Disney’s Mulan (1998), Sherlock Gnomes (2018) and all the King Fu Panda films (2008-present).

Hong was also a founding member of L.A.’s East West Players in 1965, America’s longest-running Asian professional theatre organization. I’ve seen it claimed that it’s the first one, but that’s arguable since I know of Asian theatre activity in NYC going back for over a century, and I’m sure that’s got to be true of west coast cities like San Francisco, as well. Still, it’s a pioneering modern organization, it cannot be denied.

James Hong even had a great part in Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)! I told you he’s still working! At this writing it’s a 70 year career!