Philip Ahn
“America a very funny place, full of prayers and money.” - Philip Ahn as Nautaung in Never So Few
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Philip Ahn was born on March 29, 1905 in Los Angeles. Ahn had an interest in acting since high school, so much so that he and a long-time friend Anna May Wong screened for The Thief of Bagdad (1924) in a minor role. When studying at University of Southern California (USC), Ahn applied for a role in the musical Anything Goes (1936), when they were looking for a Chinese comedian to play a role. Originally rejected because his English was void of any accents. Only when he went back speaking English in a stereotypical Asian accent did he get the role. Ahn’s name eventually came to the forefront when he was in films such as Daughter of Shanghai and King of Chinatown, which were some of the first films to portray Asians in prominent roles.
During World War II, Ahn played multiple roles in anti-Japanese propaganda. Fueled not only by Americans seeing Japan as an enemy, Ahn’s opposition against the Japanese also stems from his Korean ancestry. As a result, he impersonated the Japanese in films and media to spread bad publicity, once saying, “I felt that the more vicious I portrayed [the Japanese], the more I was accomplishing”. Note that because he played overwhelmingly villainous roles during this time, his “branding” as an actor soon to be of playing the criminal or the outlaw.
After WWII, Ahn continued to pursue acting and film. He played as a generic Asian actor who can be casted for a diverse range of Asian backgrounds. Examples include playing as characters of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Javanese descent. In his fictional novel The Life and Death of the Hollywood Kid, Ahn Junghyo described Philip Ahn “as an actor who monopolized Oriental supporting and bit roles during the 1950s and 1960, [...] who could not at all be connected to our reality of time, notwithstanding his Korean face.”
After his first visit to South Korea in 1959, Ahn pushed to show a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional depiction of his ancestral homeland. He worked with Columbia Pictures to develop a relationship where they could produce an entire film that showed Korean life and culture beyond the context of Japanese occupation and underdeveloped living. However, there was no mutual agreement with the Korean government, so the effort was shut down.
Despite this failure, Ahn still pushed for bridging gaps between South Korea and the United States. He played a substantial role as a spokesman for the Korean American community, often being sought by immigrants and Koreans for his advice and introductions into the United States. He played a role in establishing the Los Angeles-Pusan sister city initiative and was deemed an unofficial Korean cultural ambassador for Hollywood and Los Angeles. Ahn worked for the rest of his life to gain recognition as a Korean in the film industry through his ongoing push for projects in Korea. Unfortunately, his dreams to complete a project never came to fruition, after passing away from surgical complications in 1978. Awarded posthumously in 1984, Ahn became the first Korean American to get a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry.
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