Rafu Wire Service and Staff Reports
James Hong placed his handprints and footprints in cement in the forecourt of the TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX in Hollywood on Thursday and was honored on his 95th birthday for a seven-decade acting career with more than 600 credits.
Oscar-winning filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and actress Lucy Liu participated in the ceremony.
Kwan and Scheinert won awards for best director and best original screenplay at last year’s Academy Awards for the time-and-space-twisting tale “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which was also named best picture. Hong portrayed the demanding father of dissatisfied and overwhelmed laundromat owner Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh).
Since 2008, Liu and Hong have supplied the voices of Viper and Mr. Ping, respectively, for all of the “Kung Fu Panda” films, including “Kung Fu Panda 4,” set to premiere March 8.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez presented the actor with a “James Hong Day in Los Angeles” proclamation signed by the City Council.
“He’s much more than an actor,” Soto-Martinez said. “He’s also been a fierce advocate for Asian and Asian American representatation in Hollywood.”
Hong was also joined by California State Treasurer Fiona Ma.
Born in Minneapolis on Feb. 22, 1929, Hong studied civil engineering at the University of Minnesota and joined the Minnesota Army National Guard. His national guard unit was mobilized during the Korean War and Hong was sent to Camp Rucker in Alabama for training. After finishing his training for the day, he would entertain soldiers. Upon witnessing Hong’s performing prowess, the camp general asked Hong to stay at Camp Rucker and be in charge of the camp’s live shows rather than being deployed to Korea.
After the war, Hong moved to Los Angeles in 1953 with a friend and finished his engineering degree at the University of Southern California. After graduation he worked as a road engineer for Los Angeles County for 5½ years while acting in the evenings, the weekends and during his vacation time.
Reflecting on how far he has come since then, Hong said that when he first arrived in Hollywood, “the first thing I did was come here and try all the footprints. I put mine on top of John Wayne. Wow, too big for me. Too large. Jimmy Stewart? Too large. But now, today, I have my own size.”
Hong has said his breakthrough came in a 1954 appearance on Groucho Marx’s game show “You Bet Your Life,” when he did impersonations of Marx, James Cagney and others, which resulted in a flood of fan mail and landed Hong an agent.
Hong is the only living actor to have worked with Clark Gable and Marx, having appeared with Gable in the 1955 adventure film “Soldier of Fortune.”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” was the fifth film Hong appeared in that was nominated for a best-picture Oscar. The others were “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing” (1955), “The Sand Pebbles” (1966), “Chinatown” (1974) and “Bound for Glory” (1976), with “Everything Everywhere All at Once” the only one to win.
One of his favorite roles was Lo Pan, the supernatural villain in “Big Trouble in Little China” (1986), which remains a cult favorite. Hong’s other film credits include “Flower Drum Song,” “Airplane!,” “Blade Runner,” “The Golden Child,” “Wayne’s World 2,” “The Perfect Weapon,” “Mulan,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “R.I.P.D.”
His television credits include “Death Valley Days,” “One Step Beyond,” “Bonanza,” “Perry Mason,” “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “The Outer Limits,” “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “The Fugitive,” “I Spy,” “Mission: Impossible,” “Ironside,” “Kung Fu,” “Hawaii Five-0,” “All in the Family,” “The Streets of San Francisco,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Dynasty,” “Cagney & Lacey,” “Miami Vice,” “China Beach,” “Seinfeld,” “MacGyver,” “The X-Files,” “Friends,” “Martial Law,” “The West Wing,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Bones,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”
Like “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” some of his most recent film and TV appearances have involved primarily Asian American casts and storylines, including “Abominable,” “Turning Red,” “American Born Chinese,” “Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai” and “Patsy Lee & The Keepers of the 5 Kingdoms.”
Along with Mako, Rae Creevey, Beulah Quo, Soon-tek Oh, Pat Li, June Kim, Guy Lee and Yet Lock, Hong was among the Asian American artists who founded East West Players in 1965, seeking to create roles beyond the stereotypical parts they were offered in mainstream Hollywood. Now based in Little Tokyo, it helped launch the careers of such playwrights as David Henry Hwang and Philip Kan Gotanda, and has become the nation’s premier Asian American theater.
In a Facebook post, EWP said, “Thank you so much for your many years of incredible work and inspiration” and noted that part of Hong’s legacy “goes back to 1974 when James performed in EWP’s ‘Year of the Dragon’ by Frank Chin.”
In 2022, Hong received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — a project spearheaded by fellow actor Daniel Dae Kim. Last year, the KCET series “Artbound” focused on the history of EWP and featured Hong and Kim along with George Takei, John Cho, Tamlyn Tomita and others.
In a recent interview with “CBS Sunday Morning,” when asked if he was thinking about retirement, Hong responded, “What’s that word?”