Philip Ahn

Actor

• Born: March 29, 1905
• Birthplace: Los Angeles, California
• Died: February 28, 1978
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Philip Ahn was a versatile character actor whose movie and television career spanned thirty years. Although he played many villains on the big screen throughout his career, Ahn was a civic-minded citizen in his hometown of Los Angeles. In 1984, he became the first Asian American actor to be recognized for his accomplishments with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Birth name: Pil Lip Ahn

Areas of achievement: Film, television

Early Life

Philip Ahn was born Pil Lip Ahn in the Highland Park section of northeastern Los Angeles on March 29, 1905. During his career, he claimed his birth year to be 1911, but documents confirm the earlier date to be the correct one. Ahn had two brothers and two sisters. His parents, Chang-ho and Helen Lee Ahn, had immigrated to the United States from Korea in 1902, only three years before Korea fell under Japanese occupation. While attending high school in Los Angeles, Ahn was offered a role in Douglas Fairbanks’s popular 1924 “oriental” fantasy The Thief of Bagdad. However, his conservative mother did not allow him to accept it.

After graduating from high school, Ahn enrolled at the Heungsadan (Young Korean Academy) in northern California. The mission of Heungsadan was to train future leaders of Korea so the country could establish an operative government after the end of Japanese occupation, an event that ultimately did not occur until 1945. While living at the academy, Ahn worked as a farm laborer. Because his father was often absent, he also worked a series of odd jobs to support the family. In 1934, he enrolled at the University of Southern California, where he became active in student leadership and began to explore his interest in acting, cinematography, and the entertainment industry.

Life’s Work

As a college student, Ahn appeared in a stage production of the 1934 musical Merrily We Roll Along. He left college during his sophomore year to pursue his acting career full time. In 1936, Ahn appeared in his first major film, the musical Anything Goes. From that time on, he was rarely absent from either the big or small screen for the next thirty years, appearing with major stars of the period ranging from Shirley Temple to John Wayne. One of his costars in the films Daughter of Shanghai (1937) and King of Chinatown (1939) was Los Angeles-born actress Anna May Wong, with whom Ahn was rumored to have been enamored. In any case, the alleged romance did not materialize and Ahn never married.

Given Hollywood’s assumption that audiences would accept Asian American actors as being native to any Asian country, Ahn portrayed both Japanese and Chinese characters. However, he rarely played a Korean. When he assumed the role of a cruel Japanese officer, he became a symbol of the man the audience loved to hate. Ahn was quoted as saying, “If I was going to play the enemy, I was going to play him as viciously as I could,” and in that he succeeded.

Ahn served in the United States Army briefly in 1945. Following the end of World War II, Ahn resumed his film career in 1947, and as movie roles became increasingly scarce in the mid-1950s, he turned increasingly toward television productions. Among his more prominent films were The General Died at Dawn (1936), Back to Bataan (1945), and Halls of Montezuma (1950).

In the 1950s, Ahn opened a Chinese restaurant with his sister in the San Fernando Valley. Their establishment, called Phil Ahn’s Moongate, proved very successful and remained in business for some thirty years. Ahn became active in civic affairs as well, being named the honorary mayor of Panorama City, the community in which his restaurant was located. He also became an important voice for the Korean community in Los Angeles. In 1984, Ahn was posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Significance

Philip Ahn was among the very first Korean Americans to have a significant film career. Possessed of a deeply mellifluous speaking voice, excellent diction, and a dignified mien with prominent cheekbones, he played roles ranging from the darkest villainy to the extremely beneficent. Although usually typecast in supporting roles, he did play a few B-picture leads, as in King of Chinatown and Daughter of Shanghai. He was one of a relative handful of Asian American actors who worked steadily for every major studio, particularly in the years during World War II. Probably best known to later audiences for his continuing role in the series Kung Fu, Ahn remained active up to his death. By the time he played his final roles, he had appeared in hundreds of films and television shows and worked with such entertainment legends as Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Mae West, and Julie Andrews. Ahn served as a role model for countless Korean Americans who shared his passion for acting.

Bibliography

Chung, Hye Seung. Hollywood Asian: Philip Ahn and the Politics of Cross-Ethnic Performance. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2006. Print. A scholarly account of Korean representation in American film, with emphasis on the career of Philip Ahn.

Halliwell, Leslie. Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion. 9th ed. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1988. Print. Includes a brief entry about Philip Ahn.

Katz, Ephraim, and Ronald Dean Nolen. The Film Encyclopedia. 6th ed. New York: Collins, 2008. Print. A highly regarded reference work on film personalities, containing some information about Philip Ahn.

Twomey, Alfred E., and Arthur F. McClure. The Versatiles: A Study of Supporting Character Actors and Actresses in the American Motion Picture, 1930–1955. Print. South Brunswick: Barnes, 1969. A book about early twentieth-century Hollywood, with some information about Philip Ahn.