Philip Ahn

Acting

Philip Ahn

Born 1905-03-29 · Highland Park, Los Angeles, California, USA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Philip Ahn (born Pil Lip Ahn (안필립), March 29, 1905 – February 28, 1978) was a Korean American actor. He was the first Korean American film actor to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Ahn's first film was A Scream in the Night in 1935. He appeared in the Bing Crosby film Anything Goes, though director Lewis Milestone had initially rejected him because his English was too good for the part. His first credited roles came in 1936 in The General Died at Dawn and Stowaway, opposite Shirley Temple. He starred opposite Anna May Wong in Daughter of Shanghai (1937) and King of Chinatown (1937). During World War II, Ahn often played Japanese villains in war films. Mistakenly thought to be Japanese, he received several death threats. He enlisted in the United States Army, having served in the Special Services as an entertainer. He was discharged early because of an injured ankle and returned to making films. Ahn appeared in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, Around the World in Eighty Days, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Paradise, Hawaiian Style, with Elvis Presley. He got to play Korean characters in Korean War movies such as Battle Circus (1953) and Battle Hymn (1956). In 1952, Ahn made his television debut on the Schlitz Playhouse, a series he would make three additional appearances on. Ahn would also be cast in four episodes of ABC's Adventures in Paradise, four episodes of the ABC/Warner Brothers crime drama Hawaiian Eye, and the CBS crime drama Hawaii Five-O. He made three appearances each on Crossroads, Bonanza, and M*A*S*H. He would also appear in two television movies. Ahn's most notable television role was as "Master Kan" on the television series Kung Fu. A Presbyterian, Ahn felt that the Taoist homilies his character quoted did not contradict his own religious faith.

Acting credits

Around the World in 80 Days poster
6.7

Based on the famous book by Jules Verne the movie follows Phileas Fogg on his journey around the world. Which has to be completed within 80 days, a very short period for those days.

Around the World in 80 Days

1956

They Were Expendable poster
6.5

After a demonstration of new PT boats, Navy brass are still unconvinced of their viability in combat, leaving Lt. "Rusty" Ryan frustrated. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, however, Ryan and his buddy Lt. Brickley are told they can finally take their squadron into battle. The PT boats quickly prove their worth, successfully shooting down Japanese planes, relaying messages between islands, and picking off a multitude of enemy ships.

They Were Expendable

1945

The Story of Dr. Wassell poster
6.4

As the Japanese sweep through the East Indies during World War II, Dr. Wassell is determined to escape from Java with some crewmen of the cruiser Marblehead. Based on a true story of how Dr. Wassell saved a dozen or so wounded sailors who were left behind when able bodied men were evacuated to Australia.

The Story of Dr. Wassell

1944

One-Eyed Jacks poster
6.8

Running from the law after a bank robbery in Mexico, Dad Longworth finds an opportunity to take the stolen gold and leave his partner Rio to be captured. Years later, Rio escapes from the prison where he has been since, and hunts down Dad for revenge. Dad is now a respectable sheriff in California, and has been living in fear of Rio's return.

One-Eyed Jacks

1961

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing poster
6.1

A widowed doctor of both Chinese and European descent falls in love with a married American correspondent in Hong Kong during China's Communist revolution.

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing

1955

A Girl Named Tamiko poster
5.8

A photographer based in Tokyo, who's in love with local beauty Tamiko, begins to court an embassy official so she can help him gain entry into the United States.

A Girl Named Tamiko

1962

The Keys of the Kingdom poster
7.1

A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed.

The Keys of the Kingdom

1944

Never So Few poster
5.5

A U.S. military troop takes command of a band of Burmese guerillas during World War II.

Never So Few

1959

China Girl poster
5.4

Two-fisted newsreel photographer Johnny Williams is stationed in Burma and China in the early stage of WW II. Captured by the Japanese, he escapes from a concentration camp with the aid of beautiful, enigmatic 'China Girl' Miss Young. The two arduously make their way back to friendly lines so that Johnny can deliver the vital military information he's managed to glean from his captors.

China Girl

1942

Halls of Montezuma poster
5.9

Richard Widmark leads an all star cast of marine leathernecks including Jack Palance, Robert Wagner, Karl Malden, Richard Boone and Jack Webb into battle on a heavily fortified island. This action-packed story follows the squad as they pick their way through enemy-infested jungles on a time sensitive mission to find the source of the enemy rockets. As the mission progresses, the squad and leader overcome many challenges as they are transformed into an effective and efficient fighting unit.

Halls of Montezuma

1951

Back to Bataan poster
6.1

A U.S. Army colonel leads local fighters in a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese in the Philippines.

Back to Bataan

1945

Red Snow poster
5.7

An Eskimo Army Sergeant is sent to his Arctic tribal village to gather information about a mysterious unmarked black airplane which shadows military planes in northern Alaska and equally-mysterious flashings lighting up the sky from Siberia across the Bering Strait. He soon discovers Soviet espionage at work. Along the way he must also deal with an ice-floe evacuation, an air-ice rescue, a fight with a polar bear and marriage to his fiancee.

Red Snow

1952

Thoroughly Modern Millie poster
6.8

Millie Dillmount, a fearless young lady fresh from Salina, Kansas, determined to experience Life, sets out to see the world in the rip-roaring Twenties. With high spirits and wearing one of those new high hemlines, she arrives in New York to test the "modern" ideas she had been reading about back in Kansas: "I've taken the girl out of Kansas. Now I have to take Kansas out of the girl!"

Thoroughly Modern Millie

1967

The Sickle or the Cross poster
7.0

Reverend John Burnside, American missionary in the Far East, prepares to return home after twenty years to take up the fight against Communism. The Reds imprison him and send in his place a spy who is his double, but who is instructed to come out for Communism. The spy is accepted in Burnside's home town, and he reports to local Communist headquarters, where James John, prominent local businessman but in reality a Red agent, has instructions to assist him in all details of his mission. He does a series of personal appearances and radio interviews and talk shows, using an anti-Communist approach.

The Sickle or the Cross

1949

The Man from Down Under poster
7.0

An Australian blowhard raises two orphaned children as his own in the years leading up to WWII.

The Man from Down Under

1943

The Shanghai Story poster
5.0

Shanghai, China. The last expatriate Westerners still living in the city are imprisoned in a hotel by the communist authorities in order to find the spy hiding among them.

The Shanghai Story

1954

Jonathan Livingston Seagull poster
6.1

Jonathan is sick and tired of the boring life in his seagull clan. He rather experiments with new, always more daring flying techniques. Since he doesn't fit in, the elders expel him from the clan. So he sets out to discover the world beyond the horizon in a quest for wisdom.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

1973

Kung Fu: The Way of the Tiger, the Sign of the Dragon poster
7.2

After avenging the death of his teacher, a Shaolin monk flees China to the American West and helps people while being pursued by bounty hunters.

Kung Fu: The Way of the Tiger, the Sign of the Dragon

1972

Around the World poster
6.3

Bandleader Kay Kyser takes his troupe of nutty musicians, goofball comics and pretty girl singers on a tour around the world to entertain the troops during World War II.

Around the World

1943

Dragon Seed poster
6.8

Life in a small Chinese village is turned upside down when the Japanese invade it. A heroic young Chinese woman leads her fellow villagers in an uprising against the Japanese invaders.

Dragon Seed

1944

Macao poster
6.3

Nick Cochran, an American in exile in Macao, has a chance to restore his name by helping capture an international crime lord. Undercover, can he mislead the bad guys and still woo the attractive singer/petty crook, Julie Benson?

Macao

1952

The General Died at Dawn poster
6.5

China, 1930s, during the ravaging civil war. General Pen entrusts O'Hara, an intrepid American adventurer, with the mission of providing a large sum of money to Mr. Wu with the task of buying weapons in Shanghai to help end General Yang's tyranny that keeps an entire province under his ruthless iron boot.

The General Died at Dawn

1936

Fair Wind to Java poster
5.6

The Dutch East Indies, at the end of the nineteenth century. An adventurous captain of an American merchant vessel is looking for a sunken Dutch vessel containing 10,000 precious diamonds. Unfortunately, he's not the only one and then there's also that volcano on the nearby island of Krakatau, waiting to explode in its historical, disastrous eruption...

Fair Wind to Java

1953

The Chinese Ring poster
5.2

Soon after a Chinese princess comes to the US to buy planes for her people, she is murdered by a poison dart fired by an air rifle.

The Chinese Ring

1947