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The Role of His Life

Any Asian Pacific Islander American observer worth his or her fish sauce, must pause briefly from discussing events of the day to bow our heads in observance of the passing of Victor Wong.

Victor Wong who?

No, Victor Wong.

Don’t know him?

Sure you do. You’ve seen him. He was the Asian guy in the corner, the little Chinese guy you always see, but don’t. He just belongs as the Asian piece in the human landscape. Small, slightly bent over, with an aging odd-shaped face. Not round, but drawn. He had a form of palsy that caused nerve disorder in his face, that when combined with his eyes, gave him a unique look. Then there was his salt and pepper hair that was turning thin and stringy. In general, he looked too good to be a street person, but not good enough for a Macy’s ad. He had a community look in every way. Maybe that’s why he was cast in more than 30 movies and television specials in the last three decades of his life.

He was us in the movies, the envy of every Post-Bruce Lee Asian Pacific Islander American wannabe. I don’t mean the Hong Kong guys like the Jackie Chans and Jet Lis. They’re really Asian from Asia. I mean APIA. Victor was born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown. He didn’t have good looks. But he had good luck. Half the time he didn’t even have to speak on screen. He just had to dawdle and be himself. Drink tea. Eat noodles. Look mysterious and inscrutable. Or ornery and mischievous. He wasn’t a karate hunk ingénue, he was just a Chinese American guy who looked like us.

Whenever anyone needed an older Asian male schtick, Victor was there. He could turn on the image of the wise elder, or the immigrant savant at the drop of a coolie hat. Victor was a gold mine for central casting. He could deliver.

Not only could he play the generational game among Asians as he did in the Joy Luck Club and The Last Emperor, he was also in big mainstream movies like Eddie Murphy’s Golden Child, and Madonna’s Shanghai Surprise.

In moviedom, he was the Asian Pacific Islander American Harry Dean Stanton. Don’t know him either? Another character actor. Never the main guy, but always working, always looking like he belonged, and therefore, at once memorable and forgettable. (When I was covering movies I interviewed him for his role in Repo Man. He was in that? Yep. The mark of a character actor).

I actually knew Victor while in high school in San Francisco in the ‘70s. I was an intern at KQED’s Newsroom, a local TV show borne out of the newspaper strike. It was a show made up of people who shouldn’t be doing TV. But they were doing it as a public service, and all at a time when TV news was really in its infancy. There was film, not video tape. No one went live from the scene. And for most reportersÇ the best visuals they had were black-and-white photographs taken by a little Chinese guy named Victor Wong. Victor was a strange mix of Chinese/beatnik, hipster, bohemian. He was somewhat legendary in the crowd because he had befriended Jack Kerouac, and was even mentioned in On the Road. At Newsroom, Victor was basically slumming. He’d take shots of meetings, politicians and demonstrations. I would help put them on an easel for the studio cameras.

But the guy I knew as a teenager always gave me a charge when I saw him later in his movies. “There’s Victor!” I’d tell my movie going companions. And they would notice, but they wouldn’t know Victor’s real magic. Because Victor, in real life was exactly as he was in the movies. Gruff – strange even. Not overly warm. But in a second, he’d flash a smile, and then he’d be off, mumbling something as he walked off. He was always good for short, memorable impressions.

Victor died recently in Locke, the Chinese immigrant town on the Sacramento River, where he spent time in the 1930s when his father started a small school there.

I’m a bit stunned by his passing. I hadn’t seen him since he retired in 1998 after suffering from two strokes. If he were healthy he’d be perfect to play Wen Ho Lee, the atomic nuclear spy. But then he’d be the leading man. It’s more likely that Hollywood would make the central character some guilt-ridden CIA agent and make Wen Ho Lee a fringe character in his own story. Victor would have had that role down cold.

Still, we can always see his like, or his likeness again. Just go down to Chinatown. Or definitely rent one of his movies. You can have your very own Victor Wong Film Festival. When you get to the Victor parts, just freeze them. Pause. And ponder the image of a modern Asian Pacific Islander American male icon.

Reach Emil Guillermo at: emil@amok.com