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Victor Sen Yung(1915-1980)

  • Actor
  • Soundtrack
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Victor Sen Yung
Trailer for this classic war film
Play trailer2:50
Across the Pacific (1942)
1 Video
40 Photos
Achieving both film and TV notice during his lengthy career, this diminutive Asian-American character was born Victor Cheung Young on October 18, 1915 in San Francisco to Chinese emigrants. When his mother died during the influenza epidemic of 1918-19, his father placed Victor and his sister in a children's shelter and returned to China, returning to the USA in the mid-1920s, having remarried. The two children were released back to his guardianship, and began learning Chinese. To contribute to the family income, young Sen Yew was employed as a houseboy at age 11 and managed to earn his way through college at the University of California at Berkeley with an interest in animal husbandry and receiving a degree in economics.

Following a move to Hollywood for some post graduate work at UCLA and USC, Victor gained an entrance into films via extra work, where he was in such roles as a peasant boy in The Good Earth (1937), and a soldier in Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938), among others. During this early period he also worked as a salesman for a chemical firm. In one of Hollywood's more interesting tales of being "discovered", the story goes that Victor (as he would become known) was on the 20th Century-Fox studio lot at the time trying to pitch one of his company's flame retardant compounds to industry techies when one of them suggested he check out casting. The original actor who had played Charlie Chan, Warner Oland, died and the series was undergoing a major casting overhaul. In the end, Sidney Toler, received cast approval, chose the fledgling actor following a screen test to play his #2 son, Jimmy Chan, for the film Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938). Victor went on to play the role for seventeen other "Charlie Chan" features. Needless, to say he quit the sales business for good.

Victor enjoyed playing Jimmy, the earnest rookie detective who, to his chagrin, was always under the watchful eye of his famous father while trying to help solve murder cases. Outside the role, however, Victor (billed variously as Sen Yung, Victor Yung, and Victor Sen Yung at different times) found the atmosphere oppressive. Usually cast in nothing-special Asian stereotypes, sometimes villainous, in war-era films, parts in such movies as The Letter (1940) starring Bette Davis, Secret Agent of Japan (1942), Little Tokyo, U.S.A. (1942), Moontide (1942), Across the Pacific (1942), Manila Calling (1942), China (1943) and Night Plane from Chungking (1943), did little to advance his stature in Hollywood. His career was interrupted for U.S. Air Force duty as a Captain of Intelligence during WWII. His part in the Chan pictures was taken over by actor Benson Fong.

Victor was able to pick up where he left off in Hollywood following the war and returned to his famous role as #2 son. The character's name, however, was eventually changed from "Jimmy" to "Tommy" after a third installment of Charlie Chan pictures were filmed with Roland Winters now the title sleuth after the death of Toler in 1947. While Victor's workload was fairly steady, again the roles themselves were meager and hardly inspiring. Most were in "B" level crime mysteries and war pictures and many were uncredited roles. Reduced often to playing middle-age servile roles (houseboys, laundrymen, valets, clerks, dock workers and waiters), some of his slightly more prominent roles include those in Woman on the Run (1950), Forbidden (1953), Target Hong Kong (1953), and Trader Tom of the China Seas (1954). His last film appearance was in The Man with Bogart's Face (1980).

On TV, he appeared in two familiar recurring roles. On the John Forsythe series, Bachelor Father (1957), he showed up as "Peter Fong" on the final season of the sitcom. He played the cousin to houseboy Sammee Tong's regular character. Victor is better remembered, however, for the part of Hop Sing, the earnest, volatile cook to the Cartwright clan, provided sporadic comic relief on Bonanza (1959). He also appeared in the TV pilot and in several episodes of Kung Fu (1972), as well as popping up in dramatic episodes of Hawaiian Eye (1959), The F.B.I. (1965). and Hawaii Five-O (1968). Sitcoms gave a hint of his gentle, humorous side in Here's Lucy (1968), Get Smart (1965) and Mister Ed (1961).

Married and divorced with one child, he sought work outside of acting by the mid-1970s. At one point he was giving cooking demonstrations in department stores. An accomplished chef who specialized in Cantonese-style cooking, in 1974, he published the 1974 Great Wok Cookbook and dedicated the book to his father, Sen Gam Yung.

Victor Sen Yung was working on a second cookbook when he was suddenly found dead in November of 1980 under initially "mysterious circumstances" in his modest San Fernando Valley bungalow. Following an investigation it was determined that Victor was accidentally asphyxiated in his sleep after turning on a faulty kitchen stove for heat. He was survived by his son, Brent Kee Young, and two grandchildren.
BornOctober 18, 1915
DiedNovember 1, 1980(65)
BornOctober 18, 1915
DiedNovember 1, 1980(65)
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Photos40

Iris Wong and Victor Sen Yung in Charlie Chan in Rio (1941)
Jesse Dizon, Ted Eccles, Susan Lawrence, Jeff MacKay, and Victor Sen Yung in Dr. Shrinker (1976)
Billy Barty, Jesse Dizon, Keye Luke, Titus Napoleon, Jay Robinson, and Victor Sen Yung in Dr. Shrinker (1976)
Laraine Day, Keye Luke, Barry Nelson, and Victor Sen Yung in A Yank on the Burma Road (1942)
Virginia Mayo and Victor Sen Yung in Red Light (1949)
John Garfield, Wallace Ford, and Victor Sen Yung in The Breaking Point (1950)
Randolph Scott, Robert Shaw, and Victor Sen Yung in 20, 000 Men a Year (1939)
Victor Sen Yung in Death Valley Days (1952)
Virginia Dale, Carol Forman, Mantan Moreland, Emmett Vogan, Roland Winters, and Victor Sen Yung in Docks of New Orleans (1948)
Tony Curtis, Joanne Dru, and Victor Sen Yung in Forbidden (1953)
Richard Loo, Adele Mara, and Victor Sen Yung in Web of Danger (1947)
Lionel Atwill, Claire Du Brey, Robert Lowery, Charles Middleton, Sidney Toler, Cora Witherspoon, and Victor Sen Yung in Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise (1940)

Known for

Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, and Roland Got in Across the Pacific (1942)
Across the Pacific
6.8
  • Joe Totsuiko(as Sen Young)
  • 1942
Kane Richmond, Jean Rogers, and Sidney Toler in Charlie Chan in Panama (1940)
Charlie Chan in Panama
7.1
  • Jimmy Chan(as Sen Yung)
  • 1940
Douglass Dumbrille, Lenita Lane, and Sidney Toler in Castle in the Desert (1942)
Castle in the Desert
7.0
  • Jimmy Chan(as Sen Yung)
  • 1942
Joseph Crehan, Sidney Toler, Gloria Warren, and Victor Sen Yung in Dangerous Money (1946)
Dangerous Money
6.3
  • Jimmy Chan(as Victor Sen Young)
  • 1946

Credits

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IMDbPro

Actor

  • The Man with Bogart's Face (1980)
    The Man with Bogart's Face
  • Bruce Boxleitner and James Arness in How the West Was Won (1976)
    How the West Was Won
  • The Krofft Supershow (1976)
    The Krofft Supershow
  • Jay Robinson in Dr. Shrinker (1976)
    Dr. Shrinker
  • JoAnna Cameron in The Secrets of Isis (1975)
    The Secrets of Isis
  • The Killer Elite (1975)
    The Killer Elite
    • (as Victor Sen Young)
  • Barbary Coast (1975)
    Barbary Coast
  • Angie Dickinson in Police Woman (1974)
    Police Woman
  • Kung Fu (1972)
    Kung Fu
    • ...
  • The Red Pony (1973)
    The Red Pony
  • Paul Lynde and Elizabeth Allen in The Paul Lynde Show (1972)
    The Paul Lynde Show
  • Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, Dan Blocker, and Pernell Roberts in Bonanza (1959)
    Bonanza
  • Rod Serling in Night Gallery (1969)
    Night Gallery
  • The Hawaiians (1970)
    The Hawaiians
    • (uncredited)
  • Don Adams and Barbara Feldon in Get Smart (1965)
    Get Smart

Soundtrack

  • Nancy Kwan and Miyoshi Umeki in Flower Drum Song (1961)
    Flower Drum Song
    • (uncredited)
  • June Haver and Mark Stevens in Oh, You Beautiful Doll (1949)
    Oh, You Beautiful Doll

Videos1

Across the Pacific
Trailer 2:50
Across the Pacific

Personal details

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    • October 18, 1915
    • San Francisco, California, USA
    • November 1, 1980
    • North Hollywood, California, USA(accidental asphyxiation)
    • 1945 - ? (divorced, 1 child)
  • Victor Sen Yung. _The Great Wok Cookbook._ Los Angeles: Nash

Did you know

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  • Trivia
    In 1972, while returning to Los Angeles from San Francisco, he was among the passengers on a PSA airliner hijacked by two Bulgarians demanding ransom and passage to Siberia. Yung and another passenger were wounded. A third passenger and the two hijackers were killed when FBI agents stormed the plane on the ground in San Francisco.

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