Richard Loo
| Richard Loo | |
|---|---|
Loo in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
|
|
| Born |
October 1, 1903 Maui, Hawaii, U.S.A. |
| Died | November 20, 1983 (aged 80) Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. |
| Cause of death | Cerebral hemorrhage |
| Resting place | San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | actor |
| Years active | 1931—83 |
| Spouse(s) |
Bessie Loo (1929-1960); divorce Hope Loo (1964-1983); his death |
Bessie Loo (1929-1960); divorce
Richard Loo (October 1, 1903 – November 20, 1983) was a third generation Chinese-Americanfilm actor who was one of the most familiar Asian character actors in American films of the 1930s and 1940s. A prolific actor, he appeared in over 120 films between 1931 and 1982.
Chinese by ancestry and Hawaiian by birth, Loo spent his youth in Hawaii, then moved to California as a teenager. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and began a career in business. However, the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic depression forced him to start over. He became involved with amateur, then professional, theater companies and in 1931 made his first film. Like most Asian actors in non-Asian countries, he played primarily small, stereotypical roles, though he rose quickly to familiarity, if not fame, in a number of films.
His stern features led him to be a favorite movie villain, and the outbreak of World War II gave him greater prominence in roles as vicious Japanese soldiers in such successful pictures as The Purple Heart (1944) and God Is My Co-Pilot (1945). Loo was most often typecast as the Japanese enemy pilot, spy or interrogator during the Second World War. According to his daughter, Beverly Jane Loo, he didn't mind being typecast as a villain in these movies as he felt very patriotic about playing those parts. In 1944 he appeared as a Chinese army lieutenant opposite Gregory Peck in The Keys of the Kingdom. He had a rare heroic role as a war-weary Japanese-American soldier in Samuel Fuller's Korean War classic The Steel Helmet (1951), but he spent much of the latter part of his career performing stock roles in films and minor television roles.
...
Wikipedia