Victor Sen Yung was born Sen Yew Cheung on October 18, 1945, in San Francisco. His parents had both immigrated from China. His mother died from influenza during the 1919 epidemic. His father then placed both Victor Sen Yung and his sister Rosemary in the care of a children's shelter, while he returned to China. He remarried there and returned to the United States, where he once more took guardianship of young Victor and Rosemary.
To earn more income for the family, Victor Sen Yung began working as a houseboy when he was eleven, He attended the University of California at Berkeley and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in economics. He moved to Los Angels to pursue post-graduate work at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California. He entered the film industry in uncredited bit parts in such movies as The Good Earth (1937), Double or Nothing (1937), and Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937). Billed as "Victor Young," he finally received billing in a film with Shadows Over Shanghai (1938).
When Keye Luke, who had played Charlie Chan's Number One Son Lee, left the Charlie Chan series, he was replaced by Victor Sen Jung as Charlie Chan's Number Two Son Jimmy. Like Lee Chan, Jimmy Chan was a thoroughly Americanized, modern young Chinese American, although bungling to the point that it sometimes interfered with his father's investigations. He ultimately played Jimmy in eleven Charlie Chan films.
Victor Sen Yung received a meatier role in The Letter (1940), in which he played Ong Chi Seng, a young lawyer who served as attorney Howard Joyce's (James Stephenson) clerk. The role owed something to current stereotypes about East Asians--Ong was both conniving and self-serving. At the same time, however, Victor Sen Yung does give a marvellous performance in the role, showing he could do more than play Jimmy Chan.
Across the Pacific (1942) and Okono in the overly racist Little Tokyo, U.S.A. (1942). Victor Sen Yung's service in World War II would be interrupted by his service in World War II. He served in the United States Army Air Forces.
Following the war, Victor Sen Yung returned to the role of Jimmy Chan in the Charlie Chan movies, as well as other roles. Among his most notable roles during this period was amusement park attendant Sam Fong in the film noir Woman on the Run (1950). Later, Flower Drum Song (1960) would present Victor Sen Yung with another well-known role, that of Frankie Wing, the fast-talking, wisecracking emcee of the Celestial Gardens. He later played Wing Young in Confessions of An Opium Eater (1962) and Wei Chi in The Killer Elite (1975).
Like many actors during the era, Victor Sen Yung's career shifted to television in the 1950s. He made his television debut in an episode of Front Page Detective in 1951. Throughout the Fifties, he guest starred on such shows as Adventures of Superman, Medic, Death Valley Days, Mike Hammer, Bronco, and Thriller . On Bachelor Father, he played the recurring role of Charlie, quick witted cousin of Bentley Gregg's (John Forsythe) houseboy Peter Tong (Sammee Tong). It was in 1960 that he started a 14 year run playing Hop Sing, the cook of the Cartwrights on the long-running Western Bonanza.
During the Sixties, Victor Sen Yung continued to appear on Bonanza and, early in the decade, Bachelor Father as well. He also guest starred on such shows as The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Rifleman, Hawaiian Eye, The Wild Wild West, Here's Lucy, Get Smart, and The F.B.I. Continuing to appear as Hop Sing on Bonanza for the first few years of the Seventies, Victor Sen Jung guest starred on such shows as Kung Fu, Police Woman, and How the West Was Won.
Not only did Victor Sen Jung play a cook on television, but he was a talented chef in real life as well. His cookbook The Great Wok Cookbook was published in 1974. He was reportedly working on a second, which would remain unfinished when he died. It was November 9, 1980, that Victor Sen Jung died from natural gas poisoning due to a natural gas leak in his home. His death was ruled accidental. His Bonanza co-star Pernell Roberts not only delivered his eulogy, but payed for his funeral as well. He would make his last appearance on film in The Man with Bogart's Face in 1980.
Throughout his career, Victor Sen Jung would play his share of stereotypes, including to some degree Hop Sing , but he also had the opportunity to play roles that went well beyond stereotypes. He played a doctor in his guest appearance on Medic. The role of Frankie Wnig in Flower Drum Song also went beyond stereotypes. On Kung Fu he guest starred as characters that were fully developed, rather than the sometimes simple Chinese stereotypes of the Golden Age of Hollywood. In the Adventures of Superman episode "The Riddle of the Chinese Jade," he played an antique dealer who is tricked into stealing a jade figure.
While Victor Sen Jung was never an activist in the modern sense of th word, he did help pave the way for future Chinese American actors. Even when his roles could sometimes be stereotypes, he brought a dignity and warmth to the characters giving them more depth than that might have had otherwise. And while he could hardly be described as an activist, Victor Sen Jung addressed the lack of roles for Chinese American actors in the television and film industries of the Seventies, as well as the discrimination Chinese actors often faced. In his own way then, Victor Sen Young was a pioneer when it came to East Asian American representation.
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