James Hong(I)

Says his breakthrough came when he appeared on Groucho Marx's game show You Bet Your Life (1950) and did impersonations of Groucho, James Cagney and others, which resulted in a huge flood of fan mail and landed him an agent.

All the laundrymen from Minneapolis had nothing to do on weekends, so they would gather at my father's store, herb store. I remember that, because we'd have those little wooden stools and they all gathered there, and they hired these Chinese opera people from San Francisco to come and do their thing ... I was only a little boy. You watch them with wide eyes, 'Wow! What a profession.'