Khigh Dheigh was the actor who pl;ayed Red Chinese agent Wo Fat on Hawaii Five-0. He also played Judge Dee in the ABC Tv-movie Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders, which I just re-watched. An interesting film, in which all the actors were of Oriental ancestry.
Or so I thought. There wasn’t much on Dhiegh, who played him, so I Googled him, and found this:
What? Where did they get this information? It’s certainly not on the IMDB:
Does anyone know anything at al about him? How did he end up playing only oriental characters? (His IMDB listing gives only one character with a non-Oriental name).
No, he’s not Asian. I’ve been researching him. His birth name is indeed Kenneth Dickerson. On his father’s side, I’ve traced his roots back to the 1830s and he appears to be descended from free blacks. On his mother’s side, its a little murky so far. His maternal grandfather is listed as being from the “West Indies”, “Cuba”, or “Bermuda” while his maternal grandmother appears to be white. If that’s true, then he could have Caribbean roots as well. As to his claim that he is part Egyptian or Sudanese? I’ve found nothing in the records to confirm that.
So… he’s probably 75% black/25% white and may have possibly have a small amount of native Caribbean ancestry. I think that certainly led to his distinctive appearance. His black roots were known in the 1970s. Asian-American groups protested his casting in his detective show “Khan!” in 1974. They wanted an Asian actor to portray one of their own.
He wanted to be an actor and it appears that he went with the hand he was dealt. This is my conjecture: He had exotic looks so he went for those parts taking on an exotic name. He was essentially a biracial man (black/white) passing for an Asian and so he went in that direction. He developed an interest in Eastern religion/philosophy and studied them and began to teach/publish as his acting roles began to wane.
He certainly had me believing he was Asian until I read a bit about him back in the '70s. (I bought the Egyptian and Sudanese story too.)
Being able to play someone of an entirely different background convincingly is the hallmark of a good actor, and it shouldn’t matter what in kind of roles he was cast.
I haven’t done any research, but I did take a quick look for Kenneth Dickerson in New Jersey, and I found one who is identified as Egyptian and apparently working on a ferry boat maybe? He would have been in his 20s at the time, so if it’s the same person, he adopted Egyptianity rather early in life.
Not the first time by a long shot that someone passed off their ethnicity as something else. (Poster child: Iron Eyes Cody)