Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#164889
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Lee Tung Foo works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Lee Tung Foo appears in 6 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Lee. Laura is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, western, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with George Sidney, Robert Siodmak, John Ford and others, Lee Tung Foo helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Laura (1944) as Waldo's Servant (uncredited) · Criss Cross (1949) as Chinese Cook (uncredited) · Annie Get Your Gun (1950) as Chinese Cook on Train (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #164889 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
6
1942–1950
Career length
8 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Laura
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.6
Laura
Most frequent director
George Sidney
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With George Sidney
Most common genre
Drama
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 39m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1940s
6.6 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. Criss Cross, They Were Expendable, Laura — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
6.6
Across 5 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
6.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1940s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Criss Cross, They Were Expendable, Laura.
Most productive era
1940s
5 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1940s | 1950s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.73 films | — |
| Thriller | 6.62 films | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.51 film |
| Crime | 6.71 film | — |
| Romance | — | 6.51 film |
| Horror | 6.11 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Sam Wing On.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1944Laura
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Chinese Cook on Train (uncredited).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
6 of 6 films
as Waldo's Servant (uncredited)
Directed by Otto Preminger
as Chinese Cook (uncredited)
Directed by Robert Siodmak
as Chinese Cook on Train (uncredited)
Directed by George Sidney
as Asian Bartender (uncredited)
Directed by John Ford
as Sam Wing On
Directed by John Huston
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Waldo's Servant (uncredited)
Laura (1944)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Waldo's Servant (uncredited) gives Lee Tung Foo a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Chinese Cook (uncredited)
Criss Cross (1949)
Performance score6.6
Criss Cross asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chinese Cook (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Chinese Cook on Train (uncredited)
Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
Performance score6.5
Annie Get Your Gun asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Chinese Cook on Train (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Asian Bartender (uncredited)
They Were Expendable (1945)
Performance score6.5
They Were Expendable asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Asian Bartender (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Waldo's Servant (uncredited)
Start here. Laura is the clearest statement of what Lee Tung Foo does — accessible, 88 minutes, and rated 7.3 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Lee at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Across the Pacific (1942)
Keeps the drama register of Laura but asks for a colder reading of it.
They Were Expendable (1945)
Keeps the drama register of Across the Pacific but asks for a colder reading of it.
Criss Cross (1949)
A deliberate change of key after They Were Expendable — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
A deliberate change of key after Criss Cross — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Edwin L. Marin
Director
1 film together
Notably Invisible Agent
John Huston
Director
1 film together
Notably Across the Pacific
Otto Preminger
Director
1 film together
Notably Laura
John Ford
Director
1 film together
Notably They Were Expendable
Robert Siodmak
Director
1 film together
Notably Criss Cross
George Sidney
Director
1 film together
Notably Annie Get Your Gun
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Otto Preminger
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
LauraRobert Siodmak
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Criss CrossGeorge Sidney
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Annie Get Your GunJohn Ford
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
They Were ExpendableJohn Huston
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Across the PacificEdwin L. Marin
Director
1 film together · 6.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Invisible AgentSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Laura
as Waldo's Servant (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Annie Get Your Gun
as Chinese Cook on Train (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Laura
as Waldo's Servant (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
They Were Expendable
as Asian Bartender (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Laura
as Waldo's Servant (uncredited)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Lee Tung Foo has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Drama Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Laura
as Waldo's Servant (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Criss Cross
as Chinese Cook (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Annie Get Your Gun
as Chinese Cook on Train (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Laura
as Waldo's Servant (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Laura
as Waldo's Servant (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Across the Pacific
as Sam Wing On
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Annie Get Your Gun
as Chinese Cook on Train (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Invisible Agent
as Gen. Chin Lee (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Richmond Arquette
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