Leonard Strong

Leonard Strong was an American character actor who built a career largely on Asian roles. Born in Salt Lake City, he died in 1980. Starting with Little Tokyo, U.S.A. in 1942, he took on Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai parts across many films, including Dragon Seed (1944), Bombardier (1943), and Shane (1953), where he played the homesteader Ernie Wright. He also played a Thai interpreter in Anna and the King of Siam, and then in its musical remake, The King and I. On television he appeared as Clem in a 1949 Lone Ranger episode and as Luiz in a 1960 Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. He gained pop culture notoriety as The Claw on Get Smart, a villain whose name Agent Maxwell Smart kept mishearing as The Craw, and he played the title role in the Twilight Zone episode The Hitch-Hiker.