Irv Holender, chairman of the Los Angeles-based Multicom Entertainment, shared some remembrances of his friend Johnny Yune on the occasion of the renewed success of Yune’s film They Call Me Bruce?, now part of Multicom’s library. It is also the 40th anniversary of his acquisition of Film Venture (FVI), which financed the movie.
Yune was a popular actor and stand-up comedian in the U.S. (where he died in 2020 at 83 years old), but in his native South Korea he was a superstar.
Holender first met Yune in 1978, 16 years after Yune went to America, and they became good friends. “When I used to meet Yune in Seoul in 1981 or 1987,” recalled Holender, “people treated me like a God only because I was standing next to him.” At that time Yune was hosting one of South Korea’s most popular TV talk shows. Yune was later appointed to head the country’s tourism ministry by the president of South Korea.
Once he came to the U.S. Yune performed in Las Vegas as a stand-up comedian, appeared on Johnny Carson’s show 34 times, and in 1982 produced and starred in They Call Me Bruce?, a film financed by FVI, a Hollywood film company that in 1984 was acquired by Holender, who fondly recalled his luncheons with Yune. “I frequently had lunch with Johnny when he was in L.A. At times, Yune’s brother and Yune’s lawyer Ed Hahn would join us. The time he had lunch with Johnny Carson, he even invited me,” recalled Holander. “He had a home in L.A. and loved to play golf,” Holender added. “Our last lunch was two weeks before he passed away.”
Yune died in 2020 at 83 years of age. In 2017, he developed dementia, and at the last few lunch meetings, “he would just look at me and smile,” said Holender, pictured above with Yune during one of their lunches.
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