The Leading Man: James Shigeta

I knew of James Shigeta well before I met him. He was the modern playboy who romances Nancy Kwan in Flower Drum Song; Elvis Presley’s sidekick in Paradise Hawaiian Style; and importantly for me, LAPD detective Joe Kojaku, in Sam Fuller’s pioneering The Crimson Kimono. 

Born in Hawaii, he embarked on a show business career after winning audience approval on the television program, the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. He hit the nightclub circuit as a musical comedy performer and singer, a promising start that was interrupted by conscription into the US military. He served in Japan and upon discharge, joined Toho’s theatrical division, working in Tokyo for about 18 months (and learning Japanese in the process). 

After returning to the US, Shigeta played the lead opposite Shirley MacLaine in the Las Vegas musical revue Holiday in Japan. This work led to Hollywood at a time when some Asian American talents were trickling through into the mainstream, particularly on Broadway and television. It was the era of Japanese imports like Shirley Yamaguchi (Japanese War Bride, 1952), Umeki Miyoshi (the first Asian actor to win an Oscar – for Sayonara in 1957), Nobu McCarthy (Frank Tashlin’s The Geisha Boy, 1958), and the reappearance of Sessue Hayakawa (Bridge on the River Kwai), and Anna May Wong (the TV series The Gallery of Madame Liu Tsong, 1951). However, Shigeta was distinguished by his gender (he was just about the only male actor in this group), his youth, his movie-star looks, and castability (for example he plays a Chinese cowboy in James Clavell’s Walk Like a Dragon, 1960). 

I met Shigeta when I was working as a producer in Hollywood in the 1990s. We were casting a picture and the call had gone out for older Asian male actors for a mob boss role. Our casting director had shortlisted about 40 actors for the session. Taking a break in a long day, I wandered out of the audition room into the waiting area. There were around 25 more candidates for the audition sitting on sofas, leaning on walls, crouched on chairs, everyone studying their “sides” (script extracts for the audition). In the middle of all this was a gentleman in black suit, white shirt (he’d dressed like many of the others to look the part), leaning forward in an uncomfortable chair reading his sides. I was immediately struck by his lean and elegant look, and his head of hair. I did a double take before I realized it was James Shigeta. One of Asian America’s biggest stars, coming up for a cattle call? I was embarrassed. As a student of Asian American film history, he was a legend to me, and I could not bring myself to greet him in such circumstances. I disappeared back into the audition room where I tried to salve my conscience by asking an assistant to get him a better chair. We didn’t cast Jimmy (as I came to call him) that day but I did get to tell him in the audition how much I admired his work in The Crimson Kimono. He smiled and said he was surprised that anyone would remember that. 

A few years later in 2001, I curated the major retrospective on Asian American cinema at the Locarno Film Festival. Jimmy Shigeta was at the top of my guest list, as were several of his films. Through a series of happy coincidences, I had also managed to track down the director of Bridge to the Sun, Étienne Périer, who was living in Paris. It was a personal achievement for me to bring together director and star for the first time since their film together 40 years before. 

In mainstream American film history, Jimmy’s place has often been neglected, and he’s been something of a footnote (like most Asian Americans in Hollywood cinema). But we should remember that like Hayakawa Sessue, who was as big as Rudolph Valentino in his day, Jimmy was the biggest Asian American male star working in the Hollywood studio system at the end of the 1950s, and enjoyed some popularity in his day. There is good reason to see him as the Asian American version of Rock Hudson – in his quiet demeanor, his gentle determination, and his very private life that are all reflected in the major roles he played. For better or worse, Jimmy was the product of the Hollywood studio system and could have achieved greater heights. But when that era ended, his career fell into character parts, recurring TV roles and work as a bit player – the life of a jobbing actor. But he remained dignified throughout it all and never expressed any bitterness. Indeed, he brought a certain authority and artistry to those lesser roles and is memorable for example as the head of the Nakatomi Corporation in the original Die Hard. He remains an inspiration, and although he has appeared only as an occasional glimpse to succeeding generations, his stature is undiminished, and he is due for the occasional “rediscovery” – that’s durability!

– How did you get into Crimson Kimono (1959)? It was your first feature.

My agent said a famous producer, a director named Sam Fuller, was casting something. I don’t know exactly what the process was. I met him, and he said something to the effect of “I want to use some young, unknown people.” It wasn’t an audition, it was just kind of a set thing. There was Glenn Corbett and Victoria Shaw from The Eddy Duchin Story and I thought, “Oh my goodness, I’d love to do it.” We had a hilarious time because of Fuller’s antics. The first day of the shoot – no one told me. I expected him to call “action,” you know. And suddenly, “Bang!” Someone had killed himself? And of course, they were in hysterics. You know, it was Fuller’s way of directing, he’d fire a gun. I don’t know if Victoria knew, but for Glenn and I, it was our first film.


– What was he like as a director?

Very good, actually... he kind of had his way. If he wanted to do take after take, he could do it. No one bothered him. Probably we were all afraid we’d get shot!


– When you read the script, were you surprised by its interracial content?

Well don’t forget, I come from Hawaii. Maybe I wasn’t as surprised as someone from here [the US mainland]. And I liked the way it led up to that point. I guess I was surprised but it wasn’t a terrible shock. Looking back, I guess it came way before its time, the relationship between a white [person] and the Asian guy. And the competition between the two for Victoria Shaw’s affection. It’s kind of intriguing, you know. There was a real Joe Tanaka person [the character Shigeta plays in the film], a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. And I guess Fuller had met him and fashioned him from there.


– Did you meet Joe Tanaka?

No. He was a man everyone seemed to admire, though.


– You gave the character a certain dignity. Was that conscious?

I talked it over with Sam. He said this was what Joe was like – he’s a tough kid, but he’s also a sensitive kid. He loves his job, loves people. And he said, “Put whatever you feel into it.”


– How did Bridge to the Sun come about?

I had read in the trades that the book was going to be done. I had read the book before that and I just fell in love with it. Shirley MacLaine had been approached for it. I talked to her about it. She was honest and said – at that point in her career – she needed big people to lean on. She had been waiting on Frank Sinatra. She said, “You’d be very nice, I don’t know what the studios think anyway.” Actually, I had given up on the whole idea of being able to do it. Anyway, sometime later, my agent said this French director – Étienne Périer – wanted me to do a screen test. I said, “What is the film?” He said, “Bridge.” I said, “God!” [laughs]. Just out of the blue. So I did the screen test, they liked it, grabbed me, and we did it. I did meet his widow Gwen Terasaki, who was alive at the time. She said, “I think you’re very good,” which was kind of nice.


– What was the experience of filming it?

The most wonderful location film I’ve ever been on! Washington DC, Kyoto, and interiors in Paris. The dream locations. It’s a true story, which I love, and the producer and director were just wonderful. The French have a flair for that kind of film, for black and white. I think the Americans would have done something with the normal saccharine. To do it in colour would take away the harshness, the realism of that time. My favourite shot of the whole film didn’t include me. It was Carroll Baker, who had insisted on going back to Japan with her diplomat husband. She’s on this train and sees these captive Americans working on the railroad. God, that tore me apart. That visual thing. Stunning.


– You age quite considerably in the film. Is that difficult to do?

You know, when you’re doing a true story, for some reason, you don’t need to make an attempt at doing anything. It also helped that they did it in sequence, more or less. I think if it were a fiction, and the development up to that point of ageing were not real, then it would have been more difficult. I really lived through this guy and his activities.


– Was the interracial aspect controversial or a novelty at the time?

Again, we were going back to a true story. It really happened. So there you are. You don’t make any excuses, you don’t have to apologise. There was no self-consciousness about it. I think, again, if it were fictionalised, it would have been something different.


– What was it like to work in Hollywood at that time in the late 1950s early 1960s? Were you a contract player?

Yes, but not paid a great deal! For a few months, I was at Metro (Goldwyn Mayer), with Joe Pasternak, doing all the musicals and things. It was a fun time. Most of the people working there loved the industry and were very strictly movie makers. It was organised. They did all the publicity for you. In that sense, I was lucky, compared to the young kids nowadays who are starting out cold. We had people assigned to us who did PR. I think it’s rather chaotic now. As you know, most of the studios are owned by conglomerates or whatever. The whole ambiance, atmosphere is completely different. It’s strictly business now.

Extract from an original interview published by the Locarno Film Festival in Out of the Shadows: Asians in American Cinema, editor Roger Garcia (Edizioni Olivares/Cahiers du Cinéma, 2001). Reprinted courtesy Locarno Film Festival, thanks to Giona A. Nazzaro.