|
In Remembrance: Miyoshi Umeki
Miyoshi Umeki, the first performer of Asian descent to win an
Academy Award – for her stirring performance in Sayonara
(1957) – passed away on August 28, 2007 in Licking, Missouri. She
was 78.
Umeki was born on May 28, 1929, in Otaru, on the northern Japanese
island of Hokkaido, where her father owned a well-respected iron
factory. As the youngest of nine children, she found herself easily
influenced by traditional Kabuki theater and American pop music she
heard on the radio. The conflicts of World War II caused her parents
to hate American music, so she secretly practiced singing while
under her bedcovers.
At the end of World War II, a teenaged Umeki was earning 90 cents a
night at service clubs in Otaru singing with American G.I. bands,
mimicking the vocal styles of Dinah Shore, Doris Day and Peggy Lee.
She could later be heard on Japanese radio with the Tusnoda Sextet,
Japan’s equivalent to the Harry James Orchestra. Adopting the name
Nancy Umeki, she recorded numerous American standards for RCA Japan
before arriving in America in 1955 and signing with Mercury Records.
Umeki soon found her way onto American television after recording a
couple of singles. A recurring engagement on the television series
Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts caught the attention of
director Joshua Logan.
Logan asked her to star opposite comedian Red Buttons in his
upcoming film, Sayonara, based on the best-selling James A.
Michener novel.
Unlike
most 1950s American romantic dramas, Sayonara grappled with
the themes of racism and prejudice. The film’s main focus centered
upon the
forbidden romance between US servicemen and Japanese women during
the Korean War. Red Buttons played a love-smitten Air Force sergeant
who encourages the naïve
Katsumi
(portrayed by Umeki) to marry him in spite of the disapproval placed
upon them by the United States military. Ultimately, the ridicule
and persecution that follows leads to their double suicide. Umeki
and Buttons won Oscars for their supporting parts.
Despite Umeki’s landmark win, the place for Asians in American
cinema stayed relatively small and starring roles were much sparser.
Many available roles were still given to Americans made to look
their Asian counterparts. For this reason, Umeki turned her sights
to Broadway and scored a lead role in the new Rodgers and
Hammerstein musical, Flower Drum Song (1958). Her endearing
performance as the Chinese “picture bride” Mei Li garnered Umeki a
Tony nomination.
Umeki returned to Hollywood and portrayed Mei Li in the 1961 screen
adaptation of Flower Drum Song and appeared in a handful of
East-meets-West stories including the comedy Cry for Happy
(1961), with Glenn Ford and Donald O’Connor, and the 1962 romantic
comedy The Horizontal Lieutenant with Jim Hutton and Jim
Backus.
Giving up film in favor of television, Umeki appeared on a number of
popular programs throughout the 1960s, such as Dr. Kildare,
Rawhide and Mr.Ed. Her faithful role
in the
Bill Bixby TV series The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,
as Mrs.
Livingston,
the
housekeeper, was seen in many households. When the show retired in
1972, she did the same and lived quietly outside of the Hollywood
spotlight.
- John L.
Gibbon |
