Tolerance?


If this movie is a proponent of tolerance, why didn't they just cast a Japanese actor to portray Koichi Asano?

I'll bring home the turkey if you bring home the bacon.

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my dh just asked that... movie draw Alec Guiness had done many ethnic parts and was well known..

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It was even more absurd when David Lean cast him as an Indian in A Passage to India, at a time when there were dozens of actors with the appropriate ethnic background.

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amazing how they got away with it back then.. all talk .. bottom line money, right?

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Society wasn't as "politically correct" back then and Hollywood was still experiencing its heyday (for the most part). It would have unthinkable to cast a more ethnic, even foreign, actor that wasn't well known to American audiences.

Fast forward to when they were casting the film version of "Memoirs of a Geisha"--MAJOR uproar over a predominantly Chinese cast for a film set in Japan.

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I'm watching it right now on TV and I'm sorry but you can CLEARLY see that man is white and not Japanese.

Alec is a great actor but he doesn't look Japanese.

But back then they didn't cast Asian people in roles. Marlo Thomas played an Asian person. Look at Kung Fu......ain't no WAY "Bill" from Kill Bill was Asian but they had a white man playing Asian

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Just so you know, the character in Kung Fu was half asian. I have no problem with someone white playing a half asian or anything else. My guess is that because the asian character was male producers felt they had to use a white actor to make it more palatable to white audiences.

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I can only gather that you people are really young, because you are taking the movie out of its historical context. Obviously none of you were watching TCM last month, either, during their "Asian Images on Film" series. It was a tradition for decades for big box office Caucasian actors to play Asian roles. Have none of you seen THE GOOD EARTH or DRAGON SEED, to name just two?

"Don't worry. I'm not on the side of the saints yet."

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at the end of the airing I just watched on tcm Robert Osborne made this comment... evidently by the time this one was made the audience didn't take it seriously (not verbatim by me) casting Non-ethnic people in ethnic roles... this film evidently was in the end of a casting era.

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Bruce Lee (Cato - Green Hornet) had presented the idea of Kung Fu to the makers of the Green Hornet. Unfortunately because of prejudice in this country Carradine got tagged for the role.

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White actors playing leading roles in "yellow face" was quite the norm, at least until the 1970's. But real Asian performers usually had supporting roles. Always wondered what Benson Fong or Victor Sen Yound thought about playing second fiddle to Sidney Toler or Roland Winters in "Charlie Chan" flicks. I guess Broadway wasn't much different: after all, on stage Cedric Hardwicke played the lead role in MAJORITY opposite Gertrude Berg. (I guess goyim playing Jews on screen is another thread!)

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And of course whites playing blacks when in romantic roles with whites.

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The minor role of the servant Eddie isn't played by a Japanese person either. He isn't quite as offensive as Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's but he comes pretty close.

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Maybe because back in 1961, they couldn't find any Japanese actor who could carry an entire film in English ???
But I have to admit that it was painful to see Alec Guiness in that role.

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Sessue Hayakawa was still alive and working in English at the time.

"May I bone your kipper, Mademoiselle?"

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Casting Mickey Rooney as whatever nationality he was supposed to be in "Breakfast at Tiffsny's" was the most ridiculous ethnic casting job I've ever seen.

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And who would American audiences have paid to see?

A film is a business venture.



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