If not Alec Guiness, who?


Lots of posts have questioned Alec Guiness' casting as Japanese industrialist. Granted, he didn't look Asian but what other major box-office draw--emphasis on well-known "Box Office Name"--(he was fresh off Best Actor Oscar win for River Kwai) could possibly have played part at that point? David Niven? Broadway production starred Sir Cedric Hardwicke, another English performer.

There simply weren't then (and aren't many more now) any male Japanese stars of right age with enough star power to hold up male half of a major production in this hard-to-cast role. (And Yul Brynner, who wasn't Japanese but looked exotic, was at that point far too young--and intense--to be believable as middle-aged love interest in a light comedy.) So who?

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well - in the movie dialogue, Roz Russell (or is it her neighbor?) thinks Robert Taylor is Jewish. And the Japanese houseman (Eddie) thinks Robert Taylor is Japanese. Maybe he could've done double-duty?
LOL

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Sessue Hayakawa?

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[deleted]

Or Toshiro Mifune from the movie Red Sun with Carles Bronson. About an outlaw and a Samurai Warrior. About 1961 he was still making Japanese movies but started making American movies.

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Do you know, Toshiro Mifune is one of my favorite actors? The magnetism, the believability, the ability to be strong and vulnerable at the same time...

But- He had a lot of sexual magnetism as well. Unfortunately when this movie was made (even today, we see strong resistance to change) it was still not too long after the Big War, for one. Only now do we see that people at forty look pretty good, and can hit sixty,and older looking decent for two, without resisting the idea that this is possible. Finally we were still so threatened,(and still can be) by the idea of another race found too attractive, for three. As an abstract, okay, but the reality, ooh, watch people get uncomfortable.
Also, somehow back then, sex (intimacy, sharing a room, seeing each other in states of different dress and finding arousal) ended (in the movies, at least) around...oooo, 45?
That was pushing it.

Wow.
I never thought I'd say this, and I was born in 64 so technically I am one, but thank you Baby Boomers!

You showed it was okay not to start wearing lavender and going into semi seclusion unless it was for charity at fifty.

So for the time, though, I am NOT saying Alec Guiness was not attractive,( also one of my favorite actors) he was reticent enough not to offend our oh so delicate sensibilities. Whereas Russell -Mifune would have seemed...earthier...just as believable...but more potential for passion, without the pathos of the first refusal.

I was very happy with the ending!

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Whatever Toshiro Mifune might have brought to the role, fact remains he was practically unknown to American audiences at the time, which was obviously why far better-known Alec Guinness was cast. As it turned out, even the odd teaming of recent Oscar-winner Guinness and Rosalind Russell (fresh from her Auntie Mame triumph) could not rescue this film from being something of a box-office disappointment from financial standpoint.

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