A contemplative, blue-eyed lead with classically sculpted features, Peter Weller gained stage experience with notable performances in David Rabe’s “Streamers” and David Mamet’s “The Woods.” He entered film in 1979 and, though best known for his roles in the deadpan cult favorite “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai” (1984) and as the armor-clad title character of “RoboCop” (1987) and its first sequel, “RoboCop 2” (1990), Weller has also been effective in more character-driven dramas such as “Shoot the Moon” (1981) and David Cronenberg’s fascinatingly bizarre “Naked Lunch” (1991).
Weller followed up his success in “Naked Lunch” with several lackluster projects: the action adventure “Fifty-Fifty” (1991); a French romantic comedy “Road to Ruin” (1992); and the thriller “Sunset Grill” (1993), all of which moved quickly to home video. Career matters started looking up with the release of Michael Tolkin’s “The New Age” (1994), where he was paired once again with “Naked Lunch” co-star Judy Davis. Weller got to demonstrate his flair for comedy playing a jobless Hollywood ad man whose marriage is crumbling. Although the film and Weller both received rave reviews, the actor’s profile dimmed through the late 1990s; while he worked steadily, only a few films stood out, such as Woody Allen’s “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995) and director Linda Yellen’s “End of Summer” (1996). He resurfaced in the admired Showtime science-fiction series “Odyssey 5” (2002-03) playing Chuck Taggart, part of a team of space shuttle astronauts who witness the end of the world and travel back in time to prevent the disaster from occurring. Weller was seen on the big screen again in 2003, playing Cardinal Driscoll, a high-ranking church official given to ungodly actions in the secret-sect thriller “The Order.”
Stepping behind the camera as a director, Weller helmed episodes of “Homicide: Life on the Street” (NBC, 1993-99) and “Odyssey 5,” as well as the Elmore Leonard telepic “Gold Coast” (1997), but, for the most part, he stuck to acting. In 2006, he returned to high-profile productions with a recurring stint as a treacherous character on the popular action show “24” (Fox, 2001-2010) and, later, the dark thriller series “Dexter” (Showtime, 2006-2013). Before long, he took up directing again, helming episodes of the tense biker drama “Sons of Anarchy” (FX, 2008- ) and the crime series “Longmire” (A&E, 2012- ), while also appearing on both shows. After voicing Batman in the two-part animated comic-book adaptation “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” (2012-13), Weller revisited the big screen prominently with a significant role in the hit sci-fi sequel “Star Trek Into Darkness” (2013).
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
James Ellison was born in 1910 in Iowa. He made man Bmovie westerns in the 1930’s including a stint as the sidekick of Hopolang Cassidy. In 1936 he starred in “The Plainsman” with Jean Arthur and Gary Cooper. He starred opposite Frances Dee in the Val Lewton classic “I Walked with a ZXombie”. He also starred with Maureen O’Hara in “They Met in Argentina”. He ceased acting in 1962 and worked in real estate. He died in 1993 at the age of 83.
“Independent” obituary by Dick Vosburgh:
James Ellison Smith, actor: born Guthrie Center, Iowa 1910; twice married (one son, two stepdaughters); died Montecito, California 23 December 1993.
ALTHOUGH James Ellison appeared in nearly 70 films over 20 years, his place in cinema history rests on eight low-budget westerns he made early in his career; from 1935 to 1937 he played the hotblooded young Johnny Nelson in the phenomenally successful Hopalong Cassidy series. After studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, Ellison was forced to take a job in the printing laboratories at Warner Bros. One day he was spotted on the lot and offered a screen test, which he had the unique experience of developing himself. The test led to a small role in the Warners tearjerker Play Girl (1932), but no studio contract.
Eventually MGM did sign him, but used him in only three films. When the contract ended, Ellison had little confidence in his acting ability, and applied to the National Parks Service for training as a forest ranger. Just as in a bad movie, fate suddenly took a hand: the producer Henry Sherman, who was about to bring the ‘Hopalong Cassidy’ novels to the screen, put him under contract. The role of Johnny Nelson brought him instant popularity, and he was borrowed by Cecil B. De Mille to play Buffalo Bill Cody in The Plainsman (1937), the romanticised story of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, co-starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur. After leaving the Cassidy series, Ellison made a dozen films under contract to RKO, including Next Time I Marry (1939) and You Can’t Fool Your Wife (1940) – both with Lucille Ball – and two with Ginger Rogers: Vivacious Lady (1938) and Fifth Avenue Girl (1940), a reactionary comedy in which Super Patriot Ginger sorted out the problems besetting a tycoon, one of which was Ellison, his rantingly communistic chauffeur. ‘You haven’t the courage to be a capitalist yourself,’ Ginger shouts, ‘So you try to drag everyone down to where you are]’
He also played Jack Chesney in the Jack Benny version of Charley’s Aunt (1941), appeared in such horror films as The Undying Monster (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and even made musicals; in The Gang’s All Here (1944), when Alice Faye sang ‘No love, no nothin’ / Until my baby comes home . . .’, Ellison played the soldier for whom she was saving herself. At the time he was chosen for the Cassidy series, his room-mate at the Los Angeles YMCA was a young film-cutter named Pate Lucid. When Ellison left the series in 1937, he was replaced by Lucid, now using the less Surrealist acting name of Russell Hayden. By 1950, the enormous success of the old Cassidy films on television had made both actors familiar to a new generation, and they capitalised on it by producing and starring in a series of six westerns which, although pretty dire, established some sort of record; they were made simultaneously, using the same supporting actors and settings. With the help of library footage, all six films were completed in a single month.
Two years later Ellison retired from the screen and devoted himself to real-estate development and a fuller family life.
Lois Chiles was born in 1947 in Houston, Texas. In the 1970’s she had some strong leading lady parts beginning in “The Way We Were” with Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand. She played Jordan Baker in the 1974 film of “The Great Gatsby, was part of the all star cast of “Death on the Nile” and was Roger Moore’s leading lady in “Moonraker”.
IMDB entry:
Lois Chiles was born April 15, 1947 in Houston Texas to Barbara Wayne Kirkland and Marion Clay Chiles. She was raised in Alice, Texas, and received higher education at the University of Texas at Austin, and Finch College in New York City. While modeling, she made her film debut appearance as Robert Redford‘s on-screen college sweetheart in The Way We Were (1973), and reunited with Redford in The Great Gatsby (1974). She played the role of the attractive, cynical young golfer Jordan Baker. Four years later, she appeared in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie‘s Death on the Nile (1978) as the murder victim Linnet Ridgeway Doyle. Lois’s most memorable role to date is Bond Girl, Dr. Holly Goodhead opposite Roger Moore as James Bond in Moonraker (1979).
Constance Collier was born in 1878 in Windsor. She made her stage debut at the age of 3 in “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”. In 1905 she married Irish actor Julian Boyles and they performed on the stage until his death in 1918. In the 1940’s she was a stalwart character actress in Hollywood films such as “Kitty” with Paulette Goddard and Ray Milland, “The Perils of Pauline” in 1947 with Betty Hutton and Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” with James Stewart and Farley Granger. Constance Collier died in 1955 in New York.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
In a career that covered six decades, Constance Collier evolved into one of Broadway and London’s finest tragediennes during the first half of the 1900s. While the regal, dark-featured beauty who bore classic Romanesque features enjoyed a transcontinental career like a number of her contemporaries, her theatre success did not encourage an enviable film career. It wasn’t until her senior years that Constance engaged in a number of well-regarded supporting performances on screen. Later respect also came as one of Hollywood’s premiere drama and voice coaches.
She was born Laura Constance Hardie in Windsor, Berkshire on January 22, 1878, the only child of Auguste Cheetham and Eliza Georgina (nee Collier) Hardie, who were both minor professional actors. Young Constance made her stage debut at the age of three as a fairy in a production of “A Midsummer Nights Dream” and the die was cast. By age 6 she was appearing with famed actor/manager Wilson Barrett in “The Silver King”. An early break occurred in her teens (1893) when the tall, under-aged beauty was given consent by her parents to become a member of the famed George Edwardes-Hall “Gaiety Girls” dance troupe. Groomed extensively in singing, dancing and elocution, she managed to stand out among those others in the chorus line and went on to featured status in two of Edwardes-Hall’s biggest hits, “A Gaiety Girl” and “The Shop Girl” (both 1894).
Legit ingénue roles in “Her Advocate”, “Tommy Atkins” and “The Sign of the Cross” followed. Just after the turn of the century (1901) she was invited to join the theatre company of the esteemed Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who had been searching for a comparably tall leading lady to play opposite him. She remained with his company at His Majesty’s Theatre for six years where she built up a formidable classical resumé. Alongside Sir Herbert in such plays as “Ulysses”, “The Eternal City” and “Nero”, Constance also proved a fine Shakespearean with her Olivia, Viola, Portia, Mistress Ford and Cleopatra at the top of the list. She also made a noteworthy Nancy Sykes in “Oliver Twist” which she toured extensively both here and abroad. During this time (1905), she married British-born actor ‘Julian L’Estrange’.
Ms. Collier made a successful American stage debut in 1908 with “Samson” at the Garrick Theatre in New York opposite well-known American actor/playwright William Gillette, thereby placing herself solidly among the most popular and respected actresses of the day. Among her subsequent Broadway offerings were “Israel” (1909), “Trelawney of the Wells” (1911), “Oliver Twist” (1912), “Othello” (1915) and “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (1917).
Sir Herbert and Constance both appeared as extras in the silent D.W. Griffith classicIntolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916). While still in the U.S., he filmed Macbeth (1916) with Constance as his Lady Macbeth. Not only was the Shakespearean film poorly received but her starring appearances in two other silents released earlier that year, The Tongues of Men (1916) and The Code of Marcia Gray(1916), were also overlooked.
Tragedy struck in October of 1918. She and husband L’Estrange had begun a Broadway run together of “The Ideal Husband” only a month earlier. During the run he contracted the deadly Spanish influenza which had spread worldwide and died of pneumonia at the untimely age of 40. The grief-stricken actress finished the play’s run into November then returned to England where she appeared in the films The Impossible Woman (1919),Bleak House (1920) and The Bohemian Girl (1922). Among her London theatre successes were “Our Betters” (1923) at the Globe Theatre, which ran for over twelve months, and “Hamlet” wherein she played Queen Gertrude opposite John Barrymore‘s Great Dane (1925) at the Haymarket Theatre. Constance also moved into writing and penned her own play “Forever”, which was based on the Daphne Du Maurier novel “Peter Ibbetson”. She then co-wrote with actor/friend Ivor Novello the play “The Rat” (1924) in which Novello starred and Constance produced.
The advent of sound provided the exciting opportunity for the eloquent Collier to work in the U.S., but not necessarily as an actress. By helping established silent film stars transition into talkies, she became Hollywood’s foremost drama and voice coach. Finding less and less time for stage work, she directed a Broadway production of “Camille” in 1931. She did, however, manage to appear in productions of “Peter Ibbetson” (1931), which she also staged, “Dinner at Eight (1932) and “Hay Fever” (1933) all in New York. Her final Broadway curtain call was taken as Madame Bernardi in “Aries Is Rising” (1939) at New York’s Golden Theatre.
In later years, she continued to coach (among her students were Marilyn Monroe) and write, but she also found time to return to the large screen in a dozen or so films, usually providing stately support. She appeared in a range of movies from the Shirley Temple vehicle Wee Willie Winkie (1937) to the film noir piece The Dark Corner (1946). Better known roles during this period include those in Stage Door (1937), playing, quite appropriately and amusingly, the resident drama coach, An Ideal Husband (1947), excellent as Lady Markby, and Alfred Hitchcock‘s Rope (1948). Her last film was Whirlpool(1949).
Constance died of natural causes in New York on April 25, 1955, and left behind her 1929 memoirs “Harlequinade”. She had no children.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Kier Dullea was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1936. He is best known for his lead performance in the Stanley Kubrick classic “2001: A Space Oddity” in 1968. His other movies include “The Hoodlum Priest”, “Male Order Bride”, “Bunny Lake is Missing” and “The Fox” with Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Tall, slim, remote and boyishly handsome, one of Keir Dullea’s most arresting features are his pale blue eyes and, at one time, they were featured all over the screen in a number of watershed films of the 1960s. A major, up-and-coming film star from the “Camelot” years straight through the turbulent era of the U.S.-Viet Nam War, he never quite reached international fame. His shining star may have suffered a power outage into the next decade, but he persevered quite well on T.V. and (especially) the stage in a career now surpassing five decades.
Dullea, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, is the son of two book-store owners, and he was raised in New York’s Greenwich Village section. He graduated from George School in Pennsylvania and attended both Rutgers and San Francisco State before deciding to pursue summer stock and regional theatre. Attending the Neighborhood Playhouse, he made his New York City acting debut in a production of “Sticks and Bones” in 1956. His first big break came with the pilot program of the Route 66 (1960) series, and he proceeded to find other TV roles in Naked City (1958), Checkmate (1960) and various dramatic programs.
Following stage work in “Season of Choice” (1959) and “A Short Happy Life” (1961), Dullea made an auspicious film debut in a leading role with The Hoodlum Priest (1961), playing a troubled street gang member who crosses paths with Don Murray‘s determined minister. The young actor’s characters from then on seemed to walk a dangerous tight-rope of emotions, and his apparent versatility at such a young age led him to a number of other psychologically scarred portrayals. Tending to play men younger than he really was, none were more disturbed than his haphephobic adolescent David (Dullea was twenty-six at the time) in the deeply felt love story David and Lisa (1962). Paired beautifully with Janet Margolin‘s schizophrenic Lisa, Dullea won the Golden Globe Award for “Most Promising Male Newcomer.”
In the World War II military drama The Thin Red Line (1964)he played an edgy, nervous-eyed private who is pushed to his murderous brink by a brutal sergeant on Guadacanal. In Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) Dullea portrayed the incestuous brother of Carol Lynley, who may or may not figure into the disappearance of Lynley’s child. Keir also costarred as the mysterious intruder who inserts an emotional wedge between gay lovers Anne Heywood and Sandy Dennis in the ground-breaking film about homosexuals, The Fox(1967).
Topping that off, Dullea played the salacious Marquis De Sade himself in a relatively tame, internationally flavored production of De Sade (1969). The apex of his film career, however, came with his lead role in Stanley Kubrick‘s epic science-fiction film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), as the astronaut Dr. David Bowman.
In the realm of stage acting, Keir made his debut on Broadway in 1967 with “Dr. Cook’s Garden” costarring Burl Ives, and Dullea won some “flower power” stardom two years later as a sensitive young blind man who attempted to wriggle free of his protective, overbearing mother. His character also pursues love with a free-spirited girl, played byBlythe Danner, in the play “Butterflies Are Free.” By the time the movie of this story was released in 1972 both stars had been replaced by Goldie Hawn and Edward Albert.
Dullea next went abroad to seek film work in England and in Canada, but with lukewarm results. He continued to show his odd-man-out appeal on the Broadway stage as “Brick” in 1970, and in the Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1974, acting along with Elizabeth Ashley as “Maggie,” and in the black comedy “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!” one year later.
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In the years since then, Dullea has acted steadily on the stage in New York City, and in U.S. regional theatres, in productions of “Sweet Prince,” “The Seagull” and “The Little Foxes,”among others. His cinematic roles since 1970 have included another “mysterious stranger” in The Next One (1984), and he also reprised his “David Bowman” role in 2010(1984), the sequel to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Dullea has had four wives: his first was actress Margot Bennett, and he and his third wife, Susie Fuller (whom he met during the British performances of “Butterflies are Free” in London), cofounded the Theater Artists Workshop of Westport in 1983. Dullea, Fuller and her two children resided in London for quite a while. After Fuller’s death in 1998, Dullea married for the fourth time in 1999 to actress Mia Dillon, who is best known for portraying the character “Babe” in in the play, “Crimes of the Heart” in New York City. Just a few weeks later they appeared together in the play “Deathtrap.”
Dullea has worked infrequently in television roles. Among his more recent work in movies has been the role of a senator in The Good Shepherd (2006), along with Matt Damon andAngelina Jolie, which was directed by Robert De Niro.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
TCM Overview:
Raised in NYC’s Greenwich Village where his parents ran a bookstore, clean-cut, sensitive-looking leading man Keir Dullea acted in stock and with various repertory companies before finally appearing Off-Broadway in “Season of Choice” (1959). He gained immediate attention for his first two film roles, as the doomed juvenile delinquent in “The Hoodlum Priest” (1961) and as the young emotionally disturbed protagonist of Frank Perry’s “David and Lisa” (1962). Looking younger than his years, he continued to play intense, neurotic youths in movies like “The Thin Red Line” (1964), “Bunny Lake Is Missing” (1965) and “Madame X” (1966), finally breaking the typecasting as the man who intrudes upon a lesbian relationship in the film of D H Lawrence’s novella, “The Fox” (1967). After his memorable turn as astronaut David Bowman in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), his career seemed ready to blast into a new dimension, but his misses outnumbered his hits in the 1970s and 80s, due as much to his apathy as anything.
Kevin Dobson was born in New York City in 1943. He first came to prominence as the sidekick Crocker to Telly Savalas’s “Kojack” which ran from 1973 until 1978. His films include “Midway” in 1976, “All Night Long” with Barbra Streisand and “Dirty Work”. He starred in the TV series “Knot’s Landing” from 1982 until 1993.
TCM Overview:
Leading man with appeal to both women and blue collars, who still has traces of his Queens, NY, accent, and who has sustained 25 years of TV stardom, Kevin Dobson is best recalled as the right hand to “Kojak,” Lt. Bobby Crocker (CBS, 1973-1978), and as Mack MacKenzie on the long-running “Knots Landing” (CBS, 1982-1993). Dobson was attending NYU and working on the Long Island Railroad to support himself when his girlfriend — whom he later married — suggested he try to do TV commercials for make money instead of railroad work while trying to study. He won a few commercials and toured with a production of “The Impossible Years” by Walter Kerr. When he returned to New York, he was hooked, and began studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse. He won bit parts in three films made in the east — “Love Story” (1970), “Klute” (1971), and “The French Connection” (1971) — before heading to Los Angeles, where his first TV gig was in an episode of “The Mod Squad,” but he found himself working as a fireman on the Santa Fe Railroad to make ends meet. The break came when he was cast as Lt. Crocker in “Kojak” (CBS, 1973-1978). Telly Savalas bossed Dobson around for 100 episodes, but Dobson won the hearts of the younger women watching the show. Under contract to Universal, which made the series, he was put into a co-starring role in the feature film “The Battle of Midway” (1976) and in his first TV movie, “The Immigrants” (syndication, 1978). He holds the distinction of having been one of Barbra Streisand’s screen husbands, but, alas for Dobson, it was in one of La Streisand’s few box office turkeys, “All Night Long” (1981). In 1981, Dobson had his first TV series as a lead, “Shannon” (CBS), playing a New York police detective who relocates to San Francisco with his son. The show lasted only a season, but he then joined “Knots Landing” as tough federal prosecutor MacKenzie, who eventually married Michele Lee. Starting in 1988, Dobson also frequently directed episodes of the series. “Knots Landing” also gave Dobson the profile to star in TV movies, many produced through his own company — and for which his wife, Susan, was executive producer. Among the more recent were “Dirty Work” (USA, 1992), in which he was an ex-cop turned bailbondsman, and “If Someone Had Known” (CBS, 1995), in which he must arrest his own daughter. In 1996, he was the older and wiser Leo McCarthy on “FX: The Series” for syndication, and he returned to “Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac” (CBS, 1997). As for Lt. Crocker, according to his appearance in “Kojak: It’s Always Something” (ABC, 1990), which reprised the 1970s characters, Crocker had become an attorney and Assistant DA.
Kim Darby is to-day best known for her performance as Mattie Ross in the original version of “True Grit” which starred John Wayne back in 1969. Kim Darby was born in 1947 in Los Angeles. She made her film debut in “Bye Bye Birdie” in 1963. She went on to feature in the underrated “Bus Riley’s Back in Town” with Michael Parks and “The Strawberry Statement”. She is married to actor James Westmoreland.
TCM Overview:
Kim Darby rose to fame as the young woman who asks John Wayne to help her avenge her father’s murder in “True Grit” (1969), but while Wayne won an Academy Award for his efforts, Darby’s spunky quality did not translate into ingenue status and she proved hard to cast. By the 1980s, her work had become sporadic.
A Hollywood native, Darby began performing as a child (billed as Derby Zerby) with her parents, who were known professionally as ‘The Dancing Zerbies’. She was a teen-ager when she appeared as an extra in the film “Bye Bye Birdie” (1963) and made her speaking debut on an episode of the TV series “Mr. Novak” (NBC, 1964). She had her first speaking role in a film with “Bus Riley’s Back in Town” (1965), but did not get her big break until “True Grit”. She was rushed into several subsequent films, including “Norwood” (1970), a vehicle to help launch Glen Campbell in films in which Darby played a pregnant and rejected woman he chances to meet. The same year she was the protesting woman whose presence lures Bruce Davison into the anti-war movement in “The Strawberry Statement” (1970). In 1978, Henry Winkler pursued Darby in “The One and Only” and she was the professor dismayed by the changes in Jason Bateman in “Teen Wolf Too” (1987).
While Darby began in TV in the mid-60s on “Mr. Novak” as a high school student with problems, and subsequently appeared in the pilots for both “Ironside” (1967) and “The Streets of San Francisco” (1972), her work on the small screen has been infrequent. She had a supporting role as Virginia Calderwood on the original “Rich Man, Poor Man” miniseries during the 1976-77 season, and also co-starred in “The Last Convertible” (NBC, 1981). Darby made her TV-movie debut with “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” (ABC, 1973) and was still making occasional TV appearances in the 90s: she had a small role in the children’s movie “Secret of the Lizard Woman”, a 1995 ABC Saturday Special.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
James Shigeta was born in Hawaii in 1933. He served in the U.S Marine Corps during the Korean War. His breatkthrough role came in 1959 in Samuel Fuller’s cult classic “The Crimson Kimono” with Glenn Corbett and Victoria Shaw. His other films include “Bridge to the Sun” with Carroll Baker, “Flower Drum Song” with Miyoshi Umeki and Nancy Kwan and “China Cry” with France Nuyen in 1990. He died in August 2014.
His obituary in “The Independent”:
he Japanese-American actor and singer James Shigeta starred in two major films of 1961, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Flower Drum Song, in which he sang the hit ballad, “You Are Beautiful”, and the drama Bridge to the Sun, in which he played a Japanese diplomat married to an American (Carroll Baker).
The latter was the US’s official entry in the Venice Film Festival, and Shigeta was hailed as the first Oriental romantic leading man since Sessue Hayakawa in the silent era. His big-screen stardom, though, was not sustained, but he continued to have an active career on TV and stage, and became a notable character actor. His memorable roles include supplying the voice for General Li in Disney’s animated feature, Mulan (1998), and a telling few minutes in Die Hard (1988), in which he played the executive who refuses to give a bank security code to a vicious terrorist (Alan Rickman). “You’re just going to have to kill me,” he says, prompting Rickman to shoot him in the head.
Known as a “Sansei”, a third-generation American of Japanese ancestry, Shigeta was born in Honolulu in 1929, one of six children of a plumber. He attended New York University to major in creative writing, but switched to his first love, music, winning a popular talent show before enlisting as a Marine in the Korean War, rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant.
After the war he headed the cast of a musical revue in Japan, achieving immense popularity. His record of “Love Letters in the Sand” (a hit for Pat Boone in the US and UK) sold more than 2m copies, at the time the best-selling record in Japanese history. He had to find a tutor to teach him the Japanese language, and headlined both television and stage musicals. Returning to the US to star in television spectaculars with Dinah Shore and Shirley MacLaine, he headlined a revue, Holiday in Japan, in Las Vegas produced by MacLaine’s husband Steve Parker.
He made his US screen debut in Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono (1959) as one of two cops who fall for a key witness. He then played featured roles in Walk Like a Dragon (1960), as a Chinese man in the turn-of-the-century West who resents the treatment of his race, and Cry for Happy (1961), a farce dealing with culture clash as Navy men invade a Japanese brothel.
He sang on screen for the first time when given the romantic lead in Flower Drum Song as Wang Ta, who is in love with showgirl Nancy Kwan, unaware that he is loved by two others, a shy Chinese immigrant (Myoshi Umeki) and an older woman (Reiko Sato). A dramatic dream ballet depicting the confused passions, choreographed by Hermes Pan, featured Shigeta in close-ups while a masked double handled the more ambitious dance movements.
In 1962 Shigeta signed to a record label co-founded by Fred Astaire, Choreo, and made an album, We Speak The Same Language, featuring mainly show tunes, such as Rodgers and Hart’s “This Funny World” and Strouse and Adams’ “I’ve Just Seen Her”. It revealed an appealing baritone, but his acceptance the same year of a guest spot in TV’s Naked City indicated that screen roles were not being offered.
It was five years before his next film, supporting Elvis Presley in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), subsequent films including Lost Horizon (1973), The Yakuza (1975), and Midway (1976) as Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. In 1969 he returned to the stage as star of a highly successful touring version of The King and I.
He appeared in over 100 television series and films, including Dr Kildare, The Outer Limits, Perry Mason, Hawaii Five-O, Kung Fu, Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote. His last television role was in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Throughout his career, he refused to be questioned about his private life.
James Shigeta, actor and singer: born Honolulu 17 June 1929; died Los Angeles 28 July 2014.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Robert F. Lyons was born in 1939 in Albany, New York. He made his debut on television on an episode of “I Dream of Jeannie” in 1966. He was soon making feature films and his movies of note include “Pendleum” with Jean Seberg and George Peppard in 1969,”Getting Straight” with Elliot Gould and Candice Bergen and “The Todd Kilings” with Gloria Grahame.
TCM Overview:
Boyish lead of counter-culture films who made transition to more “solid guy” character roles in the 1970s and 80s. Best remembered for his hilarious turn in “Getting Straight” (1970), as Elliot Gould’s stoner buddy whose lame attempts at dodging the draft ultimately cause him to enlist in the Marines. After playing a charming Manson type who drives an unstable younger boy to multiple murder in “The Todd Killings” (1971), and a Harvard pot dealer opposite Barbara Hershey in “Dealing: Or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues” (1972), Lyons could be found in more standard action fare.
