The Age of Dreaming (8 page)

“Nakayama’s portrayal of Sasaki,” wrote the film critic for the
Rafu Shimpo
, “has set back Western understanding of the Oriental at least half a century. Our efforts to win recognition from Westerners as equal human beings have been undercut by this image of the Japanese man as cruel, base, and dishonest.”

“It is unfortunate,” wrote another reviewer, “that Jun Nakayama has squandered his considerable talents on this racialized and limited work.”

Even some American commentators were troubled by the film, for entirely different reasons. A columnist for the
Herald Examiner
warned American husbands, “All taboos have been shattered in this scandalous picture. Don’t leave your wives at home alone with your Jap houseboys.” And Harlan Chaney, the congressman, wrote a letter to the
Los Angeles Times
in which he declared:

This film is a perfect example of why the Japs are such a threat. Unlike the Negro, they refuse to accept their place. Unlike the Chinese coolie, they’re smart enough for business. This picture proves beyond doubt that Japs believe they have the right to anything, even our pure white American maidens. If it is shown in Japan, you can be sure that tens of thousands of them will come to California—with the express purpose of colonization.

Surprisingly, it was Hanako Minatoya who spoke out most passionately in my defense, sending a letter to the
Rafu Shimpo
in which she asserted that actors could not shy away from playing difficult roles. But privately, even Hanako admonished me. “You should really be more careful, Nakayama-san,” she said when I called to thank her for her letter. “I wish you weren’t so convincing at portraying a brute.”

I was not altogether surprised that the film stirred such emotion—I knew it was inflammatory from my first reading of the script—but I was taken aback by the intensity of the public response. In my view, Sasaki’s nationality was incidental to his fundamental nature. He was, indeed, a man of questionable morals—but this had nothing to do with his being Japanese. His background was simply one of many factors that made up a whole, compelling character, and not the central truth of his existence. And while it is true that Sasaki was perhaps rather brutal, it is terribly narrow-minded to think the way he was depicted was the result of racial prejudice. Some of it was attributable to the exigencies of film, which made difficult any complex characterization. Some of it was simply custom, and once I learned the expected boundaries—both in pictures and in life—I had no more troubles of the sort I’d experienced at the Moving Image Awards. Despite the opinions of critics in Little Tokyo and elsewhere, I believe that Hollywood made the fairest films it could. And was it not a mark of progress that a Japanese actor could be accepted as a leading man at all?

After I finished my pastry and tea, I left Canter’s and ventured back out onto Fairfax. As I walked down the block, I saw that a tow truck was parked in front of my car, and that a man in dark green work clothes was attaching a hook to its underside. I closed the distance between us quickly and yelled, “What are you doing?”

The man straightened up as I approached. He was perhaps in his early thirties, and a half-smoked cigarette dangled from his lips. His sewed-on name panel said
Dave
. “It’s in a tow-away zone,” he said. “Didn’t you see the sign?”

Glancing over at the sidewalk, I saw that there was, in fact, an obvious sign:
Shuttle Makes Frequent Stops. Absolutely No Parking!
I turned back to Dave, who was leaning on the hood, and fought the urge to ask him not to touch it. “No, I didn’t. It is my mistake, but I am here now. Do you really have to tow it?”

Dave fiicked away some ashes and sighed. “
I
don’t care one way or the other.” He pointed toward the building beside us. “It’s this old folks’ home that called it in. But I suppose as long as you move it, it’ll be gone and they’ll be happy. I don’t know how you drive that big old clunker anyway.”

Looking from the car to the man and back again, I said, “Excuse me, but this automobile is far from being a ‘clunker.’ It’s a 1931 V-16 Packard, the very height of elegance and prestige.”

The man shrugged, running his fingers through his visibly greasy hair. “Suit yourself. Me, I prefer the Mustang or the Viper.” With that, he bent over and disengaged the hook.

“Thank you. I appreciate it.” I gave a slight bow.

He winked and said, “No problem, old fella.”

After the tow truck had driven away, I sat in my car for a moment before starting the engine. I was troubled by the entire episode—how had I missed the sign? I did not recall there being such a sign on Fairfax, but it was true I hadn’t been there in quite some time.

I drove home thinking about the morning’s events, but I couldn’t ponder them for long. When I entered the building, George, the octogenarian doorman, handed me a package. It took me a moment to realize that it was Bellinger’s manuscript; the messenger had come while I was out. Now I bore it upstairs like a long, unwanted letter to which I was obliged to reply. I went inside and opened the package and set the screenplay on the table, wishing I had been firmer in telling him no.

As I felt the weight of it, fiipped through its ninety-eight pages, it struck me how much the moviemaking business had changed. In the early years, there were no screenplays, and no dialogue in the sense there is today. Writers wrote loose shooting scripts, which described the characters’ movements and expressions, and it was up to the director to extrapolate from there. Sometimes, though, the scenarios were even simpler. Douglas Fairbanks’
Robin Hood
was shot with nothing more than a one-page outline; Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton worked with no scripts at all. In the earliest days, only William Moran began a picture with a tight, structured written format of how he wanted it to unfold. And in all these scripts, there was little mention of what the characters should say—not like the screenplays of today, where the writer has to conceive of whole conversations, entire pages of verbal exchange.

It so happened that I had nothing planned for that afternoon, so I brewed some tea and settled down in my reading chair. I had no idea what to expect from Bellinger’s screenplay, but I hoped that it would not be too painful.

Much later, when I finished the manuscript, the room was almost dark. I checked my clock and discovered that three full hours had passed—not once in that time had I stirred, except to turn on the reading lamp. Now that I had finished the screenplay, I did not want to put it down; I held it gently in my hands like a living thing. And I felt a sensation I had not experienced in decades, the unmistakable stirring of creative excitement, the quickening of artistic desire.

It was not simply that the plot was compelling, although that was certainly true. The story centered on the young Marbury family—Terrence, Diane, and their four-year-old daughter Nancy—who live in a small town in Central California. The wife is a teacher, the husband owns a farm supply store, and their lives are uneventful. But then a new neighbor moves in next door, an older Japanese man named Takano, and they come to believe that he has moved to their remote little town in order to escape some secret from his past. They grow convinced—because of his age, because of his bearing, and because of his accent—that he is a former high-ranking Japanese official, perhaps a military leader from World War II. Although they are friendly with him, and bring him lemons from their tree, they speculate about his history and the circumstances of his arrival, and exchange increasingly far-fetched theories with their fellow townsmen. Their intense interest in him begins to shape the way they see everything else: their jobs, their own experiences, their daughter, even their marriage. Through all of this, Takano remains an elusive character who is friendly to the townsfolk and particularly to the Marburys’ child, but who has no interest in satisfying anyone’s curiosity. But what the Marburys believe Takano to be and who he really is turn out to be entirely different. By the time it is finally revealed that the town’s assumptions are horribly wrong, everyone’s beliefs are so firmly implanted that they cannot see past their own fear and suspicion. The several plot twists that ultimately play out at the end are as surprising as they are inevitable.

While the story intrigued me, what impressed me even more was Bellinger’s handling of all the dynamics of his people—their expectations and misreadings of each other; the way that fear and fantasy distort their everyday lives; the price that people pay in their futile attempt to outdistance themselves from pain. And he captured perfectly the conflicts of California’s Central Valley, where white and Japanese farmers had coexisted so uneasily. It was a wise, taut, compelling work, psychological and troubling. And the character of Takano, which was clearly who Bellinger wanted me to play, was sensitively rendered. It was a relief that the Oriental character was not a villain, and his actions, both in the present of the film and in his distant past, included elements that could even be called heroic. And while he was, in fact, quiet and mysterious, those qualities had more to do with the other characters’ failures of understanding than with something inherently unreachable in him.

The thought of playing a complex, intelligent, dignified man, a Japanese who was not dishonest or brutal or hiding a violent past, was more than I could possibly resist. It was true that I was forty years out of practice and unversed in the ways of modern film. But it was also true that something of the old actor in me was stirred by the prospect of a challenging role. Moreover, I knew that this could represent my chance to finally portray a hero.

I did not call Bellinger that afternoon. I felt too over-whelmed, and I needed to make sure that my initial enthusiasm was not short-lived or superficial. But I began to have thoughts which indicated to me that I was now taking his proposition more seriously. I wondered if Bellinger had a commitment from Perennial—whether his conversations with Ben Dreyfus’ grandson were informal or involved more concrete terms. I wondered what, if an agreement had indeed been struck, the process involved from there. I suspected that Bellinger, once the screenplay was sold, would have no say over who was cast in the film. But I also happened to know that there was no other Oriental actor of my stature. Steve Hayashi, who still appeared in the occasional B film, was simply not in the same league—and just as importantly, the Dreyfus grandson knew who I was.

I felt, I must admit, a certain apprehension, for a return to movies wouldn’t be a simple matter. I was also quite nervous about the thought of doing a talkie. So many of my contemporaries had not survived the transition to sound—not only the actors and actresses whose voices were too high or too low or too grating, but those with fine voices who did not know how to use them, or whose voices could never live up to their viewers’ fantasies. Still, I knew that I was unrivaled in terms of pure acting ability. And I speculated on who would be suitable to work on the film. Of course, my first choice for director—had it been possible—would have been Ashley Bennett Tyler, with whom I had partnered so successfully over the years. As for actors, Terrence Marbury would have to be someone handsome and workmanlike, not an aristocrat like Gregory Peck or Cary Grant. Diane Marbury would be spirited with an undercurrent of sadness, pretty but down to earth, an actress who was at once pleasant to look at and also unassuming. There were very few actresses who met those criteria; very few who took their beauty for granted. One actress, however, from my own days in film, came immediately to mind. Of course, she is an old woman by now, and she hasn’t spoken to me in many years. Merely thinking of her, though, brought back a fiood of recollection. She had been an original, a true talent and precocious child, and her story was one of the saddest tales of all.

I met her in early March of 1917, after the Normandy Players had been absorbed into Perennial. I had just finished meeting with Gerard Normandy about my upcoming film—he was vice president for production at the new studio—and was stepping down from his office for a cigarette. The day was beautiful, clear and still cool from the morning’s chill, and all the fiowers and trees on the Perennial lot looked especially lush and bright. I watched the studio employees rush back and forth, some on foot and some on bicycles, as well as players in full makeup and costume. Many of them called out as they passed, “Hello, Mr. Nakayama!” and, “Loved your last picture, Jun!” I nodded and waved, aware of the people talking about me, the looks of admiration.

I was riding a string of remarkable successes. Since
Sleight of Hand,
my last eight pictures had all been hits, bringing the studio so much money and allowing for payment toward so many debts that people had started referring to me as “the paycheck.” Benjamin Dreyfus, the head of marketing and distribution, had done a brilliant job of promoting my films; he’d also attracted a great deal of publicity for me. It seemed like every day brought another major press interview—just the previous week, I’d been on the cover of
Moving Image Magazine
—and I was now receiving thousands of letters a week, from both American and Japanese fans. Elizabeth Banks, who’d also signed with Perennial, was experiencing a surge in popularity herself; she was now being taken seriously in dramatic roles and her last several films had been successful. Looking out across the lot at all the workers and players, feeling their energy and excitement, I was struck again by our tremendous good fortune. People moved about the studio as happily as if they’d discovered a new country, a place that had everything one could possibly need for the task of making pictures—not just cameras and stages and offices, but also a hospital, a commissary, even a functioning lumber mill to speed up the production of the sets. And I thought for a moment of how strange this all was—how we functioned in an alternate and make-believe world, which was more vital to us than the real one.