Kintarō Hayakawa (June 10, 1886 – November 23, 1973), known professionally as was a Japanese actor. He was a popular star and matinée idol in Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1910s and early 1920s. Hayakawa was the first actor of Asian descent to achieve stardom as a leading man in the United States and Europe. His "broodingly handsome" good looks and typecasting as a sexually dominant villain made him a heartthrob among American women during a time of racial discrimination, and he became one of the first male sex symbols of Hollywood.
After withdrawing from the Japanese naval academy and attempting suicide at 18, Hayakawa attended the University of Chicago, where he studied political economics in accordance with his wealthy parents' wish that he become a banker. Upon graduating, he traveled to Los Angeles to board a scheduled ship back to Japan, but tried acting in Little Tokyo. Hayakawa impressed Hollywood figures and was signed to star in The Typhoon (1914). He made his breakthrough in The Cheat (1915), and became famous for his roles as a forbidden lover. Hayakawa was one of the highest-paid stars of his time, earning $5,000 per week in 1915 and $2 million per year through his own production company from 1918 to 1921. p. 2. Because of rising anti-Japanese sentiment and business difficulties, Hayakawa left Hollywood in 1922 and performed on Broadway and in Japan and Europe for many years before making his Hollywood comeback in Daughter of the Dragon (1931).
Of his talkies, Hayakawa is probably best known for his role as Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and the pirate captain in Swiss Family Robinson (1960). Hayakawa starred in over 80 feature films, and three of his films (The Cheat, The Dragon Painter, and The Bridge on the River Kwai) stand in the United States National Film Registry.
Early life was born on June 10, 1886, in the village of , now part of a town called Chikura, in the city of Minamibōsō in Chiba Prefecture, Japan.Kizirian, Shari. The Dragon Painter . Silent Film Festival.Perpetually Cool: The Many Lives of Anna May Wong (1905-1961). p. 179. From a young age, he yearned to go overseas and took on English studies in preparation. His father was the head of a fishermen's union with some wealth. He had five siblings.
From an early age, Hayakawa's family intended him to become an officer in the Imperial Japanese Navy. However, while a student at the naval academy in Etajima, he swam to the bottom of a lagoon (he grew up in a shellfish diving community) on a dare and ruptured his eardrum. The injury caused him to fail the navy physical. His father felt shame and embarrassment by his son's failure, and this drove a wedge between them. The strained relationship drove the 18-year-old Hayakawa to attempt (ritual suicide). One evening, Hayakawa entered a shed on his parents' property and prepared the venue. He put his dog outside and attempted to uphold his family's samurai tradition by stabbing himself more than 30 times in the abdomen. The barking dog brought Hayakawa's parents to the scene, and his father used an axe to break down the door, saving his life.
After he recovered from the suicide attempt, Hayakawa moved to the United States and began to study political economics at the University of Chicago to fulfill his family's new wish that he become a banker. While a student, he reportedly played quarterback for the football team and was once penalized for using jujitsu to bring down an opponent.Locke, Michelle. IN THE SILENT MOVIE ERA, HAYAKAWA BROKE HEARTS. Deseret News.King, James. Under Foreign Eyes. p. 18. Hayakawa graduated from the University of Chicago in 1912 and subsequently made plans to return to Japan./projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/sessue-hayakawa/ Sessue Hayakawa - Hollywood Star Walk]. Los Angeles Times. Hayakawa traveled to Los Angeles and awaited a transpacific steamship. During his stay, he discovered the Japanese Theatre in Little Tokyo and became fascinated with acting and performing plays.
The above account, however, is disputed, in part or whole. According to Professor of Japanese language and literature at UC San Diego Daisuke Miyao, Hayakawa's turn to acting was in reality less eventful; there is no record of Hayakawa having attended University of Chicago or having played sports there. Hayakawa's acting career instead likely followed a series of odd jobs in California: as a dishwasher, waiter, ice cream vendor, and factory worker; his theatrical appearances also were just another temporary pursuit. Another revisionist account by author Orie Nakagawa holds that Hayakawa had always intended to go to California to find work under his older brother in San Francisco; his father, however, convinced him to study at Chicago instead, and Hayakawa did so for a year before leaving to return to his original pursuits.
Career Early career
Hayakawa began his acting career in 1913. It was around this time that Hayakawa first assumed the stage name , meaning "snowy continent" ( means "snow" and means "continent").Chin, Frank. Born in the USA: A Story of Japanese America, 1889-1947. p. 14. One of the productions in which Hayakawa performed was called The Typhoon. Tsuru Aoki, a member of the acting troupe, was so impressed with Hayakawa's abilities and enthusiasm that she enticed film producer Thomas H. Ince to see the play. Ince saw the production and offered to turn it into a silent film with the original cast. Eager to return to Japan, Hayakawa tried to dissuade Ince by requesting the astronomic fee of $500 a week, but Ince agreed to his request.
The Typhoon (1914) became an instant hit and was followed by two additional pictures produced by Ince, The Wrath of the Gods (1914) co-starring Hayakawa's new wife, Aoki, and The Sacrifice (1914). With Hayakawa's rising stardom, Jesse L. Lasky soon offered Hayakawa a contract, which he accepted, making him part of Famous Players–Lasky (now Paramount Pictures).
Stardom
Hayakawa's second film for Famous Players–Lasky was The Cheat (1915), directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The Cheat co-starred Fannie Ward as Hayakawa's love interest and was a huge success, making Hayakawa a romantic idol and sex symbol to the female movie-going public. "It caused a sensation," says Stephen Gong, the executive director of San Francisco's Center for Asian American Media. "The idea of the rape fantasy, forbidden fruit, all those taboos of race and sex—it made him a movie star. And his most rabid fan base was white women." With his popularity and "broodingly handsome"Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire. p. 111–112. good looks, Hayakawa commanded a salary that reached over $3,500 a week at the height of his fame in 1919. In 1917, he built his residence, a castle-styled mansion, at the corner of Franklin Avenue and Argyle Street in Hollywood, which was a local landmark until it was demolished in 1956.
Following The Cheat, Hayakawa became a leading man for romantic dramas in the 1910s and early 1920s.Bernardi, p. 71. He also began acting in Westerns and action films. He sought roles but, dissatisfied with being constantly typecast, Hayakawa decided to form his own production company. There is some lack of clarity on how Haworth Pictures Corporation got its original funding. Hayakawa himself gave two different versions. The first was in his autobiography; he tells of William Joseph Connery, a fellow University of Chicago alumnus, introducing him to A.B.C. Dohrmann, the president of a china and glassware company in San Francisco who was willing to pay one million dollars to establish the company. In the second version, Connery's parents were multimillionaire coal mine owners who provided the million dollars.
Over the next three years, Hayakawa produced 23 films and had earned $2 million by 1920, with which he was able to pay back the $1 million he had borrowed from Connery. Hayakawa produced, starred in, and contributed to the design, writing, editing, and directing of the films. Critics hailed Hayakawa's understated, Zen-influenced acting style. Hayakawa sought to bring , or the "absence of doing", to his performances, in direct contrast to the then-popular studied poses and broad gestures. In 1918, Hayakawa personally chose the American serials actress Marin Sais to appear opposite him in a series of films, the first being the racial drama The City of Dim Faces (1918), followed by His Birthright (1918), which also starred Aoki. His collaboration with Sais ended with Bonds of Honor (1919). Hayakawa also appeared opposite Jane Novak in The Temple of Dusk (1918) and Aoki in The Dragon Painter (1919). According to Goldsea Hayakawa's fame rivaled that of Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and John Barrymore. Hayakawa drove a gold plated Pierce-Arrow and entertained lavishly in his "Castle", which was known as the scene of some of Hollywood's wildest parties. Shortly before Prohibition took effect in 1920, he bought a large supply of liquor, leading him to joke that he owed his social success to his liquor supply. He took Aoki on a trip to Monaco where he gambled at the Monte Carlo Casino.
Hayakawa left Hollywood in 1922; different authors give various explanations such as prevailing anti-Japanese sentiment and business difficulties. Nakagawa focuses on three events in particular: first, on the set of The Swamp (1921), his appendix ruptured and while he was at the hospital there was an attempt to usurp his insurance money; second, there was a baseless tabloid report that Aoki had attempted suicide; and third, Hayakawa believed there was an attempt on his life by the Robertson-Cole Pictures Corporation (accused of supporting anti-Japanese legislation) by the collapse of an unsafe earthquake sequence on the set of The Vermilion Pencil in order to gain insurance money, leading to his suing the studio. He visited Japan with Aoki for the first time since he had come to the US. He returned soon afterwards, however and played the lead role in Tiger Lily on Broadway in 1923. The next decade and a half also saw him perform in Japan and Europe.Hollywood Goes Oriental: CaucAsian Performance in American Film. p. 22.Flickers of Desire: Movie Stars of the 1910s. p. 110. In London, Hayakawa starred in The Great Prince Shan (1924) and The Story of Su (1924). In 1925, he wrote a novel, The Bandit Prince, and adapted it into a short play. In 1930, Hayakawa performed in Samurai, a one-act play written specifically for him, in front of Great Britain's King George V and Queen Mary. Hayakawa became widely known in France, where audiences "enthusiastically embraced" him and made his French debut, La Bataille (1923) (also produced by Robertson-Cole Pictures Corporation), a critical and financial success. German audiences found Hayakawa "sensational" and in Russia he was considered one of the "wonderful actors" of America. In addition to numerous Japanese films, Hayakawa also produced a Japanese-language stage version of The Three Musketeers. In the initial decades of his career, Hayakawa established himself as the first leading man of Asian descent in American and European cinema.Screen World Presents the Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the silent era to 1965, Volume 1. p. 318. He was also the first non-Caucasian actor to achieve international stardom.Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema. p. 78.
Later career and retirement