Happy Birthday Sessue Hayakawa!

No thats not the name of my Japanese dentist, but I figure this as much to do with football as Fraud's idiotic diatribes of nothingness.

Sessue Hayakawa's father was the provincial governor and his mother a member of an aristocratic family of the "samurai" class. The young Hayakawa wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become a career officer in the Japanese navy, but he was turned down due to problems with his hearing. The disappointed Hayakawa decided to make his career on the stage. He joined a Japanese theatrical company that eventually toured the United States in 1913. Pioneering film producer Thomas H. Ince spotted him and offered him a movie contract. Roles in "The Wrath of the Gods" (1914) and "The Typhoon" (1914) turned Hayakawa into an overnight success.

The next year his appearance in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Cheat" (1915) made Hayakawa a silent-screen superstar. He played an ivory merchant who has an affair with the Caucasian Fannie Ward, and audiences were "scandalized" when he branded her as a symbol of her submission to their passion. The movie was a blockbuster for Famous Players-Lasky (later Paramount), turning Hayakawa into a romantic idol for millions of American women, regardless of their race. However, there were objections and outrage from racists of all stripes, especially those who were opposed to miscegenation (sexual contact between those of different races). Also outraged was the Japanese-American community, which was dismayed by DeMille's unsympathetic portrayal of a member of their race. The Japanese-American community protested the film and attempted to have it banned when it was re-released in 1918.

With the dawn of a new decade came a rise in anti-Asian sentiment, particularly over the issue of immigration due to the post-World War I economic slump. Hayakawa's films began to perform poorly at the box office, bringing his first American movie career to an end in 1922. He moved to Japan but was unable to get a career going.

In 1931 Hayakawa returned to Hollywood to make his talking-picture debut in support of Anna May Wong in "Daughter of the Dragon" (1931). Sound revealed that he had a heavy accent, and his acting got poor reviews. He returned to Japan before once again going to France, where he made the geisha melodrama "Yoshiwara" (1937) for director Max Ophüls.

After the Second World War he took a third stab at Hollywood. In 1949 he relaunched g himself as a character actor with "Tokyo Joe" in support of Humphrey Bogart, and followed that with "Three Came Home" (1950) with Claudette Colbert. Hayakawa reached the apex of this, his third career, with his role as the martinet POW camp commandant in "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957), which brought him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Hayakawa continued to act in movies regularly until his retirement in 1966. He returned to Japan, becoming a Zen Buddhist priest while remaining involved in his craft by giving private acting lessons. (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Sessue Hayakawa!