To the Stars

by George Takei

  Yet, whenever I was alone, whether studying in the great reading room of Doe Library or walking back from class through the cool glade along Strawberry Creek, a twinge of melancholy would creep into my mind—a bittersweet feeling of something ebbing away, a quiet sense of loss. As quickly as it came, the feeling would flee. The slightest of disturbances—a resonant echo from a chair being pushed back in the vast silence of the library, a cheery greeting from a friend hurrying to class through the glade—would chase it away like a frightened cat. But it would creep back again, quietly and persistently. I might hear Pat Boone singing “Love Letters in the Sand” on the radio, and I would be filled with a saccharine melancholy. I might pass a poster announcing a production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest on campus, and I would be consumed by a wistful longing. No matter how much I tried, I could not keep suppressed this pining for a fading dream—my muted yearning to be an actor.

  * * *

  The first summer back from Berkeley, I got a job installing Venetian blinds working for a small company run by an entrepreneurial young couple, George and Betty Filey, in West Los Angeles. I was their sole employee. A garage down an alley was the production factory, and their living room served as their office. But their customers came from the lush commercial buildings along Wilshire Boulevard or the beautiful homes in Santa Monica, Brentwood, and Beverly Hills. So, even with my summer job, there were chance occurrences that served as sparks to rekindle my yearning.

  I remember keenly getting job assignments to install blinds in the homes of actors—no, not just actors, but movie stars—like Eva Marie Saint, Jeannette MacDonald, and Gene Raymond. I couldn’t believe it. I was actually being sent to work in the private sanctums of these dream figures. As I put in the blinds, even their window frames seemed to cast a special, palpable enchantment. Eva Marie Saint would be gazing wistfully through these blinds I’ve hung, just as she did in On the Waterfront, I daydreamed. Jeannette MacDonald might be singing “Indian Love Call” as she gracefully opened my blinds, I fantasized—I was getting ridiculous.

  I decided I had to cast this now-bothersome infatuation out of my system once and for all. I would do this, I resolved, by taking a summer-session acting class at Berkeley’s sister campus, UCLA. Then, cleansed of this lunacy, I would return to Berkeley in the fall.

  I sat down to dinner one evening and announced my decision to Daddy and Mama. With this class, I promised them, I would expiate myself of an adolescent fascination with acting. This was going to be my farewell gift to my teenage years, and then I could move on to serious adulthood and architecture.

  After I made what I thought was a momentous announcement, all Daddy said was, “That’s all right. But keep your day job. They should have evening classes at UCLA.” There was no long, thoughtful discussion. No resistance. No opposition. I was taken aback. I had fully expected a veto. But Daddy didn’t express any objections to my studying acting! So before he could have any time to rethink, I quickly followed through. I kept my Venetian blind job, and I enrolled in my first formal acting class in the summer evening session at UCLA.

  * * *

  By the end of a day of lugging stacks of Venetian blinds and drilling, screwing, and hanging them, I was physically exhausted. But somehow, I found renewed energy for my three-evenings-a-week class at UCLA. A quick dinner on the run and the prospect of the challenging acting class always wiped away the exhaustion, and I was reenergized.

  I plunged headlong in the class—examining the tortured psyches of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, then manifesting them in muscular contortions, anguished convulsions, and a good, resounding, cathartic howl. The class wallowed luxuriantly in emotions. It was wonderful. I was reveling in this final present to my teens. I didn’t know that this summer was to hold in store for me an even greater surprise gift—a real, paying job in a movie.

  * * *

  I got home from class one night, spent but exhilarated. It had been another full day and night. Daddy was in the living room reading the Japanese community paper, the Rafu Shimpo.

  He looked up and said to me, “I circled an ad here in the Rafu that might interest you. Here, take a look at it.”

  He pulled out a sheet from the English section and handed it to me. There, near the bottom of the page, was a big pencil circle around an ad that began, “Casting for voices to dub film.” It gave no details other than a name and a telephone number to call. But that was all I needed. I tore out the ad and folded it into my wallet.

  “Thanks, Daddy,” I said. “I’ll check it out first thing tomorrow morning.”

  What I found out was that a film, imported from Japan by an independent Hollywood company called King Brothers Productions, was to be dubbed onto English from the original Japanese for the American audience. It was a science fiction piece about a gigantic prehistoric flying monster, brought back to life after some millennia of hibernation by modern-day radiation, which terrorizes the people of contemporary Tokyo. The title of this preposterous epic was Rodan, the name of the monstrous creature. But even more unbelievably, when I auditioned, I was cast! The movie was the most farfetched of science fictions, but my brief adventure with giving English voice to this interlingual fantasy epic was to be almost as bizarre.

  I was making more money installing blinds than I would be dubbing Rodan. I knew also that I would be aggravating George Filey’s business during his busiest summer period. Yet, I begged George to let me off for the three days required for the movie work. I promised eternal gratitude to him if he would. He didn’t question my rationality. He didn’t grouse about the inconvenience to his business. I guess he understood who I was. He gave me those three days off without a hassle, and to this day, I am grateful to George Filey for his indulgence of an aspiring actor’s madness.

  Daddy noted dryly, on the other hand, that I was doing scenes from O’Neill and Williams and Arthur Miller at UCLA at night. “Why would you want to take off from a well-paying job during the day and great theater literature at one of the finest universities in America in the evenings to rant and rave in a monster movie?” He still didn’t understand his son. Didn’t he know that I was actually getting paid to do a real movie inside a genuine Hollywood soundstage?

  That soundstage was on the lot of the legendary Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio in Culver City—one of the studios that I had peered into so longingly as a youngster on those Sunday afternoon drives long ago. Now, I was checking in with the guard at the gate, actually finding my name on the list on his clipboard and being waved through as if this were the most normal of occurrences.

  What was quite abnormal, in fact downright surreal, were the three days I spent on that soundstage. The two brothers of the King Brothers independent production company, producers of the epic, turned out to be awesome behemoths of men. Both brothers were colossally, unbelievably fat and almost always stayed seated. But when they got up and moved, the deep, labored wheezing sounds they made were more like some primeval animal noises than human panting.

  They perspired profusely. When they reached up to their brows with a damp handkerchief that they always carried in their hands, they grunted like irritated beasts. They completed the image with gargantuan black cigars that protruded out of each of their mouths like some phallic prods. They spoke very little. They just sat in the gloom at the back of the darkened recording studio snorting and grunting.

  There were four actors, all cast for their varying vocal qualities—three males, mature, middle-aged, and youthful, and one female. We were each assigned eight or nine different characters to do. With oversized earphones that made us look like science fiction characters ourselves, we stared up at a gigantic screen on a wall across which passed silent images: the prehistoric monstrosity, Rodan, soundlessly swooping down on panicked crowds, fleeing noiselessly; close-ups of bug-eyed faces in mute, open-mouthed terror; shots of sober-faced officials gravely moving their wordless lips. We listened for three clicks in our earphones, which were coordinated with a flickery line that d
anced across the screen. The third click sounded just as the flickery line reached the right side of the screen, and that was our cue to speak the line—when the lips started moving or the chest heaved for the gasp. The sounds we uttered had to match the movement on the screen precisely, or else the lips would continue moving silently or our dialogue would persist over a closed-mouth face.

  The director was a big man also, but, in contrast to the King brothers, he was merely husky. He also chewed a cigar, but, again in proportion to his bosses, his was not outsized—just big. Unlike the King brothers, however, the director was always in motion. He kept jumping up from his seat as if he sat on springs—to change a word here or rewrite a line of dialogue that didn’t seem to work there. He paced about chewing his cigar, searching for inspiration. But most of all, he was constantly jumping up to run to the portable telephone that was set up to the side of the recording stage to check with his bookie. He was on that phone almost every fifteen minutes. He would hang up, more often shaking a fist in angry frustration but sometimes grinning broadly, his cigar dancing up and down in his clenched teeth.

  The joy for me in this unusual dramatis personae was in meeting and working with Keye Luke, a distinguished Chinese-American actor whom I had grown up watching in such films as The Good Earth and Keys to the Kingdom, and as Charlie Chan’s obedient number-one son. Keye was the very personification of professionalism, dignity, and good humor. His lip-syncing was crisp and precise, and he managed to find a unique voice for each character he was assigned. During the breaks, he was warm and friendly. He was my anchor of sanity, the stabilizing personality in a strange environment, which looked to my novice eyes like some manic cartoon of Hollywood.

  I watched Keye work, and I learned from him to individualize my characters. As the image of the bright young scientist on the screen silently moved his lips, I studied the movements closely, just as Keye would; I gave him an astute, analytical voice. As the young honeymooner seemed to whisper sweet nothings into his bride’s ear, I gave him audible passion in sync with his heavy breathing. As the image of the man terrorized by the enraged monster mutely opened his mouth, I gave him a series of blood-curdling screams that matched every tremble of his tonsils. With earphones over my head and intensely focused on the silent images, I stuttered, cried, pontificated, and shrieked. No, this was not some madman’s asylum. It really was the modern-day equivalent of the benshi, the men who narrated the Japanese films I remembered from my boyhood back in the internment camps. I thought, I’ve got to tell Daddy about this connection.

  At the end of the third and final day of work on the dubbing, Keye gave me a hearty congratulatory handshake and a slap on the back. “Fine work, George. You make me proud,” he said, smiling broadly.

  I was hoarse from all the screaming I’d done, but somehow I was able to croak out, “It was really a treat working with you, Mr. Luke. Thank you very much.”

  The director embraced me in a tight bear hug that reeked of his big, black cigar. Then he held me by my shoulders at arm’s length and beamed at me, wiggling his cigar up and down. I guessed that this silent accolade from a man who had spent the last three days searching for just the perfect word for each scene was his expression of the epitome of acclaims—praise beyond words.

  I hurried for the exit before I could receive whatever form of acknowledgment for my work the King brothers might make. I was relieved to see that they had no intention of getting up. From their regally ensconced positions, they waved their giant cigars in unison and growled out, “Good work, kid. Thanks.”

  * * *

  My enchanted summer was over before I knew it. My dreams had been fulfilled beyond my expectations. I had taken acting lessons at UCLA. I had the serendipitous joy of working on a real movie in a recording studio at the fabled M-G-M studios and getting paid for it to boot. My youthful passion had been indulged. Daddy and Mama believed that I had finally gotten the acting bug out of my system. Now I had promises to keep, my word to honor. I returned to Berkeley determined to become a great architect.

  The more I studied architecture, however, the greater became my quandary. Because, perhaps of all the arts, the work of an architect has the largest, weightiest, most lasting consequence. A building is a dominating presence in society that can enhance the quality of life, or it can degrade it profoundly. I felt keenly the enormity of that accountability. I was only too aware of irresponsible architecture, which seemed to surround and diminish us.

  And I learned just how much inspired architecture could contribute to the enrichment and health of a people.

  My architectural hero is Frank Lloyd Wright. His philosophy of organic architecture is based on the notion of harmony—the balance between people, structure, and nature. The architect’s task is to serve that balance. Wright manifested his philosophy in an astonishingly wide variety of environments, from the urban setting of Los Angeles with the Hollyhock House, to the arid desert of Arizona with Taliesen West, to the tumbling river and lush forest of Pennsylvania with Fallingwater.

  The one seeming violation of Wright’s notion of harmony with the environment is in probably his most visited work, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. This gracefully spiraling white edifice is the elegant individualist on the gray row of ennui that lines Fifth Avenue. It is the hallmark of Wright’s genius. A master knows when and how to break the rules. To harmonize with the genteel mediocrities that align themselves along Fifth Avenue would be polite but, like so many polite people, deathly dull. The Guggenheim is hardly that. It is a gloriously iconoclastic work of art proudly standing alone like the sculptural promontory of an urban rock outcropping overlooking the great natural expanse of Central Park. It is an extraordinary edifice that defines and ennobles the land—as does its master builder.

  I met Frank Lloyd Wright the semester I returned to Berkeley. He was to be the guest lecturer at a special evening event. There was much anticipation of the great man’s visit. On the night of his address, the sizable lecture hall was completely packed. I arrived early and was comfortably set in a good seat in the center section of the hall. Architecture students were supposed to have had priority seating, but many arriving later couldn’t even get in. There was confusion and much pushing and shoving. People were still trying to squeeze into the aisles when the hour arrived.

  Suddenly, with no introductories, the door to the speakers stage banged open, and in swept a figure dressed completely in black—a black wide-brimmed hat, a voluminous black overcoat flung over the shoulders like a cape, and a loose, old-fashioned black suit. He carried a black cane, but his brisk, firm steps immediately signaled that it was an unnecessary but dramatic prop. From under his black hat, a full mane of snow-white hair cascaded down to his shoulders. Frank Lloyd Wright had arrived. This was one of the most spectacularly theatrical entrances I had ever witnessed.

  Wright was well into his eighties, but he was a forceful, passionate, absolutely mesmerizing speaker. He spoke eloquently on his ideas of organic architecture. He railed against the mediocrity he had to fight. And he was impassioned about the need for an architect’s total commitment to a project. When he finished speaking, he responded rather imperiously to a few questions from the audience, and then, as abruptly as he had entered, he swept out. Without ceremony. Frank Lloyd Wright was there one moment, and then he was gone. There was a stunned silence before the assemblage broke out in thunderous standing ovation to an empty stage. He had left a powerful impression. As Wright the architect had graced the land with his work, he as a man singularly personified all that it took to be a great architect.

  I was profoundly inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright. He gave me renewed understanding of the importance of architecture. I was impressed by his strength and passionate dedication to his vision of the world. And I was troubled by his strong advocacy of a total commitment to architecture.

  Frank Lloyd Wright’s words haunted me the rest of that year. I would hear echoes of Wright in the speeches of professors. “An architect de
signs for individuals, but an architect’s design also speaks of his time,” I remember one saying, and I would think of the responsibility an architect carries. I would roam about the Berkeley hills and find buildings by the great Bernard Maybeck. His complex craftsmanship, the intricate details in his work, and the quiet delight they evoked only reminded me of the unreserved dedication such artistry demanded. The more I exposed myself to the great achievements of architecture, the more conscious I became of my divided commitment. I could imagine myself ten years later working as an architect—suppressing a nagging regret. I couldn’t make a complete and unreserved commitment to architecture.

  * * *

  It was Easter vacation, 1957, and I was back home in Los Angeles. On my agenda for this brief holiday at home was a serious talk with Daddy. But I felt ill at ease. I couldn’t find the words, or the right occasion to say what I wanted. I couldn’t do it at the dinner table. Too many people. I couldn’t do it when Daddy was relaxing with the papers after a hard day at the office. He had been investing in hotels and apartments lately, and the stress on him was considerable; he deserved to unwind. The short holiday week would be over soon, and I would have to be heading back to Berkeley. I felt the anxiety of time slipping away. Would I be able to have my discussion with Daddy before I had to go back?

  One relaxation Daddy enjoyed was to water the back lawn in the nocturnal calm of late evening. He would sit on the steps of the back porch gazing up at the night sky as he held the hose spraying a soft mist over the lawn. One evening, I spied him from the kitchen window sitting there alone. I watched this solitary figure for a long time. This man who had worked so hard at so many jobs for his children, this father who gave so much to us and who wanted so much from us. As I watched him gazing up at the stars, I felt I knew what he must have been dreaming about. And I ached over what I had to tell him.