To the Stars

by George Takei

  I slipped out of the house and sat beside him. The spring night air was soft and balmy.

  “Daddy, I’ve been giving my future a lot of thought,” I began tentatively, “and I’d like to share it with you.” I told him of my love of architecture but also of my anguish over my divided feelings. I told him that I didn’t want to live my life always harboring a regret. I told him that, ultimately, I had to live my own life, and although I was deeply grateful for all that he and Mama had done for me, I had to be true to myself. Then I said in one breath something that I had never before said aloud.

  “Daddy, I want to go to New York and study acting at the Actors Studio.” Only the soft hiss of the nozzle as it sprayed the mist could be heard. “It’s where Marlon Brando and James Dean studied,” I explained earnestly. My father only stared out, still and silent. “Daddy, I want to be an actor.”

  My father gazed down at the lawn pensively and continued watering in silence. All I could hear was the soft sound of the mist. A quiet heartache tightened around me. I knew the pain I was causing him. Then Daddy spoke, and I was taken aback. He said thoughtfully, “I knew that we would eventually be having this discussion.” He had expected this! Such a revelation was the last thing I had anticipated. He told me in his measured words that he had sensed my distress and that he was troubled by it. He said that what he and Mama wanted was for their children to be happy. Then he said the words for which I had steeled myself.

  “You love acting, and you think becoming an actor will give you happiness. All you know, though, is the glamour you see on stage and on screen. But you don’t know the real difficulties of making a living as an actor. There’s no security. There’s no continuity. And as a Japanese, the kinds of roles available to you will be limited. The truth is, there’s no dignity in that kind of life. We want you to be happy. But we don’t think you’ll be happy with the kind of life an actor has to live.”

  I said to Daddy that I knew there were no guarantees for an actor. But I said that what was guaranteed for me as an architect, no matter how successful I might become, was a lifetime of needling regrets. With impassioned words I said to my father that I would be going into this with my eyes wide open, that I was mindful of all his concerns, but that I was strong and I was determined and that I would not disappoint him. I asked him to have the same faith in my decision to pursue acting as he had in me as a student of architecture.

  Daddy twisted the nozzle closed, and the fine hissing stopped. He turned and faced me directly.

  “You’re determined, are you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Then do it,” he said. “Do what you are so determined to do. Become the best that you can be. We want you to be happy.”

  I was stunned. But before I could respond, he continued, “But there is an alternative I want you to consider. The Actors Studio is a fine acting school. But when you finish there, they won’t give you an academic degree. UCLA, as you know, has a distinguished school of theater. Study theater and acting there, and when you finish, they will grant you a bachelor’s degree. It will make your future a bit less perilous. Your mother and I would like you to have that.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I had been prepared to press my cause, to press it as vigorously as I could. But I hadn’t expected Daddy to turn the tables by accepting my cause before advocating his. No wonder he was successful at selling real estate. He continued.

  “You ought to know that New York is a tough place, a really merciless place, and a very expensive place. If you go to New York,” he said, “you had better be prepared to do it on your own. On the other hand, if you study acting at UCLA, which your mother and I would prefer you to do, we would be happy to cover your expenses.”

  There it was. The deal. New York on my own at the Actors Studio, versus UCLA with subsidy. It was the classic offer you couldn’t refuse. I was pitted against a professional deal maker. Daddy knew I was a practical kid; he knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the subsidy. As Daddy might have put it, “It’s a win-win deal.”

  I went back to Berkeley and began preparing to wrap up my three terms as a student of architecture. I also took out the transfer papers for my shift to UCLA. And I readied myself to become an actor.

  TO BE AN ACTOR

  9

  Wild Luck

  WILD CHOICES SOMETIMES PRODUCE IMPROBABLE results. If my determination to be an actor seemed quite unrealistic that summer of 1957, then what happened even before I began my first term at UCLA was like catching lightning in a bottle. I landed a plum role in the most prestigious live drama on television, Playhouse 90.

  It began when I looked up an agent I had met on the M-G-M studio lot when I was dubbing Rodan the summer before. He was a Japanese American man named Fred Ishimoto. He had given me a card that I secreted away among the mementos of my theatrical dreams. I never thought I would actually be using it. But now I was going to be seriously pursuing an acting career, and I needed an agent. After all, I was now a student of acting in Hollywood.

  Fred greeted me cordially in his Sunset Boulevard office. He revealed to me that he knew my father from his grocery store days, when Fred was a beer salesman. Fred genially told me that he had been impressed with what he saw of my performance on the dubbing stage. But when I asked if he would represent me in “the business,” he said, “George, go to school and get your degree first. If anything should come up in the meantime, I’ll be happy to let you know.”

  He sounded like my father, supportive but not wholly enthusiastic. At least he said he would call if anything right for me should come up. I concluded this was not yet the time for me to be shopping for an agent, so I went back to my old summer job with George Filey and his Venetian blind business.

  But about a month later Fred called.

  “George, something interesting has come up that you might want to check out,” he began. “It’s a Playhouse 90.”

  He might have heard my gasp over the phone. Playhouse 90 was the most critically acclaimed dramatic anthology series on television and my favorite show. I never missed it on Thursday nights.

  “Now don’t get all worked up over it,” he cautioned. “There’ll be a lot of competition for this one, but I thought the interview process might be a useful experience for you to have.”

  This is the man I wanted to represent me? Interviewing merely for the experience? Is that all the confidence in me he could muster? I was a little irritated, but I tried to hide it. He, after all, was the one who was opening this door to Playhouse 90 for me.

  “Tell me the place, and I’ll be there,” I responded. But inside myself, I thought, “I’ll show you how I interview. I’m going to go out there and get that part. I’ll show you.”

  The place was the sprawling, modern new facility at Fairfax and Beverly that CBS had grandly dubbed Television City. Giant, stark white blocks with black panels housed the multilevel studio facilities. Artfully placed high up on a corner of the largest white block was the familiar logo of the CBS eye. The offices were in the glass-walled block at the eastern end of the complex.

  This was where the interviews were held. First I read for the casting director. Fred called a day later with their request for another reading. A callback, he termed it. I was pleased by the slightly obsequious tone he now had in his voice. This time I was to read for the director, Herbert Hirschman—a name I remembered from some of the credits for Playhouse 90.

  “Give him a good reading,” Fred urged. “Even if you don’t get this one, he’ll be casting other projects. It’ll be good to have him know what you can do.”

  Fred still didn’t think I could actually get the part. That just fired my determination even more. I’d show him.

  CBS had delivered a scene from the script for me to look over and prepare. My part was that of a young Japanese soldier returned to a devastated postwar Japan only to discover that his betrothed had fallen in love with an American G.I. When she is killed in an accidental fall from a bridge during
a lovers’ quarrel with the G.I., the embittered Japanese soldier becomes the prime suspect. The test scene was between my character and the defense attorney in a grim jail cell. It was a strong, dramatic scene, the kind I would have loved doing in my acting workshop. But I now was to read this scene before a distinguished director for Playhouse 90—just the thought was overwhelming. I hungered for the part, but my fervor was not unmixed with anxiety.

  I was a bundle of nerves as I was ushered into a compact, sun-flooded conference room to read for Herbert Hirschman. The room was filled with many people, all of whom looked like assistants. None looked like a powerful director of Playhouse 90. Seated at the head of the table was a smiling elfin gentleman, spectacles perched on the tip of his nose and with a salt-and-pepper hairline that began near the back of his scalp. He was in shirtsleeves with his tie loosened. He looked like the jovial right arm to some high-ranking producer. It wasn’t until a collegiate-looking young man referred to him as “Mr. Hirschman” that I realized he was the distinguished director.

  We chatted briefly, and then he announced that the college student assistant would read the defense attorney’s role with me. The young assistant started out in a flat monotone, reciting the words that I had practiced so much at home that they were now as familiar to me as a monologue from Eugene O’Neill or Tennessee Williams. But I resented his emotionless reading. That resentment just increased the tension I already felt. My reading was bitter, ironic, spiteful. As he continued to drone on, an uncontrollable anger began to well up impotently inside me. It made my reading that much more hostile and sullen, I could do nothing about the way this assistant’s colorless reading was stealing from the most important test of my life. Then, quite unexpectedly, I felt hot tears of frustration brim up into my eyes. As I read my final biting lines, the tears overflowed and streamed down my cheeks. There was a long, eerie silence when I finished. Then Mr. Hirschman said softly, “That was very nice, George. Thank you.” I walked out quickly from the room, wiping my face.

  When Fred called a few anxious days later, it was to tell me that I was doing Playhouse 90.

  “Well, young man, it looks like we’re starting out from the top. I’m really proud of you, George,” he crowed. Fred sounded as though he’d known I would get the part all along. I felt like reminding him of the gossamer-thin confidence he evidenced in me before, but I thought the better part of valor was in biting my tongue.

  This episode, he told me, was titled Made in Japan, with a script by Joseph Stefano starring Dean Stockwell, E. G. Marshall, Harry Guardino, Robert Vaughn, Dick York, and lovely newcomer Nobu McCarthy, whom Fred also represented. It was an impressive cast and very heady to think I would be part of it.

  Playhouse 90 was an hour and a half of the best live original drama on television. The scripts were by some of the most talented young dramatists in America, including writers like Rod Serling, Paddy Chayefsky, and Reginald Rose. Exciting young actors such as Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Jack Palance, and Geraldine Page shone brilliantly on the series. And the show possessed the one great essential of drama—the immediacy of danger. It was live television.

  What this meant was that the show was telecast as it was played, not recorded on film or tape. It had the dramatic sense of the moment of live theater without the need to project out to the second balcony. There was no opportunity for retakes, as in films. But, unlike the stage, the camera provided maneuverability to gain the intimacy of extreme close-ups. Live television combined the best and the worst of both film and theater: The enormous potential audience of television could enjoy the excitement of drama as it was happening in the present tense; but there was the ever-present possibility that disaster would be witnessed by millions. To an actor this could mean both great fulfillment and sheer terror. I felt the two extremes with the Playhouse 90 production of Made in Japan.

  The great luxury of live television was the two weeks of rehearsals that was not possible with films. And for a young aspiring actor, those two weeks with a distinguished cast that gathered every day in the spacious new facility at CBS Television City was the best internship that I could have been granted.

  Dean Stockwell was a child film star who had matured into a fine actor on the Broadway stage. E. G. Marshall was a highly respected veteran of stage, screen, and live television. Nobu McCarthy, in contrast, was a model from Japan whose only other credit was a Jerry Lewis comedy. She spoke English with charming hesitancy, but I noted her drive and abundant discipline. Robert Vaughn was a self-confident and charismatic personality, and Dick York was a relaxed and rather reserved working film actor.

  Harry Guardino was cast as the passionate defense attorney with whom all my scenes were played. He was, I had been told, what actors here in Hollywood referred to as a “New York actor.” What that term suggested was a breed of actors who were serious, intense, and more committed to the theater than to films.

  “Nah, don’t believe it,” he told me during a rehearsal break. “This town likes to categorize people. I’ll do a good film any day. I pass on a lot of bad theater all the time. George, it’s all in the quality of the material.”

  He shattered one part of the myth and reinforced others. I saw that Harry was indeed an actor who was serious and intense about his art. During the course of the rehearsals, I also noticed something else about Harry. He was having difficulty retaining the words to a lengthy, rather convoluted courtroom speech at the climax of the drama. His problem didn’t seem to be with any particular part of the speech. Sometimes he would get past the part he had forgotten in the last run-through, only to “go up,” or have his memory fail him, on another. Or he would get the whole speech out without a lapse, but the next time around go up again on a completely new portion of the speech. It was quite unpredictable. As we neared the air date, the concern we had for Harry grew into anxiety for the show. I overheard E. G. Marshall whispering an old actor’s tip to Harry.

  “Why don’t you carry the script pages of that scene around with you like some prop notes on a clipboard you could refer to?” he suggested.

  Herbie, as everyone called our director, also implied to Harry that he was not averse to hiding slips of clippings from the script around the set as he orated around the courtroom to help him out.

  To all these suggestions, Harry’s reply was, “Nah, don’t worry. Those tricks only take away from my concentration. If I go up, I know what I can do.” But he never let on what he had in mind.

  We moved from the rehearsal hall to the actual sets two days before the air date. All of the many different locales were constructed on one enormous soundstage. It was awesome. There was a whole Japanese village street running the length of the stage. There was the high, gracefully curved bridge from which Nobu was to fall during the quarrel with Dean. Tucked into a corner of the huge stage was the smallest of the many sets, my jail cell. And there was the pivotal set for the climax of the drama, where Harry was to make his impassioned, and now to us, quite suspenseful, summation speech—the military courtroom.

  When the extras were added at dress rehearsal, the sets came to life. The street teemed with bicyclers, noodle hawkers, merchants, shoppers. The courtroom was crowded with onlookers, adjutants, and sober-faced judges. The movement of the crowd of extras on and off the floor, swiftly and silently as the live action played, had to be orchestrated. The drama was not just before the camera but in the noiseless, fast-moving activity behind as well. The tension was becoming electric, as were my opening jitters.

  I watched the dress run-through of Harry’s courtroom oration on my dressing room monitor. The old pro sailed through this final rehearsal without “going up.” It was a great sign, I thought.

  But out in the corridors of the dressing rooms, E. G. told me that in the theater a good dress rehearsal foreboded the very opposite: a bad dress rehearsal was a good omen, and a good dress rehearsal was an ominous portent. I thought it was a crazy superstition and chose to ignore it. Harry did fine, I’ll do fine, the show will be wo
nderful, I kept repeating like a mantra in my mind. Then, I remembered the proverbial whistling through the cemetery at night, and with a shiver, my jitters returned. I realized, then, that in this precariously uncertain world of show business, so fraught with the unpredictable, superstitions become a cozy security blanket, an irrational but calming solace to jittery nerves. Anything to hang on to. Especially on live television.

  Airtime was announced with a flashing red light. Millions of viewers throughout America were now listening to the lush overture as the title, Playhouse 90, came on the screen. The same music I had listened to every week on my living room television set I now heard as I sat watching a tiny monitor screen in my brightly lit dressing room. I watched as I waited to be called to the huge soundstage floor next door. This was going to be my professional acting debut. It was indescribably thrilling.

  The drama moved from one scene to the next with breathtaking swiftness. Before I knew it, the assistant stage manager was knocking on my door with the call for my first scene. I went out onto the stage floor. Everyone—cameramen, technicians, actors—moved briskly to a silent choreography. Any mishap would be sent immediately into millions of homes throughout America. I walked quickly to my cell set and waited.

  Soon two dark cameras converged on me like voracious mechanical beasts. A beat after the Cyclops eye atop one of the cameras lit up bright red, Harry walked in. He was wary, probing, calculating. I felt insulted by his suspicion—defiled. There was so much I felt inside me. The dishonor of defeat in war and in love. The injustice of the victorious Americans. The despair in the helplessness of my situation. None of which I would discuss with this prying foreign official. Cold bile welled up inside me. This lawyer’s trickle of compassion for me seemed degrading and patronizing. My rising anger boiled over in hot, stinging tears. They dropped down my cheeks bitterly. I spat out my defiance. Then the scene was over. The cameras quickly turned away to the next set and rolled on.