- An icon of American culture I somehow overlooked until today
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james_nicoll- February 20th, 12:51
Sessue Hayakawa (早川 雪洲 Hayakawa Sesshū?, June 10, 1889 – November 23, 1973) was a Japanese and American Issei actor who starred in American, Japanese, French, German, and British films. [...] Hayakawa was active at the outset of the American film industry. He was the first and remains one of the few Asian actors to find stardom in the United States and Europe. He is the first Asian American as well as the first Japanese American movie star and the first Asian American Leading Man. His "broodingly handsome"[...] good looks and typecasting as a sinister villain with sexual dominance made him a heartthrob among American women, and the first male sex symbol of Hollywood, several years in advance of Valentino.
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"[T]hey do seem to be recording almost anything these days--have you heard Sessue Hayakawa’s record of 'Remember Pearl Harbor'?" Tom Lerher, 1960.
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Edited at 2013-02-20 06:55 pm (UTC)
2013-02-21 10:51 am (UTC)
By the way, seriously, I don't expect anyone to read my journal.
Hayakawa was a "heartthrob" in a very racist way; the exotic, sinister Asian man made popular by playing on racist rape fantasies. Wikipedia overstates things when they say he was the first male sex symbol in Hollywood. One of the sources for that claim is a fictional novel by Darwin Porter that is basically slashfiction, so it isn't really a source.
Male actors of the day tended to be either support for the female sex symbols (Theda Bara et al.) or comedians. Hayakawa's films were mostly pulpy little things of under an hour where he wasn't so much the sexy lead as the second/supporting male lead and villain. The dramas where he wasn't a villain were productions co-starring his wife, but they reportedly weren't as popular.
Now, he absolutely did pave the way for male sex symbols like Valentino and Fairbanks, which became popular right about the time his own brief popularity waned. He was, like many "ethnic" stars in Hollywood, a fad.
I appreciate people who want to turn Hayakawa's early U.S. career into something positive, but the way he was treated was mostly really, really horrifying.
2013-02-21 11:01 am (UTC)