Silents are Golden: Silent Superstars – The Early Heartthrob Sessue Hayakawa
The typical handsome leading man of silent films was a strong, dependable, clean-cut type, with names like Harold Lockwood or Earle Williams. Rudolph Valentino’s popularity in the ‘20s also initiated a craze for “exotic” Latin lovers. But modern movie fans might be surprised to learn that there was another beloved matinee idol, earlier than Valentino, who also seemed exciting and “exotic” to white audiences: the Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa, a star of the 1910s.
Hayakawa’s early life was tinged by drama. He was born Kintaro Hayakawa on June 10, 1886 in the city of Minamiboso in Japan. He came from a wealthy family, his father being the provincial governor and his mother having aristocratic roots. At age eighteen Hayakawa attempted to join the Japanese navel academy in Etajima, planning on becoming an officer as his parents desired. When he was rejected due to problems with his hearing (he had ruptured an eardrum while diving), he attempted to commit ritual suicide by stabbing himself in the abdomen. Fortunately he was discovered and managed to make a recovery.
He later recalled that his family then sent him to the University of Chicago to study political economics, with the new goal of becoming a banker. But apparently there’s no record of Hayakawa being at the university, and he may have spent his time in the U.S. doing odd jobs instead. At any rate, while spending some time in Los Angeles he ducked into the Japanese Theatre in the Little Tokyo district. Enamored with what he saw, he decided to try to become an actor and took the name “Sessue” (meaning “snowy continent”) as a stage name.
He quickly made an impression on his fellow actors, including actress Tsuru Aoki, who would later become his wife (they would adopt three children). Aoki convinced film producer Thomas Ince to attend a performance of The Typhoon, and Ince decided to turn it into a film starring Hayakawa. The 1914 film was a hit and was followed by The Wrath of the Gods and The Sacrifice (both 1914). Since Hayakawa was clearly a star on the rise, he was signed by Famous Players-Lasky (now known as Paramount).
Hayakawa would prove himself in Cecil B. DeMille’s sensational drama The Cheat (1915), where he played a wealthy ivory merchant. When a married high-society woman comes to him for a loan, hoping to replace a large sum of Red Cross money that she lost in a bad investment, he agrees in return for sexual favors. When she tries to back out of the deal, he brands her on the shoulder–a shockingly lurid scene for the time. It was a critical and box office hit, and established Hayakawa as one of Hollywood’s top stars and an idol to many female filmgoers.
While his charisma and brooding, elegant good looks certainly explain his popularity, some of his appeal was also bolstered by the strong interest in Asia at the time. People were drawn to the exoticism of the “Far East,” and it had a strong influence on fashion and interior decorating trends. Still, concerns about miscegenation often limited Hayakawa to villainous roles, keeping him from being a regular romantic lead or hero. But even this didn’t exactly hurt his popularity, since these roles made his characters seem like forbidden fruit to countless enraptured women.
Soon getting tired of typecasting, in 1918 Hayakawa decided to establish his own studio, Haworth Pictures Corporation. It was the first Asian-owned studio in Hollywood, and in the next three years it would make twenty films, lauded for their subtle Zen-inspired acting. While most of them are lost today, the most famous one that survives is The Dragon Painter (1919). Co-starring Hayakawa’s wife Tsuru, it was highly praised for its authenticity and poetic story.
By the late 1910s Hayakawa was commanding $3,500 a week and was happy to spend his money almost as fast as it came in. He drove a gold-plated Rolls Royce and hosted large parties in his custom-built mansion–said to have been the wildest parties in Hollywoodland. But by 1922 his career was starting to slump, helped along by anti-Asian sentiment in the aftermath of WWI. Other issues included suffering a burst appendix during the shoot of The Swamp (1921), and prosaic troubles involving insurance.
Deciding to leave Hollywood, he returned to Japan for a time and then started making films in France and Britain. Not one to waste his time, he would also have a starring role on Broadway, write a novel called The Bandit Prince, adapt The Bandit Prince into a play, and produce a Japanese language stage version of The Three Musketeers, and open a Zen temple in New York City.
By the early ‘30s he had also found time to return to Hollywood, making his talkie debut in Daughter of the Dragon (1931) starring Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong. Unfortunately his heavy accent wasn’t well received, and he returned to making films in Japan and France. He would even star in a remake of The Cheat in 1937, also called The Cheat.
Following WWII, Hayakawa was contacted by Humphrey Bogart’s production company for a role in the film Tokyo Joe (1949). This began the last leg of his acting career, where he often played “honorable villain” types of roles. The highlight was his famous role as Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe nomination. Following this, he began to wind down his acting career, appearing in films and on television only occasionally. He would also lose his wife Tsuru to peritonitis in 1961. His last film was the stop-motion The Daydreamer (1966).
A practicing Zen Buddhist, Hayakawa decided to devote himself to becoming a Zen priest. He would also give acting lessons and write his autobiography Zen Showed Me the Way…To Peace, Happiness and Tranquility. He passed away in 1973 from a cerebral blood clot, leaving behind a proud legacy of being cinema’s first international Asian film star.
…
–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub
You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
,
