August, 2002, LOS ANGELES - The pleasant days of summer combined with people's urge to travel seem to be the convivial mix that brings far flung friends and relatives together. A second cousin of mine from Japan, Shunichi Takei, whom I hadn't seen in over a decade, dropped in. He works for Hewlett-Packard Japan and had crossed the Pacific for a meeting at its Silicon Valley headquarters in California. A Fourth of July family get-together at the home of my Orange County relatives, James and Midori Uyeda, followed this.
Flying in from New York were Stan Honda and his wife, Ann Levin, whom I had visited in Manhattan earlier this year. He is the photojournalist who took some of the shots of the World Trade Center horrors that have now become iconic. One of his photos, of a dust-coated and dazed businessman, still carrying his briefcase, became the cover of Fortune Magazine. Another, of a stunned African American woman also completely covered in dust, appeared in newspapers all over the world. The Japanese American National Museum is planning an exhibit of Stan's works in September 2003.
The museum was the attraction for many visitors. A long-time friend, Sarla Joy of Dayton, Ohio, where I had performed in a concert production of Stephen Sondheim's "Pacific Overtures" in June, came to Los Angeles for her first visit to the Japanese American National Museum. She went back to Dayton, not only impressed with the exhibits, but also enthusiastic about lobbying the Dayton Art Institute to invite one of our traveling exhibits there. Another visitor to the museum I was delighted to welcome was Mr. T. Kubota, a representative of the influential Association of Japan Corporations, known in Japan as the Keidanren. He joined us for the festivities surrounding the opening of our newest exhibit, "Passports to Friendship," about the exchange of dolls between the children of Japan and the United States.
Interspersed through the month were travels of my own. One was to San Francisco for a speaking engagement and another to Minneapolis for a Star Trek convention.
There was a comedy review titled "Triple Espresso" playing at a nearby theater. I'm an addict - not of coffee but of theater. "Triple Espresso" - what hilarious, high-caffeine nonsense! I laughed 'til it hurt. There, I met its producer, Dennis Babcock, who had also produced Leonard Nimoy's play "Vincent" that toured the country. Dennis told me that he is a member of the Charles Dickens' Club of London and that he was going to be there in December. What serendipity! I, too, am planning to be in London in December, I told him. I now seem to have inveigled myself an invitation to join Dennis as his guest at their December dinner gathering to meet the club's honorary chairman, Cedric Dickens, the great grandson of the great Dickens himself, Charles. I thought surprising happy events like this happened only in Dickens novels.
For my summer Hollywood Bowl concert night, I invited local friends that I don't see often enough to share a box with me. My guests were Lynn Arthurs, former chair of East West Players, Tim Dang, artistic director of East West Players, Brian Arthurs, and Darrell Cummings. It was a wonderful summer evening with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the guest flutist, the incomparable James Galway.
Back on a plane again to gather with friends at another Star Trek convention, this time in Las Vegas. A unique enhancement of this convention was a tribute to Leonard Nimoy - Creation Entertainment's Lifetime Achievement Award.
There are many accolades given to people who have been successful in their careers. But this one to Leonard was so fitting on so many levels. Certainly, Leonard has been eminently successful as an actor and a director. He has been the recipient of standing ovations, rave reviews, and career honors galore. Leonard and I share a Grammy nomination in the "Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Recording" category for our work together on a Star Trek audiocassette. He has published his poems and other writings. But a little-known aspect of Leonard that is highly deserving of recognition is his civic spirit and quiet generosity. He and his wife, Susan, have been great philanthropists to many institutions that have enriched the Los Angeles community. The Japanese American National Museum has been a beneficiary of their generosity, as has the Museum of Contemporary Art of Los Angeles. The historic Griffith Park Observatory, now undergoing enormous renovation work high up in the Hollywood Hills, has been a major recipient of the Nimoys' vision and bigheartedness. The new theater that will be a part of the expanded observatory is to be named very appropriately the Leonard Nimoy Theater. This observatory shall truly "live long and prosper."
While in Las Vegas, I got together with old friend Pat Morita and his delightfully witty wife, Evi.
The restaurant was abuzz with excitement - Mr. Miyagi of the Karate Kid having dinner with Captain Sulu of Star Trek! In the middle of the Nevada desert, fine wine flowed, bottle after bottle. We were the last ones to leave the restaurant. The next morning, I missed my regular sunrise jog.
I returned to Los Angeles just in time to greet my new friend from my "Pacific Overtures" run in Dayton, Ohio, actress Kay Bosse. She played my sweetly conniving murderer mother who poisoned me with her concoction of chrysanthemum tea. I enjoyed my stay in her city, Dayton, so I wanted to reciprocate by showing her how vibrant my hometown, Los Angeles, can be. Of course, the first stop was the Japanese American National Museum. Then, to the birthplace of my city, El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles Sobre el Rio Porciuncula. This historic state park includes the charming Mexican shopping street, Olvera Street. The thick walls of the Avila Adobe, the oldest adobe structure in Los Angeles, fascinated Kay. We crossed the street to our great mission style art deco railway station, Union Station, to catch the newest subway system in the nation, our Metro Rail. Along the way to Hollywood, we stopped off at our spectacularly restored Central Library. We stopped for drinks at the trendy rooftop lounge of the newest boutique hotel in downtown Los Angeles, the Standard Hotel. Then, back on the Metro Rail to Hollywood to see the original Star Trek casts' handprints and autographs in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater and to the new home of the Oscars, the Kodak Theater next door. Dinner was at The Grill, a new restaurant in the spectacular Hollywood and Highland complex.
Kay's final evening in Los Angeles was a very Hollywood event. The American Cinematheque was celebrating the 20th anniversary of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" with a screening of the film followed by a panel discussion with its producer, Harve Bennett, director Nick Meyer and two actors, Walter Koenig and me. The historic Grauman's Egyptian Theater, the new home of the American Cinematheque, was filled to capacity. They had to schedule a second screening to accommodate the demand. After the screening, Kay was caught in the crush of Star Trek autograph seekers. She was bumped and shoved ruthlessly as the determined fans tried to get to me. But I suspect she was thrilled by every uncomfortable second of it. As I write this, she is now winging her way back to Dayton. I think she is already planning her next visit to Los Angeles.
August, 2004, LOS ANGELES - I have been privileged in my life to work with many groundbreakers, real pioneers in television, who have become legends. This month, I participated in three major conventions that celebrated three of these noteworthy individuals.
The first of these was a rarely produced convention built around the classic television series created by Rod Serling, "The Twilight Zone." This event was, for me, a tribute to the genius of a master storyteller and dramatist.
Serling was a writer whose work I first saw on the distinguished live television series "Playhouse 90" when I was a teenager. His dialogue was tough yet sensitive; real and yet poetic. His characters were strong, determined but flawed people. I was particularly impressed by his drama "Requiem for a Heavyweight" that starred Jack Palance. Serling won three Emmys for his writing among his many other awards. He saw television as more than a theater of personal human dramas but as a powerful medium for addressing issues of the times as well. Like other iconoclasts in television, however, he met resistance from the networks. Frustrated by the battles he had to fight, he came up with a creative solution. He would slip his controversial issues under the network radar, disguised as fantasy or science fiction. He created a new series titled "The Twilight Zone," and thus made television history.
A year before I worked on the "Star Trek" pilot, I was cast in an episode of "The Twilight Zone" titled "The Encounter." It was a red meat acting role in a two-character drama with that fine actor, Neville Brand. Working on that episode was a tremendously fulfilling experience. As a fan of the creator of the show, I got an unexpected treat. That special bonus was the opportunity of meeting the man whom I had so admired as a youngster, Rod Serling. As the host of the series, he welcomed the audience at the opening and then the close of each episode in his deep, sonorous voice. He filmed these pieces in batches of about half a dozen, all in a few hours. Thus, actors working on the series did not necessarily get to meet Serling. So, it was a special thrill for me to watch him film his intros and closes, then to chat with him when he was finished. His voice was as resonant in life as in film and he was as warm and gracious as I had imagined him to be. All these memories from forty years ago came flooding back to me at "The Twilight Zone" convention.
What a trip down the proverbial "memory lane" the convention was. So many of the actors who had worked on the series were there. Shelley Berman, Theodore Bikel, Terry Becker, with whom I had worked on "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea," H.M. Wynant, who had also impressed me on so many "Playhouse 90" dramas, Lloyd Bochner, who I liked on the series "Hong Kong," Paul Comi, who played my cohort navigator on a first season episode of "Star Trek," France Nuyen, who played the Elaan of Troyus on an episode of "Star Trek" and so many others, were all there. The convention was one that brought back so many fond memories - and the most prominent presence there was the spirit of that venturesome and imaginative television pioneer, Rod Serling.
Then, I flew to Toronto, Canada, for a gigantic convention that combined four genres, sci-fi, anime, comics, and horror movies. It attracted over 25,000 fans. Any convention that might have any part of it dedicated to science fiction, by definition, would be paying tribute to Gene Roddenberry, the creator of "Star Trek" and another visionary iconoclast of television. His contribution to television legend would be well represented. Patrick Stewart and I were the "Star Trek" guests. On arrival in Toronto, I was alarmed to learn that Patrick could not make it due to an angioplasty procedure that had to be performed on him. I was assured that he was making good, steady recovery. In his place, Michael Dorn and Levar Burton of "The Next Generation" stepped in to fill the breach. The convention was an enormous success. The organizers told me this was the biggest gathering of its kind in Canada and I certainly believed them. It was huge.
This popular convention had, for me, however, a different complication. I was contracted to do this August convention in Toronto many months before and I was also to be doing a very special convention - my dear friend, Jimmy Doohan's final public appearance - in June back in Hollywood. But when it was learned that Jimmy would, at long last, be receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in August, the date of his convention was suddenly changed to the very same weekend that I was scheduled to do this Toronto convention. I had a contract and now a dilemma. I couldn't be in two places in two countries on the same weekend. Thanks to my business manager's good negotiating skills, I was released from the last day of the Toronto convention so that I could fly back to Hollywood to do the "Beam me up Scotty... One Last Time" convention. I flew in the dark of early Sunday morning on the "red eye" flight back to Los Angeles for the final day of Jimmy's last convention. It was a rough journey but it was for a beloved friend.
This convention was the most personal, the most heartfelt, and more than a little bitter sweet. Jimmy had been diagnosed with early Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other diseases. I had lost my mother to Alzheimer's just two years before. I know from experience what challenges lie ahead.
But Jimmy was in fine spirits at the convention. He was rolled out to me in his wheel chair. He looked wonderful. His eyes sparkled with joy and his smile was radiant. When I bent over to him and said, "It's great to see you Jimmy," he repeated in a whispery voice, "It's great to see you, George." His hand had lost his familiar firm grip but he held on to mine and wouldn't let go. I love this man, this old pal, this guy I used to call my favorite drinking buddy. I introduced him to sushi way back when and he had become an enthusiastic sushi connoisseur.
We had shared so much of our lives together - working on "Star Trek," doing conventions together throughout the world, even going into business together selling cosmetics. And, he is a first rate professional. When it came time to pose for photos with the cast, he was there smiling throughout. I suspected he was tired, but he has the resilience of a "black Irishman." Yes, he is Irish - although he has drunk enough Scotch to be able to claim a lot of Scotch in him. All the activity and excitement must have been exhausting for him, but he sparkled the whole time.
The unveiling of the James Doohan star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was two days later on a Tuesday. So many of Jimmy's family, friends, colleagues, and fans were gathered on the sidewalk in front of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum. Jimmy's wife, Wende, stood beside him carrying their little four-year-old, Sara, and his children and his many grandchildren were scattered throughout the crowd.
From the cast, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, Grace Lee Whitney, and I with guest stars Barbra Luna and France Nuyen were there to celebrate this happy day and tribute to Jimmy's career achievement. The bank of photographers and news cameramen punctuated the occasion with calls of "look this way," "now this way please," and "one more this way." The Mayor of Hollywood, Johnny Grant, began the ceremony with his usual flourish. In my congratulatory talk, I said, "This is a galactic day in this town filled with a galaxy of stars. We've gathered from throughout this planet to congratulate you Jimmy, and say to you, we love you. We thank you for your luminous talent. We thank you for the gift of an unforgettable character, that ingenious and beloved engineer who could fix anything. We thank you for who you are and we love you." Jimmy beamed as he clutched the small replica of his star and waved to the gathered fans and press. Jimmy was truly transported. This will be a day I will cherish in my memory.
October, 2002, LOS ANGELES - September was a month rich with resonance from the past. The shock and terror of a year ago still haunts us with silent anxiety. The media, though, was not so quiet. The air was filled with reminders of the horrors of September 11, 2001. There were for me, however, other reminders of other events from history that brought a larger context.
The month began for me with a visit to Sacramento, California. The trip took me back to another kind of horror that occurred almost sixty years ago. I went to my state capital for a reunion of the people interned during World War II in the American internment camp for Japanese Americans in northern California called Tule Lake. That was one of the two camps in which my family and I were incarcerated simply because of our Japanese ancestry. I was the keynote speaker at the reunion banquet. I spoke of my childhood memories of my years of confinement at Tule Lake. I also spoke of the power of our American democracy to learn from and heal the wounds of its past errors. Where else is there a government where the victims of the violation of our civil liberties can initiate a process for redress, with the effort led by Japanese American legislators in the U.S. Congress who themselves had been incarcerated? Where else is there a nation with its Constitutional principals set so shiningly high that its history has been a constant work-in-process? To the elderly people there at that banquet with memories of internment and to the younger people there with searching, inquiring minds about that history, I made the point that ours is a participatory democracy that calls for and is crucially dependent on the involvement of good, principled citizens.
My next trip was to Hawaii. This one took me a few more months further back into history. It was here in Oahu that the attack that precipitated the war occurred at Pearl Harbor. That attack also ignited the hysteria that put Japanese Americans into those internment camps. I had the honor of serving as co-master of ceremonies, together with the first Miss Universe from Hawaii, Angela Baraquio, of a concert called the Aloha Peace Concert. The program was dedicated to world peace sponsored by the International Committee of Artists for Peace. The featured performers were the great jazz artists, pianist Herbie Hancock and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. The show was a huge success and played to a sold-out house.
The irony, however, of a peace concert in the city where an historic war began was compelling. Herbie, Wayne, and I, together with members of the International Committee of Artists for Peace, made a pilgrimage to the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. The Hawaiian afternoon was bright and sunny but the atmosphere was solemn as a special U.S. Navy barge took us out to the Arizona Memorial where 1,177 sailors are entombed in the sunken ruins of the battleship, USS Arizona. Floral wreaths had been prepared for us to present to those who perished in the devastating surprise attack. My wreath was on behalf of the Japanese American National Museum. I approached the marble wall etched with the names of those sailors whose bodies lie in the waters just below us. It was these men -- most of them mere boys -- who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we could be there advocating for peace. It was a deeply moving experience.
My final trip of the month was to Washington, DC and the autumn Board of Trustees meeting of the Japanese American National Museum. We had recently become an affiliate of the Smithsonian family of museums, so we scheduled this meeting in a conference hall at the National Museum of American History on the great mall. This trip was also an opportunity for me to connect with more current history.
The Memorial to Japanese American Patriotism during World War II had recently been completed near the Capitol building. The Memorial is made up of a long granite wall with the names of the 10 internment camps and the number of people incarcerated in each. Further down the wall are the names of all the Japanese American soldiers who died fighting for this country in World War II. In the center of the plaza is a sculpture of two cranes caught up in a tangle of barbed wire struggling to reach for the sky. The names of the two camps where I, together with my family, was incarcerated, Rohwer in Arkansas and Tule Lake in California, happened to be placed right next to each other. The irony and the power of this newest of monuments in our national capital is deeply personal to me as well as gravely important to our nation.
At the conclusion of our board meeting, our Museum hosted a symposium addressing the aftermath of September 11th. The participants were Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, who happens also to be a trustee of our Museum, and photojournalist Stan Honda, who captured some of the iconic images of the horrors at the World Trade Center on that devastating day. I served as the moderator. Intrinsic to any discussion of September 11th by Japanese Americans is dialogue weighing civil liberty with national security. The generational perspectives brought to the discussion by Secretary Mineta, who had himself been incarcerated during the World War II and Honda, who had not yet been born at the time, added another dimension to the discussion. Nevertheless, there was agreement that our government made a severe Constitutional error then and that Japanese Americans have a singular responsibility to do all that we can to prevent that from being repeated with another group of people just because they happen to "look like the enemy."
The travels of September took me on a time journey from the immediate history of a year ago to those of more than six decades past, then full circle round back to a discussion on the responsibilities we bear as Americans today. We must not forget the lessons from our history. It was a full and thought-provoking month of travels.
September, 2002, LOS ANGELES - Movies are historic documents. They chronicle the times in which they were filmed. Oscar-winning movies in particular, beyond their acknowledged cinema artistry and box office popularity, can illuminate the temper of the country at a point in time. They capture the styles, the social values, and a sense of the political climate of the year in which they won the Academy Award.
This year is the 75th anniversary of the Oscars. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been celebrating this Diamond Anniversary by screening all of the Academy Award winning Best Pictures in sequence most Monday nights at its Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. This past month, the Oscar winners from the 1940s have been screened. These award-winning films gave me a good sense of the spirit of this country during those turbulent times.
The 1940 winner was director Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca," starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson. The country was just emerging from the Great Depression and hungering for escape. The people wanted a break from the lingering gloom. Their romantic fantasy was the notion of happiness prevailing over adversity, come what may. Joan Fontaine played a beautiful but poor young housekeeper in a great manorial estate owned by Laurence Olivier, whose wife had recently died. She falls in love with the dashing young owner in spite of the relentless intrusions of a stern and mysterious head housekeeper played by Judith Anderson.
The film would be seen today as a piece of high-class soap opera. But it well captured the escapist appetite of a nation just shaking off the dreary dust of economic hard times. "Rebecca" is an entertaining, but transparently corny gauge of the period. This movie won for Best Picture over a much more substantial film that depicted the true hardships of the period with powerful realism, "The Grapes of Wrath." If I were voting then, this would have been my pick. The Best Direction award, aptly, went to the director of "The Grapes of Wrath," the great master, John Ford.
An added bit of fun with "Rebecca," on the other hand, was watching a young Judith Anderson as the sinister head housekeeper. Her career-capping movie was "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock" in which she portrayed the stern ancient Vulcan priestess. She seemed pretty stern in real life as well when we worked on that film. For her role in "Rebecca" she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
The 14th Best Picture Academy Award winner, "How Green Was My Valley," was released in 1941. The Oscar ceremony honoring it was nearly canceled. The award presentation took place on February 26, 1942 - two months after Pearl Harbor. The governors had been thinking of canceling the show after the surprise attack. But, after much debate, they decided to go ahead with a modified version. The tone was subdued, formal attire was banned, and there were no searchlights fanning the skies outside Los Angeles' Biltmore Hotel, where the ceremony was held.
The winning film still reflected the economic struggles of the nation rather than the now-raging world conflict. "How Green Was My Valley" is about the struggles of a Welsh coal mining family at the turn of the century. Parallel to the trials and tribulations of a tight-knit family gradually breaking up were the economic issues of unionization, labor versus capital, and class divisions. It was still a "fighting through hard times" movie. The film's director, John Ford, won his second Oscar, thus becoming the first director to win two in a row. He had won the previous year for "The Grapes of Wrath."
The Fifteenth Oscar presentation was on March 3, 1943, in the Coconut Grove of the Ambassador Hotel. This time, the Academy Awards ceremony radiated patriotism. Jeannette MacDonald sang the National Anthem. Marine private Tyrone Power and Air Force private Alan Ladd unfurled an industry flag announcing that over 26,000 members of the motion picture business were in uniform. For the first time, the bronze-filled, gold-plated Oscar statuettes were made of plaster due to wartime shortages. And the Best Picture of the year award went to "Mrs. Miniver," a film unabashedly glorifying the courage of an English family under wartime Nazi assault.
The Mrs. Miniver character, played by Greer Garson, personified heroic British spirit and resilience. The downed German pilot spouted Hitler's master race slogans like a robot. The devastation of war was heartbreakingly depicted. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the film "propaganda worth a hundred battleships." I noted an interesting bit of the moral code of the times in the separate beds occupied by the loving wife and husband in their own bedroom. Greer Garson received the Best Actress and Teresa Wright the Best Supporting Actress Oscars. The director, William Wyler, won for his work on the film but could not attend the ceremony because he was stationed in England at the time. The world was engulfed in war and so, too, was the Academy Awards ceremony.
The Oscar ceremony of 1945 was moved back onto Hollywood Boulevard to the legendary Grauman's Chinese Theater. The news from Europe was looking hopeful
Within two months, Germany would surrender. The Japanese would follow suit in August. The country was feeling optimistic.
The Best Picture Oscar winner was the bright and sentimental Paramount Studios film, "Going My Way," starring Bing Crosby. It was also the first Best Picture to include the Best Song. Crosby, as the idealistic, easy going, crooner priest Father O'Malley, won as Best Actor and Barry Fitzgerald as the charmingly cantankerous Father Fitzgibbon, won as Best Supporting Actor. America had struggled through more than a decade of economic misery and now seemed victorious in a world conflict. We were feeling good. We felt upbeat about the future. "Going My Way" was a precise picture of the country.
This Academy series on the Best Picture Oscar winners set me to thinking on the films that might reflect the temper of our times.
Today, we could be said to be living in a time prickly with uncertainty. The air is filled with insecurity whether it is in the wild gyrations of the stock market or the fear of some startling terrorism in our land. News of rising unemployment is accompanied by conflicting reports of possible attack on Iraq. The air is tense with a vague anxiety. I saw a film earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival that I think brilliantly captures this societal unease. It is "One Hour Photo" starring Robin Williams in a chillingly fine performance. The film was recently released nationwide. "One Hour Photo" is one of the best pictures I have seen this year and a good candidate for Best Picture consideration.