Breakfast at Tiffany's

Even before you see anything at the beginning of this classic 1961 film, you start to hear the Academy Award winning music from the song, Moon River, written by Henry Mancini.  Then a yellow cab comes into view driving north on an empty Fifth Avenue (it became a one way street going south in 1966) in New York City early one morning.  After driving past the Bonwit Teller Building, it pulls up in front of 727 Fifth Avenue, which would become, in 1983, the next door neighbor of Trump Tower, the current home of the President of the United States (when not at the White House).  Then and now this is the address of Tiffany & Co., the world famous luxury jewelry store.

Stepping out of the cab is the beautiful actress, Audrey Hepburn, wearing a black, floor-length, sleeveless gown, with matching gloves.  She is also wearing multiple strings of pearls around her neck and has a tiara in her hair.  There are sunglasses covering her eyes and a white scarf draped over her arm.  Audrey walks (in high-heel shoes) over to one of the Tiffany display windows where she opens a small paper bag she is carrying which contains a cup (styrofoam) of coffee and what appears to be danish pastry.  This is her Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Very early in the film, we are unfortunately introduced to a character called Mr. Yunioshi, a Japanese man living in New York, portrayed by the famous actor, Mickey Rooney, who is not Japanese.  He "wore makeup and a prosthetic mouthpiece to change his features to a caricatured approximation of a Japanese person." 

What was especially unfortunate about this portrayal is that Mr. Yunioshi is a bumbling, laughable character.  For a white man to portray a Japanese in this manner is comparable to a white man portraying a shuffling black man while in black face.
  

In 2006, the film's producer, Richard Shepherd, said "If we could just change Mickey Rooney, I'd be thrilled with the movie."  Director Blake Edwards stated, "Looking back, I wish I had never done it...and I would give anything to be able to recast it."  In 2008, Rooney said if he had known his performance would be considered offensive, "I wouldn't have done it."

In 1961, a white actor portraying a Japanese character in a comical, caricatured manner was considered perfectly acceptable.  What was there to complain about?  More than fifty years later, society has changed and complaints arise.

I have included below some other examples regarding the casting of Japanese ethnic roles in films in that era.  The great actor Marlon Brando portrays an Okinawan in the 1956 film, The Teahouse of the August Moon, with the help of make-up.  In the 1961 film version of the musical, Flower Drum Song, which is about the Chinese community in San Francisco, one of the stars, Miyoshi Umeki, was Japanese, not Chinese.  On the other hand, in the 1957 film, The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Sessue Hayakawa, a Japanese actor, portrays a Japanese character.   

As you can see from my limited analysis above, Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s was not always particular about correctly casting Asian actors to be Asian characters in films.  (See my blog post of 9/3/2016 - William Holden)  Regarding the future, I'm optimistic we'll never see anything like Mr. Yunioshi again, thank goodness.