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January 2008
Nederlands Filmmuseum discovers unique films starring the silent Hollywood star Sessue Hayakawa
The Man Beneath
Inspired by the renewed academic interest in the Japanese-Hollywood actor Sessue Hayakawa’s career, research within the archive of the Nederlands Filmmuseum has revealed the only extant prints in the world of The Man Beneath (1919), His Birthright (1918) and The Courageous Coward (1919) - all three of them with Hayakawa in the leading role, and produced by his own company Haworth Pictures.
Sessue Hayakawa (1889-1973) is better remembered today for his appearance as the Japanese Colonel in David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Less widely known is the fact that he was the first non-white Hollywood star-cum-producer in the first decades of the previous century. Unfortunately, many of his silent films are presumed lost.
Hayakawa’s best known screen appearance is undoubtedly in David Lean’s war film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), where he appears as the cold-blooded Colonel Saito. That the same Hayakawa had already had an exceptionally successful career in the early days of Hollywood, had largely been forgotten, already at the time of his Oscar nomination for best supporting actor in 1957. However, as early as 1915, Hayakawa had already established himself as a Hollywood super star earning $5.000 a week; the first non-caucasian matinee idol to conquer the screens (before other exotic figures such as Rudolph Valentino or Ramon Novarro) and making his female admirers swoon with his good looks and intense gaze. His overnight success was partly due to the director Cecil B. DeMille, who cast Hayakawa - at the insistence of Hayakawa’s wife, the actress Tsuru Aoki - as the cruel and exotic lover in the extraordinarily popular silent movie The Cheat (1915).
Following the publication of Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom by film scholar Daisuke Miyao (Durham: Duke University Press) in 2007, the history of Hayakawa, as ‘the first Asian Hollywood star’ was revived in the public memory. Miyao also researched the holdings of the Nederlands Filmmuseum and in his book refers extensively to His Birthright (1918), preserved by the Nederlands Filmmuseum. In 2007 the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA) organised a Hayakawa retrospective and drew the audience’s attention to the remarkable position of this Japanese actor and film producer in Hollywood and his willingness to negotiate between cultures and to disseminate American values.
Hayakawa at the Nederlands Filmmuseum
Anticipating this revival, the Nederlands Filmmuseum decided to re-assess its Hayakawa related holdings in the past years. This comprehensive research revealed that the holdings of three films, namely The Man Beneath (1919), His Birthright (1918) and The Courageous Coward (1919) represented the only remaining footage of these films in the world.
All three titles, produced by Hayakawa himself, reflect the constant negotiation between different cultures and identities in their plot, starring Hayakawa as the lead character in the centre of the action.
The nitrate prints, acquired through private donations in the eighties and nineties, are Dutch theatrical release copies, carrying Dutch intertitles. Despite their overall good condition, and well-preserved tinted colours, the prints are missing footage. Only The Man Beneath can be considered to be complete. While the first and fourth reels of His Birthright are missing, nothing but the last reel of The Courageous Coward (co-starring Tsuru Aoki) survives.
Considering their historical importance, the Filmmuseum has decided to make new prints of all the three titles, adding explanatory intertitles, in order to be able to present the films to new audiences.
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His Birthright
About Sessue Hayakawa
In 1918, joining forces with the director William Worthington, Hayakawa founded his own production company; Haworth Pictures, where he produced about twenty films which broke through the type-casting of Asian characters as the ‘eternal villains‘. It is also remarkable that Hayakawa played the romantic hero opposite white women, as in the Hollywood of those days interracial relationships were very controversial.
In 1923 Hayakawa left Hollywood and worked in Britain and France. In 1931, back in Hollywood, he made his talkie debut with Daughter of the Dragon (director: Lloyd Corrigan) but his strong accent proved a serious handicap.
His appearances in later American productions such as Tokyo Joe (1949, Stuart Heisler), Three Came Home (1950, Jean Negulesco) and House of Bamboo (1955, Sam Fuller) assured him again of a respectable career in Hollywood, culminating in his Oscar nomination (best supporting role) for David Lean’s Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
Hayakawa continued to act to a very late age; appearing in the adventure film Swiss Family Robinson (1960, Ken Annakin) and the war film Hell to Eternity (1960, Phil Karlson). In 1966 he returned to Japan, where he died in Tokyo in 1973. Hayakawa apeared in around a hundred films and wrote many scripts, a novel (The Bandit Prince, 1926), a stage play (The Life of the Buddha, 1949) and his memoirs Zen Showed Me the Way (1960).
About the Nederlands Filmmuseum
Nederlands Filmmuseum is the national film archive of the Netherlands with a commitment to preserve and present the cinematic culture of the country. The Filmmuseum is well-known worldwide for the extraordinary range of its film collection, varying from unique silent films to recent experimental cinema. Internationally acclaimed for its state-of-the-art preservations and restorations, the Filmmuseum is the recipient of various prizes, the most recent one being the Prix Henri Langlois, awarded by 'Rencontres Internationales du Cinéma de Patrimoine et de Films Restaurés 2008' in France. In 2004 the Nederlands Filmmuseum was featured in numerous publications and websites, following its spectacular discovery and restoration of Beyond the Rocks (1922), starring Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson. For more information please see: http://www.filmmuseum.nl/english
* The American distribution company Milestone Films is releasing the restored versions of Hayakawa’s The Dragon Painter (1919) and The Wrath of the Gods (1914) on DVD in March 2008. For more information and an electronic press-kit with detailed information, please see:
www.milestonefilms.com
* A tribute to Hayakawa will shortly take place at the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive in California, presented by Daisuke Miyao on February 9th and 10th, 2008.
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/readings_hayakawa
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More information
For further information about the Hayakawa films, and/or to book the prints please contact:
Mrs. Elif Rongen-Kaynakci, at the Nederlands Filmmuseum
tel. +31-204622010 e-mail: erongen@filmmuseum.nl
For high-resolution film stills please contact perssupport@filmmuseum.nl. Film stilss can also be directly downloaded from the Filmmuseum ‘image bank’ (www.filmmuseum.nl/beeldbank). The online image bank is only intended for the press and for theatres. Please ask for a log-in name and a password at perssupport@filmmuseum.nl.
Synopses and credits
His Birthright
William Worthington (USA 1918)
Silent, Dutch intertitles, 48 minutes, reproduced with original tints.
Young Yukio (Hayakawa) travels to US from Japan, to revenge the American admiral who he holds responsible for his mother’s suicide. Yukio gets involved in the scheme of a gang of spies who order him to steal secret documents from the admiral. Yukio does what is asked of him, but regrets his deeds as it becomes clear that the admiral is his long lost father. Reels 1 and 4 out of 5 are missing.
The Courageous Coward
William Worthington (USA 1919)
Silent, Dutch intertitles, 14 minutes, reproduced with original tints.
The Japanese-American law student Suki Iota (Hayakawa) investigates a murder. He lives with his guardian and is secretly in love with his ward’s niece Rei (Tsuru Aoki). When he discovers that Rei’s American friend Tom Kirby is the murderer, he withdraws from the case in order not to embarrass Rei. Suki is called a coward, but when Tom confesses publicly a rehabilitation follows and Suki is regarded as a valuable member of American society. Only the last reel of The Courageous Coward is known to have survived.
The Man Beneath
William Worthington (USA 1919)
Silent, Dutch intertitles, 66 minutes reproduced with original tints.
The Indian doctor Chindi Ashutor (Hayakawa) falls in love with the Scottish Kate Erskine. Kate’s sister Mary is engaged to Ashutor’s fellow student James Bassett. Kate refuses to marry Ashutor because she fears the social consequences of a mixed marriage. In the meantime Bassett falls under the spell of a religious sect. Ashutor intervenes but cannot prevent a death. The honoured scientist returns to India without any illusions about the British class dominated society. The Man Beneath has survived almost completely.
Other Hayakawa titles in the Nederlands Filmmuseum collection:
The Dragon Painter (USA 1919; director William Worthington)
Atarashiki Tsuchi (JAP/GER 1937; director Arnold Fanck/Mansaku Itami)
Tempête sur l'Asie (FR 1938; director Richard Oswald)
Higegi no shogun yamashita yasubumi (JAP 1953; director Kiyoshi Saeki)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (GB/USA1957; director David Lean)
The Geisha Boy (USA 1958; director Frank Tashlin)
Green Mansions (USA 1959; director Mel Ferrer)