To the Stars

by George Takei

  I hurried back to my dressing room. A swift traffic flow had to be maintained; actors merely got in the way after the scene was done. On my monitor, the drama rushed from one scene to the next with spine-tingling speed. Before I knew it, I was returning to my cell for my next scene. The cameras alighted on me briefly, stared intently as Harry and I played out our scene, then they raced on to the next. Back in the dressing room, I watched as we rapidly approached the final courtroom scene and Harry’s big speech. I was glued to my monitor with my fingers crossed.

  When the scene came, Harry seemed in perfect command. He began slowly, methodically building his case. He paused, and I held my breath. Harry continued; it was a dramatic pause. His speech began to build in force and passion. Suddenly, of all times, the sound on the monitor went on the blink. Harry’s lips continued moving mutely on the screen. I rushed out to see the action live on the floor. In the corridor, other actors popped their heads out of their dressing room doors whispering, “Something’s happened to the sound on my monitor. You too?”

  I got out on the floor just in time to catch Harry in the last few seconds of using his much-vaunted secret weapon. He was earnestly, passionately pleading his case before the military judges—in pantomime! Not a sound was being made by his fervently moving lips. Then, as suddenly as he had lost his voice, Harry was talking again. His voice, but more crucially, his memory, had returned. Harry had cloaked his memory lapse with the illusion of a technical glitch. But even without sound, Harry’s performance was brilliant. He had voicelessly maintained his concentration, emotional core, and his command of the audience.

  “And . . . we are off the air. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for a wonderful show.” Herbie Hirschman’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker from the control booth high above. Immediately, people came pouring on to the stage floor to envelop Harry in wild, congratulatory embraces. E. G. was already jubilantly slapping him on the back. As I watched this mad, joyous hubbub from a distance, I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “I love this. I love being an actor. I love being a part of all this.”

  I knew, then, I had made the right decision. It was crazy, but it was right.

  * * *

  After Playhouse 90, the rest of summer was something of an anticlimax. Hanging Venetian blinds became the buildup to the next act, beginning my studies as a theater arts student at the great university of my parents’ dreams. Each blind I hung, I imagined was a letter on the marquee of a movie theater announcing the next attraction. They spelled out U.C.L.A.

  Although Berkeley and UCLA are both parts of the great University of California system, the two campuses are as different as north is from south. While the air of Berkeley is usually cool and crisp, UCLA’s is almost always warm and balmy. While the campus style in the mid fifties at Berkeley was the traditional white buck shoes and khaki trousers, the look of the UCLA arts students was shaggy early-beatnik black. And my move down to the southern campus had transformed an unsure architecture student into a resolutely single-minded young actor.

  I was now a veteran of live television and sci-fi dubbing, eager to take on the challenges of academic theater. UCLA meant returning to lecture halls and libraries, seminars, and writing papers. But what was markedly different here were the project assignments. Every student in the Theater Arts Department had to serve on a work crew of a production.

  My first semester, I was assigned to the stage crew of the Royce Hall main stage production of Edmond Rostand’s romantic classic, Cyrano de Bergerac. It was like beginning a serious meal with a big portion of high-caloric confectionery dessert—extravagantly delicious.

  Bill Wintersole, the most dashing student actor on campus, was electrifying as the rapier-witted and heartrendingly heroic Cyrano. The massive sets—whether rococo theater or combat-ravaged battlement or serene nunnery—which I pushed around in the semigloom of the scene shifts, seemed to float magically on air. I watched the clangor and the smoke of the battle scenes from the darkened wings, transfixed.

  Best of all, for the first time I tasted something I had only read about—a “thunderous ovation.” It is amazing how sweetness can sound so loud. It really wasn’t for me; I knew that. I had only shoved the sets around. And yet I felt I, too, had contributed in my way to the total theatrical experience for the audience. The ovation was partially mine. And it was there for the taking. Scrunched in the dark crevice of the nunnery wall, as the smiling actors strode by me in their lace collars and plumed hats to bask in the glory of their curtain calls, I vicariously bathed with them in the gorgeous warmth of the sound. Indeed, it was “thunderous.” Indeed, it was sweet. I was transported—there at the footlights bowing and smiling with the actors. Hidden in the dark behind the nunnery wall, I beamed. It was wonderful.

  But the morning after the applause and the glory and the splendor, we had to be in our seats for the nine o’clock lecture of Theater History 101. Bill Wintersole sans nose, chevaliers sans rapiers, and me, tired and yawning. It was all very egalitarian. This was what Daddy wanted for me. To do theater but to also learn about its history, its place in civilizations, and the ideas that shaped it. I was discovering, though, that I found this aspect of theater engaging also. New doors were being opened up, new concepts that piqued my curiosity. Daddy was right after all. I was grateful for his good guidance.

  In fact, I was beginning to realize how special my father was. His counsel was so unlike the stern dicta of Japanese American fathers of my friends. I couldn’t imagine any of them supporting their sons’ desire to go into a venturesome career field, whatever it might be. My father understood and encouraged the individual aptitudes of his children. The guidance he gave was benevolent, and it was enlightened. He widened rather than restricted our horizons, stimulated rather than demanded. He subsidized my choice instead of throwing me to the wolves.

  Nevertheless, I was grateful that I had a brother and a sister going into more “respectable” fields. A bit of the pressure was lightened. Henry was studying to be a periodontist at the University of Southern California, and my sister, Tita, was going to join me at UCLA to become a schoolteacher. I was the black sheep of the family. I knew it; Daddy knew it. But he wanted me to be the best black sheep out there in the pasture. I felt the weight of that responsibility. But it was a different kind of weight from the one I felt up in Berkeley. This one fed my determination not to let him down.

  I worked hard. Being a theater student at UCLA was fun and engrossing, but I worked hard too. I also recognized that I was lucky. When I started at UCLA, I was the only Asian student in the Theater Arts Department, and I was lucky in the good casting opportunities that I enjoyed. I was also lucky in receiving the esteem of my peers. In 1959, for my portrayal of an American Indian in an original play by James Hatch, Tallest Baby on the River, I was named the Best Supporting Actor of the Year at UCLA. The following year, I won the same recognition for my role as Mr. Shu Fu in the Bertolt Brecht classic, The Good Woman of Setzuan.

  I look back on my UCLA years as a halcyon time of rare opportunities and good challenges blessed by lady luck. But luck is not some whimsical caprice of fortune that flits about touching this one and arbitrarily ignoring another. Luck is something that one can make. Hard work and being prepared to seize opportunities create the chance for luck to grant her gentle encouragement. I’ve found that the harder I worked, the luckier I seemed to get.

  * * *

  That luck, however, didn’t seem to carry over from the theatrical stage to my involvements in the arena of politics. My streak of bad luck in politics started when I volunteered to help in Adlai Stevenson’s 1960 presidential campaign.

  Daddy was a great admirer of Adlai Stevenson, the former governor of Illinois. He had cast his first vote as a newly naturalized American citizen, back in 1956, for Stevenson for President of the United States. Stevenson didn’t win, but the eloquent campaigner was again a candidate in 1960. The Democratic Party’s nominating convention this time was to be held in our hometown, Los
Angeles. It was a fortuitous opportunity to experience the American electoral process firsthand.

  Daddy and I went downtown one Saturday morning to the old Paramount Theater Building across from Pershing Square. This was where the headquarters of the Stevenson for President campaign were located.

  The place was a beehive of activity. Earnest young coordinators were organizing the volunteers into various task forces. Frantic messengers scurried about. Telephones jangled, and typewriters clacked incessantly. The air was intense with a driving sense of purpose. And there was urgency. The Democratic National Convention and the struggle for the presidential nomination was going to begin on July 12.

  Daddy was able to help only until noon, so we were assigned the task of stuffing envelopes with campaign literature. This was essential work in spreading the word on Stevenson’s issue positions and winning supporters, we were told. We pinned on our name tags and joined a group of people seated at a long table piled high with neat stacks of folded campaign literature. The other volunteers greeted us cheerfully as we sat down and quickly became a part of their efficient assembly line. Once we got the rhythm of the task, we were able to chat while we worked.

  What impressed us was the diversity of the volunteers and the singleness of their commitment to the ideals personified by Mr. Stevenson. There was a gray-haired high school teacher in suit and tie who liked the Stevenson educational reforms. There was a black legal secretary who felt Stevenson was the best man on civil rights issues. There was a housewife from Glendale with two teenaged sons who were enamored of Stevenson’s oratorical eloquence. Most of the people at the table were college kids like me. There were political science students, foreign policy students, and journalism students. And then there was me—a theater arts student.

  When I revealed this fact, the assembly line perceptibly slowed down. “Oh, really?” some said, exaggerated friendliness barely disguising their curiosity. Again, I was the oddity. The shuffling of paper continued, but I could sense the next question silently poised on everybody’s lips.

  There were a few beats of a polite waiting before the most nosy person asked, “What will you do for a living?”

  “Well, I’m going to be an actor,” I answered.

  “Oh . . . how nice,” and there was more shuffling of paper. The envelope stuffing continued, but the group’s curiosity was palpable.

  “And what kind of films do you like to do?” The paper shuffle resumed, but everybody’s ears were cocked to hear my answer.

  “Well,” I began thoughtfully, “I plan to be very selective about the films I do. I’ll be looking for scripts with Academy Award potential.” There was an indulgent ripple of laughter. I could tell they were thinking, “Poor thing.”

  Then Daddy helpfully announced, “Actually, I see him making a good drama teacher.” And with that, everybody chorused, “Ah, of course.” “Yes, a teacher indeed.” “I’m sure he’d make a fine drama teacher.”

  The old rhythm resumed. Everything now made sense. They didn’t have to sympathize with the pathetic plight of a nice young man condemned to a life as an actor. The task of the assembly line could carry on.

  Daddy said he had to leave, but I decided to stay the whole day. I was sorry he didn’t, too, because late in the afternoon, something extraordinary happened. Like an electric current rippling across the room, excitement spread throughout the vast office. “She’s coming,” they whispered. “She’s supposed to be on her way right now.” Then, “She’ll be here in ten minutes,” followed shortly by, “Five minutes. She’s going to be here in five minutes.”

  I looked up and saw flinty-eyed men in dark suits filter in from the front door. Then to a spatter of applause that grew and grew, the legendary lady stepped through the door. With a dark straw hat crowning her loose gray hair, Eleanor Roosevelt entered radiating her famous toothy smile. She waved at everybody in the room, then turned and began shaking every volunteer’s hand as she graciously worked her way around the huge room. I stood with the others at my table and waited. When she took my hand, she looked right into my eyes with her sparkling crinkly ones. “Thank you, George, for all that you are doing for Adlai. I so appreciate your work.”

  This renowned woman, this fabled former first lady, was personally thanking me! I was incredulous. And she called me by my name. She was amazing. I was too euphoric to realize I was wearing my name tag. I watched her move through the room from one volunteer to another, connecting with each, touching every person with her charm and appreciation and thus energizing the campaign for Adlai Stevenson. This is American politics, I thought. People connecting with people from all walks of life in a common cause. Eleanor Roosevelt certainly buoyed our support for Adlai Stevenson that afternoon, but, in a much larger sense, she also strengthened my commitment to our democratic process.

  At the dinner table that night, I shared my excitement over meeting Eleanor Roosevelt. I told Daddy that it was too bad that he couldn’t have stayed a few hours longer, and he repeated something about being too busy. It wasn’t until much after the campaign that I discovered that Daddy, in fact, knew that Mrs. Roosevelt was coming that afternoon and chose not to meet her. He was there to support Adlai Stevenson’s presidential campaign but not to meet Mrs. Roosevelt. I remembered, then, what the name Roosevelt had meant to him so many years ago.

  I continued to go back to the Stevenson headquarters and became a regular volunteer for the campaign. I was given the job of coordinating the “spontaneous” rallies. I organized the Stevenson demonstrations at the Biltmore Hotel, which served as the hotel headquarters of the Democratic Party, and at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, where the convention was being held. Back at the headquarters on the night of the nominations, we were moved as we watched on the television screens Senator Eugene McCarthy’s impassioned speech placing Adlai Stevenson’s name in contention. Our work as volunteers was now done. The rest was in the hands of the delegates.

  In the turbulence of the campaign, I experienced the sweat, the messiness, and the exhaustion, but most of all the fervent commitment, of the people involved in the electoral operation. I was surrounded by savvy, dedicated idealists. And I saw that the fuel of our democratic process is very American: It is a compound made up of ideas, spirit, potato chips, and soda pop. I was exhausted, but proud to have been a part of the noble effort to elect Adlai Stevenson as our President. Alas, luck would not be with us. The nominee of the Democratic Party in 1960 was John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

  10

  Burton and Guinness

  AS INDISPENSABLE TO AN ACTOR’S career as a key to a locked door is that one crucial person we call an agent. I had him now in Fred Ishimoto, who agreed to keep his eyes open for projects right for me while I was still at UCLA.

  The labyrinthine corridors of Hollywood, however, have many locked doors, and an actor requires more than one friend with a key to open them. Another such friend now was Herbie Hirschman, my Playhouse 90 director. Herbie liked what I had done on the show, so when he began work on his next project, he asked for both Nobu McCarthy and me. The production was the popular television series Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr. Again, Nobu and I were teamed as ill-fated lovers. This time, the story involved the theft of a rare “blushing” pearl—and murder.

  A less-macabre production introduced me to another important key bearer who was to help open many doors for me in my journey through the maze of Hollywood. This person was a casting director who saw me in a UCLA summer theater production of an American theater retrospective entitled Portraits in Greasepaint. The presentation was a sweeping saga told in vignettes of representative scenes from plays throughout our theater history. I played a variety of roles ranging from Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the Captain of the H.M.S. Pinafore in the Gilbert and Sullivan classic. The eagle-eyed casting director in the audience at one performance was Hoyt Bowers from Warner Brothers Studio. He was the gatekeeper who was to open the door at many important junctures in my career, the first of which was a role
in a major feature film.

  The day after he saw Portraits in Greasepaint, Hoyt Bowers left a message with the Theater Arts Department office for me to call him at the studio.

  It seemed half the department knew about the call before I got the message. The set design class was just breaking up when a friend told me she heard people at the office talking about a call for me from a movie studio. As I was hurrying across campus to the office, another classmate yelled out, “Hey, George, I heard Warner Brothers wants you to call. It’s urgent!” I’m sure others within hearing simply assumed this was another silly theater-arts student joke. When I arrived breathless at the wooden bungalow that served as the Theater Arts Department office, a chorus of voices again assaulted me with the same urgent information. “Call Warner Brothers Right away!”

  I could feel a dozen pairs of eyes looking over my shoulder when I was handed the note. I read it, then asked the secretary if I could use her phone to call my agent. I could feel those eyes turn silently to each other with the expression, “He’s got an agent?” Fred had counseled me always to contact the studios through him.

  “Fred, this is George. I’ve got a message here from a Hoyt Bowers at Warner Brothers. Could you check it out for me?” And I gave him the number in the message.

  “Thanks for the phone,” I said to the secretary as I hung up. I strolled out as nonchalantly as I could, knowing that I left in my wake a crowd of nonplussed faces. But inside, I prickled with an excitement that coursed through me like an electric current. What could this be about?