by George Takei
I learned that Hoyt Bowers was casting Ice Palace, a film adaptation of Edna Ferber’s epic three-generational novel about a powerful dynasty in Alaska. He was calling me in to read for the role of a young Chinese cannery worker, Wang, who ages from eighteen to eighty. Most of this character’s scenes were in his youth, so Bowers was looking for a young Asian actor who could also play the later scenes credibly.
“Here’s the actor who had me believing he was Uncle Tom one moment and then the Captain of the Pinafore the next.” Hoyt Bowers greeted me cheerfully in his modest office at Warners. “I hope you can convince me you can be an eighty-year-old Chinese man as well.” With that mild challenge he handed me a few pages from a script. I read one scene from the character’s youth and another as the old man Wang.
“Not bad . . . if I keep my eyes closed,” he said smiling. “But you look so blooming young. Let’s go see what Mr. Sherman thinks.”
This was Vincent Sherman, the director of the film. We walked from Bower’s office across a garden courtyard to a spacious bungalow office. Mr. Sherman was a courtly, gracious gentleman with a deep, strong voice. After I read the same scenes again he concurred with Hoyt Bowers. “Young man, you’re a fine actor. But I’m just a bit concerned about the old-age makeup. Could we ask you to do a screen test for us?”
I hoped my dropping jaw wasn’t too noticeable. He’s asking me to do a screen test? I was incredulous—I would have killed for such an opportunity. I must have been speechless, because Hoyt Bowers broke the silence by saying that he would set it up with my agent. As we walked out of Mr. Sherman’s office, Bowers said, “I’d better settle this with Fred real quick. I suspect maybe you’re one of those difficult actors who are above doing screen tests.” And then he winked at me.
It was at this interview that I learned the leads were being played by Richard Burton and Robert Ryan, actors I admired. The teaming of the two was intriguing, a classic British actor with a rough-hewn American ideal. The contrast and the conflict would be sharp and strong. It would be fantastic working with this team. I had to be in this film; I had to convince them I could play eighty.
On the morning of the screen test, I was instructed to report directly to the soundstage before I went to makeup. I wondered what this was all about. When I arrived at the soundstage, Mr. Sherman greeted me genially.
“Good morning, George. It’s very kind of you to stop by before makeup. We just wanted to get you on film first as you are. Please make yourself comfortable there in front of the camera.”
With that, I was ushered to a lone stool set in a pool of light. Mr. Sherman seated himself on a stool right next to the camera and whispered something to the operator. It started to whirr softly. It was all very casual and relaxed, but I knew my screen test had now begun.
“Now then, George,” he began smilingly, “tell me something about yourself.” Mr. Sherman asked me a series of questions about my feelings on school, on movies, and on my hopes for the future. I responded as honestly, and, I hoped, as interestingly as I could. Mr. Sherman chortled at my attempts at wit, frowned gravely at the serious points.
“Thank you, George. Now I think the makeup people are waiting for you.” The soft whirr stopped. Mr. Sherman got up from his stool and shook my hand, and with that, this part of the screen test was over. The real test was about to begin.
George Bau was a balding, rotund man who came from a family of makeup people that had worked at Warner Brothers studio practically from its beginning. The makeup man was an old hand at aging actors. He studied my face through sternly squinted eyes. He pinched my skin and frowned. He rubbed my forehead and scowled. He silently analyzed my face as if it were some insensate lump of flesh, with no regard for the living human being inhabiting it. There was no conversation, no chitchat. Only a wordless evaluation of the youthful challenge that sat in his makeup chair. Then, he began assembling his materials—liquid latex, powder, various shades of base, and makeup pencils. He cut a small square of foam rubber, and with it, he started dabbing the liquid latex on my face. Suddenly, as if he had been struck by a flash of inspiration, he stopped.
“Al!” he shouted out into the corridor. “Al Greenway! Can you come in here and help?” A large, hulking man with tightly curled steel gray hair and a genial smile came in.
“Can you hold the skin here stretched real taut while I dapple it with the latex?” he asked, pointing to my forehead with the square of foam rubber in his hand. “I want it stretched real tight,” he emphasized.
“With pleasure,” replied the hulking man. And with his powerful fingers, Al gripped, then stretched the skin of my forehead until it felt as if it were about to tear apart. My head reared back and my body extended straight in the chair. It was excruciating.
George Bau proceeded to dab the liquid latex on the now agonizingly smooth skin surface. Each dab felt as astringent as the touch of an ice cube on sunburned skin.
“Sorry about this, young man. I know it’s uncomfortable,” Al said. Uncomfortable was hardly the word, I thought. At least Al knew there was a living, traumatized being down here. But George Bau just continued dabbing in silence. When he had covered my forehead with his dabbings, he turned around and reached for something. I heard the sudden drone of a hair dryer. Then, a blast of cool air was blowing furiously on my forehead. As the latex started to dry, I felt my tightly stretched skin begin to contract even tighter. Al’s hard grip struggled to hold firm. Just as suddenly as it had begun, the blowing ended. Next, George Bau took a powder puff and began to softly powder my forehead still held taut. This gentle act had to be the most torturous part of the whole ordeal. I could feel every pore on my forehead starting to pucker up and shrivel.
“Okay, Al. Let go,” George commanded. Instantaneously, like a Venetian blind suddenly yanked up, the skin of my forehead violently closed on itself into a wrinkled, shrunken mass. It was jolting and unbearably painful. Tears welled up in my eyes.
But the two makeup men were looking down at me, smiling happily and patting each other on the back.
“That is gorgeous, George. Just beautiful,” Al beamed. He was talking to the makeup man—not me.
“Thank you. Thank you.” George Bau smiled back. “Now, Al, if you’ll hold the skin next to the eyes for the crow’s feet. . . .” And they continued on in small painful patches, repeating the process all over my face.
When they finished, my forehead was numbed, the sides of my face were prickly, my cheeks smarted, my whole face hurt, and I really felt eighty years old. When I looked into the mirror, I was stunned. I saw a pitifully wizened old man’s face resting on a youthful body. My watery eyes just stared in amazement, while over my head, Al continued to shower George Bau with effusive congratulations.
I returned to the soundstage in costume as well as my new prickly makeup to continue with my screen test. George Bau followed behind me with his makeup box in hand. When I stepped back into the pool of light in front of the camera, the crew broke out in spontaneous applause. I started to break into a slow, painful smile to acknowledge the accolade, but immediately it froze on my face. The eyes of the people clapping were not looking at me. The applause was being directed at George Bau, smiling and nodding in the gloom behind the camera. Only Mr. Sherman seemed to give me some credit for my suffering for art.
“You look amazing, George. Well done,” he said, directing his approving smile at me. Then he added, “Now, don’t try to play the age. You already are old. Just play the scene.” And with that guidance, he whispered, “Action!” The camera started to whirr, and I played the scene I knew so well. The pain of the makeup made me talk and move so much slower. I felt like I had arthritis of the face.
When the scene was done and Mr. Sherman had shouted, “Cut!” there was stony silence. No audible sign of any verdict. But I noticed there were a lot of smiling faces. I saw Hoyt Bowers was smiling in the gloom with the crew. So was Mr. Sherman. I overheard him whispering to George Bau, “That was masterful, George. The watery ey
es are a stroke of genius. A wonderful touch.”
“Thank you. Thank you,” he was repeating almost robotically.
George Bau was claiming the compliments even for my tears of pain! It seemed more his screen test than mine. And quite obviously, he had succeeded with flying colors. I was merely the model wearing his wrinkled, painful creation.
The suspense of my casting, however, was to linger for another week. When I finally got the call from Fred, he told me to start packing for a two-week location trip to Petersburg, Alaska, and then two more months of filming back at Warner Brothers studios. I was doing Ice Palace with Richard Burton and Robert Ryan.
* * *
The vista from the window of the small twin-engine plane that was ferrying us from Vancouver, British Columbia, to the location site at Petersburg in the lower panhandle of Alaska was as heart-stopping as the turbulence of the flight. The awesome majesty of the snow-streaked mountain ranges only made me grip the armrest harder. The lushness of the black-green primeval forests took my breath away as much as the sudden bottomless drops of the tiny plane. And the almost surreal blue of the rivers that laced the pristine landscape looked to my traumatized eyes like parts of the sky visible through cracks in the beautiful landscape.
This was my second flight since the trip to Colorado Springs years ago, but it was my very first in a flimsy twin-engine propeller plane. Only a thin, trembling metal wall separated me from the hair-raising grandeur of Alaska. I was so grateful when we finally splashed down on the waters of what the Alaskans call “the narrows,” though we were bobbing around on what to me looked like the widest river I had ever seen. I could barely see the other shore from the pier where the small aircraft alighted. I was traveling with two stuntmen who were to double for Burton and Ryan. I’m sure the driver who picked us up thought I was talking about the scenery when I kept repeating, “It’s so good to be alive.”
As soon as I unpacked at the hotel, I thought I’d wander around the village. The midsummer air was breezy, bracing, and as clear as crystal. Petersburg was a quaint little fishing community of wood-frame cottages built into a steep wooded hillside. The main street, made up of the hotel, a general store, a café, a barbershop, and a couple of saloons, ran parallel to the narrows. It would have looked like a frontier town in a western except for the great body of water that flowed by the village and the giant cannery standing on stilts in the water with its piers jutting out into the narrows. This huge, weather-worn structure, pungent with the smell of fish, was the major employer and only industry of the village.
I walked out on the long pier alongside the cannery. At the far end I could see a lone man looking out across the narrows. As I walked farther out, the soft breeze turned sharper, chillier, a gale that slapped my hair briskly on my face. I walked more forcefully against the wind. Then I recognized the man at the end of the pier. It was Robert Ryan. I approached the lean, craggy figure standing tall in the wind, intending to introduce myself. I guess he sensed my advance toward him. He moved away, turning his back to me, and shifted his gaze downstream. I stopped. He probably didn’t want to be bothered by a fan. I just stood near him and gazed out across the wide expanse of water to the immense range of wooded mountains on the other side. We stood there for a long time silently communing with the vast beauty of Alaska.
Then I heard that famous, raspy voice say, “What do you catch here?”
I wasn’t sure he was talking to me. But there was nobody else around. “I beg your pardon,” I answered hesitantly.
“What kind of fish you catch around here,” he drawled again.
“Oh, I . . . well . . . um,” I faltered. “I’m an actor. I just arrived from Los Angeles, and I’m afraid I can’t tell you a thing about the fishing here.”
He looked at me with those crinkly eyes. He studied my face silently and then broke into a slow-building chuckle. “Of course. You’re playing Wang, aren’t you,” he laughed. “I took you for one of the locals here. Sorry.”
I introduced myself and began to tell him how much I admired his work. I had recently seen him in a professional production at UCLA of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.
“Yes, O’Neill. Great playwright.” He nodded. Then, smiling, he turned his face across the narrows again. “Beautiful country,” he declared, fixing his eyes on some distant object.
“Magnificent,” I agreed, and joined him in his silent reverie. He obviously didn’t want to chat about his career with an enthusiastic neophyte actor. But I stood there with him at the end of the pier, pretending to scan the entire vista but actually stealing glances at him from the corner of my eyes. He looked strong and rugged, his eyes squinting enigmatically. . . . Was it a smile or the bright, clear sunlight? The wind flapped his collar against his sinewy throat. I stood there with him for a long time as we wordlessly communed with our new environment.
Finally, he turned to me and said, “Well, I’ll see you on the set.” And with that, he walked off. I watched his lanky old frame amble down that long pier until he reached the end and turned when a cannery building blocked him from view. Robert Ryan was very much like the characters he played—the strong, silent type. And I sensed that he didn’t like talking about his acting career.
* * *
The town barbershop was commandeered by Warner Brothers as the actors’ makeup facility. I reported there at 7:00 A.M., bright and early in the morning, although morning in midsummer Alaska seemed not appreciably brighter than night. The sun shone practically twenty-four hours a day in the summer and then gave way to the moon during the winter months. I had slept listlessly with an eerie golden glow filtering in through the window shades all night long.
The two stuntmen, Sol and Eddy, were already there in the barbershop, standing with steaming cups of coffee in their hands.
“Good morning, George,” the assistant greeted me. “You’re in the first shot, so we need you made up right away.” With that, I was immediately hustled into the first chair. Thank God, I wouldn’t have to get into that painful old-age makeup for another six weeks.
As soon as I was made up, I was to rush over to the cannery, where, the assistant informed me, the company was setting up. Although it was only a short three-minute walk away, he had a car waiting for me outside. I thought it was a bit absurd, but I accepted and rode the short distance in the car. They must be in an awful hurry, I thought. I was to learn otherwise.
I was made up, dressed in my cannery worker’s outfit with high rubber boots, and pacing the pier, mouthing my lines. But no call came for me to go before the camera inside the noisy, smelly building. They always seemed to find some way to intensify an already nervous situation.
The shot was to be that of an exshausted Wang working at the assembly line of the clangorous fish-canning machine—so exhausted that he loses his heavy knife in the fast-moving machinery, fouling up the steady work flow. Drudging alongside Wang would be Zeb Kennedy, a fellow cannery worker who comes to his aid when the foreman lashes out at him for his mistake. Zeb was the principal character in the film—the role being played by Richard Burton.
But where was Burton? He was nowhere in sight. Sol the stuntman was there dressed as the foreman; Eddy stood around dressed as his aid; a crowd of Asian extras dressed as Chinese cannery workers lounged around in the crisp, bright sunshine of the pier . . . and me. We were all ready and waiting. Half the morning was gone. But there was no star.
“Isn’t Richard Burton supposed to be in this scene with me?” I asked one of the assistants.
“Yes, but we’re having some problems coordinating the camera moves with the movement of the fish through the canning machine, so we’re having him wait back at the hotel,” he explained to me. “Don’t worry. We’re in touch with him with our walkie-talkie.”
Just then, I noticed some commotion at the land end of the pier. A crowd of local onlookers that was being held back at the foot of the pier burst into squeals and applause, and a figure in a yellow sweater came pushing past th
em.
“Oh my God, he’s coming!” exclaimed the assistant, and he rushed toward the approaching figure.
“Now then, lads. What seems to be holding up the festivities?” That unmistakable stentorian voice came cutting across the length of the pier. It was Richard Burton!
The assistant and a few other people ran up to him and were excitedly explaining the situation. But he strode right past them with a smile as he continued orating down the pier, “I’ve read the papers, finished the crossword puzzle, and I’m utterly bored to death. Now, gentlemen, shall we get us down to work?” He turned at the huge gaping entrance to the cannery and disappeared inside. I followed.
Vincent Sherman approached him with a big smile and explained the coordination difficulties of the camera with the complex travel route of the fish through the workings of the machine. Burton walked around the ungainly apparatus listening closely as Mr. Sherman pointed out the problems.
“The essence of the scene, Vincent, is to show Wang exhausted to the point of disrupting the orderly flow of the work, isn’t it?” Burton was conversing with Mr. Sherman, but even his normal way of speaking was so theatrical that he seemed to be playing to the entire cast and crew. “It seems to me,” he continued in his ringing tones, “this can be done in another way without having to spend all this time choreographing a ballet with this noisome beast. Can’t we have Wang show his fatigue by simply spilling a trayful of already-canned fish?” I loved listening to him, the silvery clarity of his elocution, the lyrical way in which he shaped the English language. I felt as though I were in a London theater instead of a vast, dank, stinking fish cannery.
Burton was right, of course. So the action was shifted from following the course of the fish through the problematic machine to the two of us stacking trays of cans in a neat, high pile, which the bone-weary Wang finally spills. It worked much better. It was certainly much more visually interesting with the trayful of tin cans rolling all over the cannery floor. And the scene was set up and shot in half the time.