Hayakawa in Japan the USA, Belgium, France, etc.

[mccaskem at georgetown.edu]

I believe Hayakawa acted in a lot of US silent movies in the 19-teens and 1920s. 
A high point was his own US Bond-raising WWI short, Banzai (1918), in which he 
played the role of a victorious US General.

I think Hayakawa's last major prewar US film may have been "Daughter of the 
Dragon" (1931). Then he went on to act in a number of Belgian and French films. 
He stayed on in France under the Vichy Regime, and made some more pictures. 
Then he made a few more in Liberated France.

He returned to US pictures in "Tokyo Joe" (1949), with Humphrey Bogart, and 
after that was generally regarded by everyone in the US as a Japanese actor with 
longstanding US roots, due to his much earlier US film career.

He just really just seems to have pursued his acting career to the best of his 
ability, wherever he was, though somehow I can't help being a little reminded of 
Peter Ustinov in "Hotel Sahara" (1951).

A person on this list has written a great, definitive book on Hayakawa, and is the 
expert, able to supply much better information and correct errors, I'm sure.

Best Regards,

mmcc

PS

There  are unusual tales about Itami, Hayakawa, et al., trying to make an after-
hours version of the Fanck film, aimed more at an English-speaking market, 
with Hayakawa speaking English instead of German, etc. A Japanese blogger 
claimed to have seen bits of this once, in some Japanese film museum, so it may 
just be totally apocryphal..