The China Lover (27 page)

   22   

T
O SAY THAT
Yoshiko was happy when she was offered the part of Mariko in
House of Bamboo
would be a grotesque understatement; she was ecstatic. This would finally launch her Hollywood career, she would be an international star: “Oh, my gosh, Sid-san, Twentieth Century–Fox! In Japan! I will show the world my country. I will show how we have changed, how we have become a beautiful, peaceful country.” When I heard that
House of Bamboo
was to be a remake of a gangster picture, set in Tokyo instead of New York, and directed by Sam Fuller, master of film noir, I wasn’t so sure that Yoshiko’s vision of peace and beauty would turn out quite the way she imagined. But who was I to spoil her party.

Isamu failed to share his wife’s joy. The thing is, he wanted her around all the time. He didn’t even like it when Yoshiko took off in her limo to be at the Oriental Peace Studios. Fortunately, however, Isamu too had been blessed by a stroke of good fortune, which took his mind off his domestic worries, at least for a while. Kenzo Tange, the architect, asked him to design the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima. Tange said Isamu was the perfect artist to “heal the wounds of war,” an opinion shared wholeheartedly by Isamu himself. On his return to Japan after the war, he had told reporters that he had come not just to make art, but “to reshape Japan.” Here was his chance to do just that, in Hiroshima,
in the middle of Peace Park, right above which the fateful bomb had exploded. With this task in hand, he would be more than just an artist in his father’s land; he would contribute to its legacy. His creation would be there for centuries to come, an expression of emotions that were not just Japanese, or American, but universal. That, give or take a word, is how Isamu put it.

I, too, benefited from fortune’s sudden largesse, for the producers of
House of Bamboo
had asked me to be the liaison man between Hollywood and Tokyo, to smooth over cultural frictions, make sure no Japanese feathers were ruffled overly much, keep Sam Fuller happy, take care that the right people were paid off to let us work on location—the right people usually being the local yakuza gang. My friendship with Tony Lucca proved to be invaluable when it came to these practical matters.

The first person to arrive in Tokyo, on a kind of reconnaissance mission, was the main producer, by the name of Maurice “Buddy” Adler. I was bracing myself for boorish behavior: failure to take off shoes in Japanese homes, using soap in Japanese bathtubs, shouting at waiters, that sort of thing. We met at his hotel, the Imperial. Thinking I’d hit the right note of American familiarity, I addressed him as “Buddy,” which did not go down well. An eyebrow was slowly raised: “ ‘Mr. Adler’ will do fine.” I should have known better. Silver-haired and beautifully turned out in custom-made English suits, Adler looked like a high-powered banker. On his first night in Tokyo, he invited Yoshiko and myself for dinner. It had to be Japanese food, he insisted. We went to Hanada-en, where they were used to serving distinguished foreigners.

“Are you a Jew?” asked Yoshiko. It was perhaps not the happiest opening gambit at dinner with a perfect stranger who was producing her next film. I froze. Up shot his right eyebrow again. He pursed his
lips and ran his right hand down his silk tie, as though to smooth away any creases. “Madam, may I enquire why you ask?” I was beginning to have second thoughts about my role as the cultural mediator.

“Oh,” said Yoshiko, childlike in her undisguised joy at dining with such an eminent man, “I thought all producers in Hollywood were Jews. You know, I used to know many Jews in China. They were such cultured people, and so clever. I love Jewish culture: Mozart, Einstein, President Roosevelt, George Cukor . . .”

“That’s quite a formidable group,” Adler said, “but I rather think some of them would be surprised to be included in that company. As for myself, since you kindly asked, my father became a Lutheran in Vienna around the turn of the century.”

“Vienna!” cried Yoshiko. “I knew it. Jewish culture, in music, in theater, wonderful.”

“Madam,” said Adler, who seemed quite ready to move on to another topic, “I have been fortunate enough to meet many cultured people, some from Vienna, some Jewish. But Jewish culture is not something I recognize, except of course in the synagogue.”

“There used to be a beautiful synagogue in Harbin,” said Yoshiko. And that, to my intense relief, rather exhausted the subject.

Adler in a display of his perfect manners took Yoshiko’s innocent remarks with good humor. I was thankful that much of the rest of the dinner conversation revolved around her role in the movie. She had to feel free, Adler told her, to make comments if the lines didn’t sound correct. It was most important to get the cultural details absolutely right. Her role was a pivotal one, since she had the only major Japanese part in the film. There was one other Japanese, the good Tokyo cop, to be played by Sessue Hayakawa. But Mariko was the more important role, for she was at the very center of the story.

The tale of betrayals and double betrayals had a typical B-movie plot. It opens with a botched heist in Tokyo by a gang of discharged
GIs. A fellow named Webber is shot by one of his own gang. Just before he dies, he tells the Japanese cop (Hayakawa) that he has a Japanese wife, Mariko. He also discloses that his best pal, a convict named Eddie Spanier, will come to Japan as soon as they let him out of jail in the States. Instead of the real Spanier, however, a military cop (Robert Stack), pretending to be Spanier, joins the gang, and takes Mariko on as his “kimono girl” for cover. Sandy, the gang boss (Robert Ryan), likes the new guy. Unfortunately, this makes Sandy’s “number one boy,” a young punk named Griff, jealous. Mariko falls in love with Eddie. Eddie tells her he isn’t who she thinks he is, and that he’s after the gang that killed her husband. Sandy hears of the double-cross. He tries to kill Eddie. Eddie kills Sandy instead, in an amusement park. Eddie and Mariko walk off, arm-in-arm, down the Ginza.

Simple enough. But there was trouble even before the shooting began. Hayakawa, arriving at Haneda from Hollywood dressed in an absurdly lavish kimono, like a Kabuki actor a hundred years ago, was furious because the Japanese press wasn’t there to meet him, whereas Robert Ryan merited a full press conference. Off he went to his hotel in high dudgeon. The star’s mood didn’t improve when he found out that he had to share a studio dressing room with three other actors, instead of having one to himself. “I’m a Hollywood star,” he protested, “and I deserve respect!” Sam Fuller told him to talk to the studio people, and they told him to talk to me. Since there was nothing I could do, he went back to the studio people, who went back to Sam Fuller, who told Hayakawa that he was indeed a major star, and he would talk to the studio people, et cetera. Hayakawa finally got a room to himself.

The set on the first day of shooting was supposed to be Mariko’s house in Tokyo. Stuart Weiss, the set designer, had come up with something that bore very little resemblance to a Japanese room. It looked more like a lavish restaurant in Chinatown, with odd red lanterns and
other bits of Oriental frippery. The Japanese set builders were too polite to say anything. If this is what the foreigners wanted, this is what they would get. Yoshiko told Fuller that the set looked very strange. Fuller replied that it looked just fine to him. “Shirley,” he said, “don’t you worry your pretty little head over these details. This picture has to play in Peoria, not Yokohama.”

“But Mr. Adler said . . .”

“I don’t give a damn what Mr. Adler said. He isn’t making the movie. I am. And I say it’s fine.”

To say that Yoshiko and Bob Stack didn’t warm to one another would be putting it mildly. She couldn’t stand him. I never quite figured out why. He was a bit on the dull side, to be sure, talking endlessly about his mother back in L.A. Although he had made a splash earlier in his career as the first man to kiss Deanna Durbin on screen, he was not the romantic type. Yoshiko liked men to make a fuss over her. Bob Ryan certainly did. She complained to me that Bob had quite fallen in love with her, which didn’t seem to overly bother her. Quite the contrary, I should say. In fact, Bob, a strict Catholic, and a married man, was not known as a Lothario. But he followed Yoshiko about like a dog in heat. I once caught him banging on her dressing room door, shouting: “But Shirley, I love you!” It was all most unseemly.

But Yoshiko was a pro. I watched her shoot the famous scene with Stack in the Chinese restaurant that was supposed to be her apartment. He was on his stomach, dressed in a kind of funereal black kimono, his shoulders bared, as she, in a bright red kimono, more appropriate for a bar hostess than a demure young woman, kneaded his spine. “Where did you learn how to do that?” he purrs.

Yoshiko:
“In Japan, every girl learn from early age how to please the man.”

Stack:
“So what is it in a man that attracts a Japanese woman? Broad shoulders? Muscles?”

Yoshiko:
“Nooo . . .”

Stack:
“So what makes a Japanese woman want to . . . ?” (Yoshiko whispers something in his ear) “What?”

Yoshiko:
“His eyebrows. In Japan, woman finds eyebrows so romantic.”

Stack:
“That’s traditional, too, eh?”

No wonder Yoshiko found her Hollywood debut rather a disappointment.

   23   

I
T WAS DURING
a rare break in the shooting, between locations, on a Saturday morning, that the phone rang in my apartment in Azabu. “Hellooo,” said a reedy voice, clearly American, probably Southern, almost certainly female. “How are you, Sid? It’s meee.” Who? “Meee, Truman.” Funny name for a girl, I thought. I had no idea who I was talking to. Who? “Ooh, Sid,” came the reply. “Truman, Truman Capote. Parker gave me your number. I thought you might be my Cicerone in this garden of vice, or should I say my Mephistopheles?”

Of course I had heard of Truman Capote. I had actually read his
Other Voices, Other Rooms
. I admired his writing, but I had never made his acquaintance, and certainly hadn’t expected a phone call. I must admit that the voice threw me. Still, I would soon get used to it, since for the next eight days, he called me at all hours; where to buy drugs for his migraine, where to have lunch, where to drink cocktails, or buy American magazines or a pair of socks. But mostly he called to tell me he was bored: “Bored, bored, bored, darling. Is there really
nowhere
in this ugly town where a boy can have some fun?” I told him about the attractions of Asakusa and Ueno. But he showed no interest.

Truman had come to Tokyo on an assignment from
The New Yorker
, to write a profile of Marlon Brando, who was shooting a movie with Josh Logan in Kyoto. Unfortunately, Logan had banned journalists from the set, and told Brando to reject all requests for interviews. He
knew just what a literary bitch like Truman might make of his Japanese venture. So Truman chose to be cooped up like a fuming prisoner in his room at the Imperial (“A retirement home in Akron, Ohio, my dear”). If he couldn’t have his interview with Brando, he would sulk: “Hell isn’t hot enough for that old Jewish queen Logan.”

I decided that the only way to snap him out of this mood, which wasn’t doing anyone any good, was to make sure he found some romance. So I took him on a little tour. He was mildly amused by the drag queens at Hanazono Shrine, but dismissed the boys in the blue line bars, even though some of the boys certainly showed an interest in him. They couldn’t get enough of his light blond hair, which they stroked as though he were a Siamese cat. On and on we went, from bar to bar, ending up in a place called
Bokushin no Gogo
, Japanese for
L’Après-midi d’un faune
. A photograph of Clark Gable gazed at us from the wall. The furniture was a kind of fake French Empire style, made of cheap wood painted gold. Truman held forth amusingly on grisly murders in the American South. Whenever I pointed out some promising Japanese youth, he turned away after a perfunctory glance and said: “Too small.” What did he mean, too small? “Too small down there.” How did he know? He held up his thumb, as if to hitch a ride: “Just look at their thumbs, honey. It never fails.”

At two o’-clock in the morning, groggy from too many watered-down whiskeys, no longer amused by the murder stories, tired of trying to pimp for the great young American novelist, I said to him: “Is there really nobody you like?”

“Yes, there is,” he mewed.

“Thank God for that. Who?”

He glanced at me slyly from the corner of his eye: “You.”

Time to go home, I thought, though I managed to extricate myself a little more politely.

I thought I would never hear from Truman again, after my attempt
to find him some romance ended in disappointment, and more sulking on his part. But two days later, the phone rang just as I was trying to write my weekly movie review. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon. The crows were making a terrible noise outside my window. Not only was there no trace of his earlier funk, he sounded positively delirious: “Honey, I’m in heaven!” I asked him where he was. “In heaven. Why didn’t you tell me about this place, Asakusa! All the pretty things you can buy around the temple . . .” But I
had
mentioned Asakusa to him. “No, you did not. I had to find it all on my own.”

As with much of what Truman said, this turned out to be a falsehood. Sam Fuller had invited him to come and watch the last scene, of Bob Stack shooting Bob Ryan in an amusement park on the roof of an Asakusa department store—gunshots and merry-go-rounds, carnival music and murder, the kind of thing Orson Welles did so well in
The Lady from Shanghai
. Bored with waiting for the action to start, Truman had gone wandering around the Kannon Temple market, with its rows of little stalls filled with touristy gewgaws. “Oh, those lovely artificial flowers, those gorgeous gold Buddhas, those adorable dwarf trees . . . And I bought myself a beautiful silk kimono, jade green, with the most marvelous chrysanthemums in gold thread. It was just as I remember it from Aunt Marie’s parlor in Alabama. You know, as a boy, I would spend hours with her Oriental menagerie, imagining I was in Japan. Now I know it’s all true. Oh, Sid, I wish you could have been there.”