Sessue Hayakawa
Birthday: 1889-06-10
Place of Birth: Nanaura, Chiba, Japan
Biography: Sessue Hayakawa (June 10, 1889 – November 23, 1973) was a Japanese and American Issei (Japanese immigrant) actor who starred in American, Japanese, French, German, and British films. Hayakawa was the first and one of the few Asian actors to find stardom in the United States as well as Europe. Between the mid-1910s and the late 1920s, he was as well known as actors Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. He was one of the highest paid stars of his time; making $5,000 a week in 1915, and $2 million a year via his own production company during the 1920s. He starred in over 80 movies and has two films in the U.S. National Film Registry. His international stardom transitioned both silent films and talkies. Of his English-language films, Hayakawa is probably best known for his role as Colonel Saito in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai, for which he received a nomination for Academy Award Best Supporting Actor in 1957. He also appeared as the pirate leader in Disney's Swiss Family Robinson in 1960. In addition to his film acting career, Hayakawa was a theatre actor, film and theatre producer, film director, screenwriter, novelist, martial artist, and an ordained Zen master. Description above from the Wikipedia article Sessue Hayakawa, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Movies
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their J...
View Movie
House of Bamboo
Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a fo...
View Movie
The Honorable Friend
Makino works for Kayosho, a Japanese curio dealer in America. To reward Makino's dedication, Kayosho...
View Movie
Temptation
Opera singer Renee Dupree is in love with struggling composer Julian who falls very seriously ill. S...
View Movie
The City of Dim Faces
Chinese merchant Wing Lung and Elizabeth Mendall, an American, marry and have a son named Jang Lung....
View Movie
Hell to Eternity
Based on the story about Guy Gabaldon, a Los Angeles Hispanic boy raised in the 1930s by a Japanese-...
View Movie
The Geisha Boy
Gilbert Wooley is a second-rate magician who is sent to entertain the troops in the pacific. During ...
View Movie
Forfaiture
Denise Moret joins her husband, Pierre, in Mongolia where he works as a civil engineer. One night sh...
View Movie
Green Mansions
A young Venezuelan idealist flees his native land to escape a revolution. Hoping to find peace, he g...
View Movie
Swiss Family Robinson
After being shipwrecked, the Robinson family is marooned on an island inhabited only by an impressiv...
View Movie
Tokyo Joe
An American veteran returns to Tokyo to try to pick up the threads of his pre-World War II life ther...
View Movie
The Cheat
A venal, spoiled stockbroker's wife impulsively embezzles $10,000 from the charity she chairs and de...
View Movie
Patrouille blanche
An Oriental villain named Halloway is called in by wealthy oil interests who want to destroy a dam p...
View Movie
Le Soleil de minuit
Going to take up his post in Moukden, the forest engineer finds in a trainer from the cabaret "the m...
View Movie
Malaria
A colonial wife carries on an affair with a French officer, but the wife's native servant may have o...
View Movie
Le Cabaret du Grand Large
Superintendent Thomas is investigating a cabaret owner with suspicious actions....
View Movie
Quartier chinois
In a Far Eastern town, a settling of accounts between Western and Asian opium traffickers draws the ...
View Movie
The Devil's Claim
A Persian novelist living in New York throws aside the woman who loves him, and she gets an American...
View Movie
The Dragon Painter
A wild man and genius becomes a master painter's disciple, but loses his divine gift when he finds l...
View Movie
Three Came Home
Borneo, 1941, during World War II. When the Japanese occupy the island, American writer Agnes Newton...
View Movie
Daughter of the Dragon
At her Chinese father's bidding, a woman goes to murder an enemy and meets a Scotland Yard detective...
View Movie
The Wrath of the Gods
An American sailor falls in love with a fisherman's daughter and convinces her that Jesus is more po...
View Movie
John Gunther's High Road
John Gunther, a great traveler in many parts of the globe, presented on the American ABC channel the...
View Movie
The Tong Man
An opium smuggler is marked for murder in this story of the Chinese Mafia....
View Movie
Yellowface: Asian Whitewashing and Racism in Hollywood
A history of anti-Asian racism and yellowface in Hollywood after the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack....
View Movie
The Last of the Line
Sioux leader Chief Gray Otter sends his son Tiah to the white man's school so that he can become a g...
View Movie
Yoshiwara
Based on a novel by Maurice Dekobra, the film is set in Yoshiwara, the red-light district of Tokyo, ...
View Movie
The Rise and Fall of a Jungle Giant
A behind-the-scenes look at the building of the bridge in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai (195...
View Movie
The Typhoon
Tokoramo, a Japanese diplomat on a mission to Paris, begins a love affair with Helene, a chorus girl...
View Movie
The Daydreamer
A young Hans Christian Andersen goes in search of knowledge in the Garden of Paradise in order to ma...
View Movie
The Death Mask
A Native American warrior travels to a faraway tribe to find and defend a woman that haunts his drea...
View Movie
The Daughter of the Samurai
Teruo gets caught up in a conflict between tradition and modernism after returning to Japan from Ger...
View Movie
The Clue
Russian brothers Count Boris and Alexis Rabourdin obtain a Japanese coastline defense map and plan t...
View Movie
The Secret Game
In the office of Major Northfield, the quartermaster of the Pacific Coast, a leak has been discovere...
View Movie
His Birthright
Yukio is illegal in the United States and is used by a gang of spies for their plans. Yukio must ste...
View Movie
The Tragic General: Yamashita Tomoyuki
When Japan entered into the great tragedy that was unforgettable, the general general of the history...
View Movie
The Frozen Moment
Created for the "Esso World Theater" series of films in 1964, it features excerpts from "Bugaku," "G...
View Movie
The Bottle Imp
Lopaka, a poor Hawaiian fisherman, falls in love with Kokua, a young girl of royal blood. Her father...
View Movie
Gambling Hell
In Macao, where places of pleasure and arms trafficking are concentrated, a tragedy opposes an adven...
View Movie
The Courageous Coward
Sessue Hayakawa was making the transition from Asian villain to sympathetic hero in this picture. Th...
View Movie
The Man Beneath
The renown Hindu scientist, Dr. Chindi Ashutor, who has conquered plague in India, visits Scotland a...
View Movie
The Call of the East
While visiting Alan, who works in Tokyo, she attends a festival with her Japanese maid while wearing...
View Movie
The Great Prince Shan
An assassinated Lord's daughter refuses to marry a Chinese prince but agrees to be his mistress....
View Movie
47 Vendettas
The legendary tale of the forty-seven samurai who seek vengeance against the man who caused their ma...
View Movie
Screen Snapshots (Series 1, No. 20)
Intimate views of the movie stars of the Silent Era, at work and play; featuring Sessue Hayakawa, Li...
View Movie
The Victoria Cross
Maj. Ralph Seton is a British army officer stationed in Cawnpore, India, when the Sepoy Rebellion--a...
View Movie
Lover's Duet
A melodrama about a talented singer who finally makes her debut. A remake of the 1939 film of the sa...
View Movie
The Big Wave
Yukio, a farm boy, and Toru, a fisherboy, live in a small Japanese village that is periodically thre...
View Movie
The Temple Of Dusk
Japanese poet Akira living in Tokyo, loves American Ruth Vale, who was placed in the care of Akira's...
View Movie
The Secret Sin
Blanche Sweet has a dual role in this picture -- she plays twin sisters, Edith, a sweet, normal youn...
View Movie
Where Lights Are Low
The Chinese prince T'Su Wong Shih loves Quan Yin, the daughter of a gardener, but his uncle wants hi...
View Movie
The First Born
Loey Tsing, the first love of Chan Wang, is sold into slavery by her father. Although Chan marries a...
View Movie
An Arabian Knight
Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa is cast as an ancient Egyptian donkey boy in An Arabian Knight. The h...
View Movie
Bonds of Honor
In this picture, Sessue Hayakawa is in a dual role, playing twin brothers. One of them, Yamashiro is...
View Movie
Forbidden Paths
Sato (Sessue Hayakawa) faithfully works for importer James Thornton (James Neill). When the old man ...
View Movie
Hidden Pearls
Hawaiian prince Tom Garvin (Sessue Hayakawa) receives an American college education and falls in lov...
View Movie
The Honor of His House
Marooned on a desert island, Dr. Robert Farlow and wealthy toxicologist Count Ito Onato both fall in...
View Movie
Li Ting Lang
In a day and age when interracial marriages were considered taboo, film star Sessue Hayakawa rarely ...
View Movie
The Swamp
Mary and her son Buster live in a single room in the slums of the city, having been deserted by thei...
View Movie
The White Man's Law
Japanese leading man Sessue Hayakawa stars as John A. Ghengle, the Oxford-educated son of an Arab ch...
View Movie
Black Roses
Japanese architect Yoda is hired as groundskeeper for retired criminal Benson Burleigh....
View Movie
O Mimi san
A silent melodrama from the very first series of American films to use a Japanese cast. The scenes ...
View Movie
Sen Yan’s Devotion
A disguised servant of a dying Japanese prince saves articles of succession from a rival faction....
View Movie
Why Be Good?: Sexuality & Censorship in Early Cinema
Before the G, PG and R ratings system there was the Production Code, and before that there was, well...
View Movie
I Have Killed
Hideo, an antiques dealer in Tokyo, is accused of killing his best friend. In a dramatic court-room ...
View Movie
Around the World with Douglas Fairbanks
With the advent of sound, the world's leading screen idol, Douglas Fairbanks, experienced a downturn...
View Movie
A Heart in Pawn
Toyama wants to go to college in America but his alcoholic father won't supply the funds. He gets th...
View Movie
The Bravest Way
Tamura, a Japanese man working as a gardener in America, saves his money to marry his girlfriend, Ja...
View Movie
The Vermilion Pencil
The Vermilion Pencil is a 1922 American silent drama film directed by Norman Dawn, and produced and ...
View Movie
Night Life in Hollywood
A picture depicting the engrossing adventures of a small town youth in Hollywood and showing the int...
View Movie
After Five
Thinking that he has lost both his money and his beloved Nora's in a bad investment young New Yorker...
View Movie
Swiss Family Robinson: Adventure in the Making
A look behind the scenes at Walt Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson (1960)...
View Movie
Escape to Paradise/Water Birds
A behind-the-scenes show on the filming of Swiss Family Robinson on the West Indian island of Tobago...
View Movie
The Soul of Kura San
When his fiancée commits suicide after being used by an American artist, a Japanese art dealer seeks...
View Movie
日本敗れず
In May 1945, Japan's defeat was imminent after the attacks on Saipan, Iwo Jima, and the Philippines,...
View Movie
The Sun Rises from the East
The Japanese debut film of silent-era star Sessue Hayakawa, in which he not only starred but directe...
View Movie
His Debt
Goro Mariyama uses the profits from his ethically run gambling house to help the poor. Gambler Blair...
View Movie
The Beggar Prince
A humble fisherman's girlfriend is kidnapped by an egotistical prince tricked into believing he has ...
View Movie
The Illustrious Prince
The Japanese Prince Maiyo is in London to avenge the death of his father who years earlier committed...
View Movie
The Brand of Lopez
When a famed matador is forced to become an outlaw, he seeks to get revenge on the dancing girl who ...
View Movie
Hashimura Togo
After an accusation of a breach of diplomacy committed by his brother, Hashimura Togo bears the burd...
View Movie
Five Days to Live
Tai Leung, a young man who dreams of love and carves ivory images, falls in love with the pretty Kao...
View Movie
The Jaguar's Claws
The manager of the American oil company quits out of fear of El Jaguar, the bandit who is terrorizin...
View Movie
Alien Souls
A Japanese maiden is pursued by an unscrupulous American young man who falsely believes her to have ...
View Movie
The Danger Line
While her husband is away on a secret mission, the Marquise Yorisaka is Americanized by Mrs. Hockey ...
View Movie
The Gray Horizon
The skill of colorful Japanese artist Yamo Masata attracts the attention of a clever counterfeiter w...
View Movie