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Monday, July 24, 2006

We've lost another one of the great character actors, Mako

First a few quotes from the Playbill news item, then me.
Mako, the Japanese actor who was Tony Award nominated for playing the Reciter in the original Broadway production of Pacific Overtures, died July 21 at his home in Somis, in Ventura County, California, according to friends and colleagues.



"Personally, Mako helped open my eyes as a young artist just graduating from USC," East West Players' producing artistic director Tim Dang told Playbill.com. "He made me aware of the lack of opportunities in the industry and the valiant work that was ahead. He wanted to make sure that I was tough enough to survive in an industry where 80 percent of artists are unemployed and that percentage is even worse if you are an artist of color."



Mako's film credits include "Memoirs of a Geisha," "Conan the Barbarian," "Seven Years in Tibet," "Pearl Harbor," "The Green Hornet," "Rising Sun," "The Ugly Dachshund" and more.



His sonorous performance in Pacific Overtures was captured on the original cast recording.

He also appeared in four different episodes of "M*A*S*H" as four different characters over the long span of the series. The most memorable was probably "Guerrilla My Dreams." Mako played a South Korean officer Hawkeye tries to prevent from interrogating a wounded woman being held at the 4077th as an enemy guerrilla. (That synopsis is slightly rewritten from the one appearing in The Classic Sitcom Guide). It was a rare episode in which Hawkeye's trusty liberalism was found to be deficient.

But perhaps Mako's most underrated performance is in an overlooked film called The Wash, released in 1988. Playing a rigid, domineering husband and father who nearly breaks when his wife of over 40 years finds the strength to leave him, he is superb, powerful and filled with emotion. The film may be hard to find, though it is available in some of your better video stores, and I cannot recommend it too highly.

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