Other Cringeworthy Blackface/Yellowface/Etc. movies

Cafe Society
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We’re all familiar with the classic embarrassing parts in movies --John Wayne in The Conqueror, Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Marlon Brando as Sakini in Teahouse of the August Moon. But there are plenty of other movies, and lots with multiple miscast roles

Genghis Khan (1965). If you thought John Wayne was badly cast as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror, have a look at this one. I saw it as a kid when it first came out. Seeing it again recently, it was hard to watch. Look at this list of Caucasian actors playing Chinese, Mongolian, or other Asian roles:

Stephen Boyd

Telly Savalas

Robert Morley (as the Emperor of China!!)

Michael Hordern

Eli Wallach

George Savalas (Telly’s brother, who was also in Kojak)

and James Mason (!!)

Judge Dee (1969) – a Granada Television series

I’d really like to see this series. I love Robert H. van Gulik’s Judge Dee mysteries, set in T’ang dynasty China. This British series was the first adaptation of van Gulik’s stories, but done with what appears to be an all-British cast, including a young Timothy Dalton.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164265/

Years later Nicholas Meyer (the King of TV movies) wrote a script for Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders (1974), which used almost exclusively actors of Asian ancestry. Except, oddly, for Judge Dee himself, played by “Khigh Dheigh”, who was famous for playing Wo Fat on Hawaii Five-O and for numerous other roles. I was amazed to learn that he’s of Anglo-Egyptian Sudanese ancestry. The TV movie was supposed to be a pilot of a series, but ABC balked.

My Geisha (1962) - Shirley MacLaine’s character disguises herself as a geisha to surprise her director-husband, and later to try out for the lead role in Madame Butterfly. It’s been ages since I saw this, and I think she did a creditable jovb, but this kind of butterfly would never fly today.

You Only Live Twice (1967) – Sean Connery made up as a Japanese man, with prosthetic epicanthic folds, looks amazingly like Sean Connery and wouldn’t fool anyone.

Gods of Egypt ( 2016) A lot of European actors (and also Chadwick Boseman) portray the deities of ancient Egypt in one seriously miscast film.

Starship Troopers (1997) – Ignore all the stuff about how this is a terrible and wrong-headed adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s work. What I’m concerned about here is that the cast is awfully anglo for a story that, on Earth, is supposed to be set in Argentina. In the book, Johnny Rico is Filipino, and presumably lived in the Philippines. Rico’s mom was killed by a “bug meteor” that fell on Buenos Aires, but it’s clear in the book that she was just visiting, so evidently they weren’t paying attention. The point is, Johnny Rico and his schoolmates feel as if they live inMinnesota, not Argentina or the Philippines.

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Which is weird for a film that is actively parodying the fascist nature of the book. What possible reason would there be to have a bunch blond blue eyed natives of Argentina in a parody of fascism? :roll_eyes:

I’m not a huge fan of the film (you can be a parody of fascism without making an episode of Beverly Hills 90201) but that was one of the better subtle jabs in the movie IMO

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Adele James playing the Macedonian Greek Cleopatra in the 2023 Netflix series Queen Cleopatra

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No mention yet of Robert Downey Jr. in black face in Tropic Thunder? That seems to be one of the biggest offenders in this area. Or at least one that gets brought up frequently.

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I was always amused by the Ashkenazi Eli Wallach playing Mexicans – e.g. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, The Magnificent Seven – presumably on the theory that he was swarthier than the whitebread standard of the day.

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“Japanese” Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Usually cut out of most television showings.

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And the WASP Charlton Heston as a Mexican in Touch of Evil.

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Iron Eyes Cody, possibly most famous for playing the crying Indian in the i70s anti-pollution commercial, also played a Native American in a number of movies.

He got so caught up in the habit of playing a Native American that he would claim IRL to be a member of several different tribes. But he was actually Italian American.

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A response in the Movie Marathon thread game reminded me of Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. Remo’s martial-arts trainer and mentor in the “Destroyer” novel series on which the movie was based is a Korean man, Chiun; in the film, Chiun is played by the Jewish-American Joel Grey.

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The Two Ronnies performed an entire calypso medley in blackface on their eponymous TV show. The cringe is mitigated just a tad by two factors: (1) they had an actual all-Black calypso ensemble, The New Sensations, as their backing band, and (2) the lyrics are surprisingly on point about the challenges faced by Caribbeans under British rule.

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And I believe he was played by Roddy McDowell in the tv spinoff pilot.

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That’s a little more complicated as its parodying Hollywood movie blackface. Is that ok? Most people nowadays would say no, it’s not. YMMV

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The movie is built as a self-referential, multi-layered satire of Hollywood itself, outside today’s culture-war debates. (He goes even further and disguises himself as an Asian vendor when they infiltrate the camp.)

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Both Adele James and Cleopatra have one parent of African descent and one parent of European descent. Cleopatra probably looked more like her than Elizabeth Taylor.

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I don’t have such a problem with a lot of casting. As I posted two years ago:

It’s acting. if we all get too precise in casting ethnicities, no one gets to do any roles. As I just watched Philadelphia, I read that Hanks said a straight guy couldn’t play Andy these days; you’d need a gay actor. If we can only play what we are, then Hanks can’t play Forrest Gump, Jim Lovell, Capt Phillips, a Cast Away, a Ranger captain, Capt Sullenberger, A toy cowboy, an escort ship captain, well you get the idea. You’d need to cast those actual people.

As for the OP, fake ethnic casting is still not as bad an Bing Crosby doing his actual blackface routine in Holiday Inn. Bingle, what WERE you thinking??

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And the character was being called out for his blackface by an actual Black person in the film (in the “What do you mean ‘you people’?” scene).

I found the “retard” humor much more cringeworthy. Or Tom Cruise pretending to be Jewish, down to the fake nose.

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Anthony Quinn, a Mexican-American actor in every role he starred as the non-exactly white, foreign, exotic and swarthy character.

Omar Sharif, an Egyptian actor in every role he starred as the non-exactly white, foreign, exotic and swarthy character.

ETA: also Charlton Heston as a Mexican (with brown face and fake mustache) in “Touch Of Evil” and Spaniard in “El Cid”.

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That was what he claimed, and wacky ethnic claims are nothing new (as you certainly know). Is it true, who knows?

For my own contribution, how about Watto, playing an alien [Jewish] pawnbroker in one of the Star Wars movies, and Jar Jar Binks, playing an alien Jamaican.

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I find the Spaghetti westerns with Italians trying to be Mexicans cringy.

It’s not that terrible. But I do notice.

Oh Clint, you shoulda known better. :thinking:

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Alexi Sayle in Indiana Jones is pretty dodgy, much as I love him. It’s a Ukrainian playing a north African (or a generic Hollywood “Arab”, the distinction between the two being too much for Hollywood to grasp) and not only that it’s a stereotype of a corrupt arab monarch. Which is worse IMO