Pat Morita
Pat Morita, born Noriyuki Morita in 1932 in Isleton, California, was an influential comedian and actor recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to American entertainment, particularly as an Asian American performer. Overcoming significant health challenges in his youth, including spinal tuberculosis and internment during World War II, Morita emerged resilient and transitioned into a successful career in comedy. He gained fame for his role as Matsuo "Arthur" Takahashi on *Happy Days* and is best remembered for portraying Mr. Miyagi in *The Karate Kid*, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, marking a historic achievement for Asian Americans in Hollywood.
Throughout his career, Morita navigated a landscape rife with ethnic stereotypes, often using humor to challenge and confront racism. He was the first Asian American comedian to achieve widespread recognition and consistently sought to expand the representation of Asian Americans in film and television. His work earned him accolades, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he continued to perform until his passing in 2005. Morita's legacy lies in his ability to break barriers and create opportunities for future generations of Asian American artists.
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Subject Terms
Pat Morita
Actor, comedian, writer
- Born: June 28, 1932
- Birthplace: Isleton, California
- Died: November 24, 2005
- Place of death: Las Vegas, Nevada
Best remembered for his portrayal of Mr. Miyagi in the 1984 film The Karate Kid, as well as groundbreaking television roles, Pat Morita overcame early poverty, childhood paralysis, the dislocation of wartime internment, and rigid ethnic barriers to build a forty-three-year acting career.
Birth name: Noriyuki Morita
Areas of achievement: Film, television
Early Life
Pat Morita was born Noriyuki Morita in Isleton, California, in the home of his father Tamaru and mother Momoye Morita, who had emigrated from Kumamoto, Japan, in 1912 and worked as migrant farm laborers picking fruit. In one of the dirt-floored migrant cabins, Morita contracted spinal tuberculosis at two years old and nearly died. He was hospitalized at San Francisco’s Shriners Hospital and was bedridden, for part of the time in a full-body cast. While at the Weimar Sanitarium, a chaplain gave him the name Pat. Following spinal fusion in 1943, Morita learned to walk at the age of nine, contrary to doctors’ predictions. Upon his recovery, the then eleven-year-old was escorted to Gila River War Relocation Center, where his family had been interned following the US entry into World War II. They were later moved to Tule Lake Internment Camp until October 1945. Unable to speak Japanese, Morita felt isolated from his parents and family; alone and in unfamiliar and hard conditions, he missed the familiarity of the sanitarium and its staff.
Like 120,000 other Japanese Americans who had been required to abandon everything during the forced removal, the family returned to California more impoverished than before. Carrying nothing but knapsacks, they returned to farm labor, settling near Fairfield, California. Morita attended Armijo High School in Fairfield and graduated in 1949. His father purchased a small restaurant in Sacramento in 1948 and moved the family there. Morita worked in the family’s restaurant—which served Chinese food, to avoid anti-Japanese backlash after the war—and helped his mother run it after his father was killed in a hit-and-run automobile accident. Within three weeks of his twenty-first birthday, Morita married Kathleen Yamachi, with whom he had a daughter, Erin, in 1954.
Morita soon began work at Aerojet General Corporation in the Sacramento area. Despite his lack of math skills, a supervisor’s support and tutoring enabled him to pass his probationary period and become head of the operations department within three years. Soon, he moved his family to Walnut Creek, where he worked on the company’s Polaris and Titan missile projects. The sedentary though successful career left Morita, at twenty-seven, dissatisfied with his life and weighing 200 pounds. After a period of self-examination, he decided to become a comedian at the age of thirty—a decision that contributed to the eventual breakup of his first marriage. He trained by scheduling remote company projects in San Francisco, where he could watch professionals at work. There, he met comedian Flip Wilson, who entertained while on leave from nearby Hamilton Air Force Base, and who quickly became Morita’s friend and mentor in basic stand-up comedy technique.
Life’s Work
The inexperienced Morita began his career after convincing the owner of San Francisco’s Ginza West night club to let him work weekends for no pay, an engagement that lasted seventeen months. A visiting comedian from Los Angeles convinced Morita to meet his manager, Sally Marr. Marr signed Morita, coached him, and in 1966, on the strength of a fifteen-minute impromptu audition with the producer, secured him four appearances on ABC’s Hollywood Palace, then the number-two-rated network variety program. Morita soon found work on late-night television shows and in 1967 was cast in a small stereotyped part for the musical film Thoroughly Modern Millie. That year, Morita and Kathleen divorced.
Over the next ten years, Morita found roles of varying depth on television series ranging from sitcoms to police dramas. In 1970, he married Yukiye Kitahara and the couple had two daughters, Aly and Tia. Morita’s friendship with actor Redd Foxx resulted in his recurring role on the innovative sitcom Sanford and Son in 1974 as the non-stereotyped though ill-named Ah Chew.
Morita’s acting breakthrough came in the following year, with the regular role of Matsuo “Arthur” Takahashi on Happy Days. Shortly after a successful appearance on the show Welcome Back Kotter, Morita was approached by executive Michael Eisner to play the lead role of Taro Takahashi in the new show Mr. T. and Tina. Though Mr. T. and Tina was cancelled after only five episodes, Morita had broken new ground as the first Japanese American to star in a television series. Despite the setback, Morita secured a major role the 1976 television movie Farewell to Manzanar, about the Japanese American internment experience. He then became a regular character for the single 1977 season of Blansky’s Beauties, followed by his return to Happy Days from 1978 until 1983.
Morita’s most-remembered film role followed in 1984 when he played Kesuke Miyagi in The Karate Kid—an iconic role that earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, the first for an Asian American. In a rare dramatic role, Morita portrayed a karate master who mentors a teenager played by Ralph Macchio. He used a thick Japanese accent for the role and was billed as Noriyuki “Pat” Morita because producers wanted him to seem more ethnic. More television work followed the film, along with a 1986 reprise of the Mr. Miyagi character in The Karate Kid, Part II. Morita then created, occasionally wrote, and played the title role in the 1987 police drama Ohara, which ran for two seasons. Regular film, television, and voiceover work continued over the next nineteen years, interspersed with two additional Karate Kid sequels 1989 and 1994, the last featuring Hilary Swank as Miyagi’s pupil.
Throughout his career Morita made guest appearances on programs ranging from M*A*S*H (1973–4) to Baywatch (2000–1) to SpongeBob SquarePants (2006). Though he played mostly bit parts and stock Asian characters, Morita was hardworking and had a reputation as a dependable and funny comic actor. He was nominated for an Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards in 1986. In 1995 Morita was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to entertainment.
Morita and his second wife divorced in 1989, and he married Evelyn Louise Guerrero in 1994. Morita continued working into the last year of his life and died of natural causes on November 24, 2005, in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the age of seventy-three.
Significance
Pat Morita was the first Asian American comedian to gain wide exposure with mainstream audiences and the first to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting. From the beginning, his comedy rested on ethnicity, as he was forced to work within stereotypes—even billing himself as the “Hip Nip” for American audiences in the 1960s. In one engagement Morita even performed for an audience of World War II veterans on the twenty-fifth anniversary reunion of the survivors of Pearl Harbor. Morita also confronted and ridiculed racism in an era when cultural identity was a new and uncomfortable concept. Within a lingering typecasting system that reduced Asian Americans to caricatures, he also expanded their television and film presence and potential.
Bibliography
Champlin, Charles. “Morita’s Long Road to Miyagi.” Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times,22 June 1986. Web. 5 Mar. 2012. Discusses Morita’s life and career, as well as his views on his success following the release of The Karate Kid, Part II in 1986.
Downes, Lawrence. “Goodbye to Pat Morita, Best Supporting Asian.” New York Times 29 Nov. 2005, late ed.: 26. Print. An editorial that reflects on Morita’s acting career, also discussing the limited roles for Asian American actors as stereotypical stock characters.
Lipton, Mike, and Howard Breuer. “Pat Morita.” People 12 Dec. 2005: 79–80. Print. An obituary for Morita that discusses his family, acting career, and struggles with alcoholism.