RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN IN
“THE MAKING OF SHOGUN”
© 2004. Okihei Enterprise, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Tribute to Richard Chamberlain

 

 

 

 

 
Eric Bercovici: To go into a project like this literally into an unknown world none of us had ever been to Japan in the 1960s before, it required a certain group of people with a certain attitude to make it work. 
Richard: I was doing, I think Cyrano de Bergerac at the Ahmanson Theater or maybe it was The Night of the Iguana. I can't remember which. But somebody came backstage. There were a bunch of people backstage one night after the show in my dressing room and somebody I'd never seen before said, "Have you read Shogun," and I said, "Hmm?" "Have you read Shogun?" It was a hugely popular novel at...I just didn't happen to know about it. And I said, "No," and he said, "Read it. Make a great miniseries."
Jerry London: From what I heard they went to Sean Connery, and he liked the material but ofcourse, he had never done television so he didn't want to do it. And then it went to Roger Moore, and for some reason, whether he was not available, or didn't want to do it I never heard. And then a whole list came out, Albert Finney and so forth and so forth and I think that NBC said, look we want a recognizable name. "Get me one, big recognizable name," and ofcourse Richard was.
Richard: I knew I had to play Blackthorne. Just I had to play Blackthorne. And so I started to chase it down. 
Eric Bercovici: He came in and met us at Paramount, and he looked great. He looked....he had a beard, and he looked really... He looked like a pirat.

 

 
Richard: I was all dolled up with a beard and everything, trying to be as "Blackthorne" as possible, you know? And he bought the act.
And was very instrumental in... getting me the part, because James Clavell really did want Sean Connery, and then he really did want a British actor to play the part, but....largely because of Eric, I got the part.
Eric Bercovici: The amount of work that he had to do physically--forget the words--the physical work that he had to do Richard had to have been exhausted every single night, cause he carried the whole production. It was all on his back. 
Richard: Well, I read everything I could find historically about this character and about the time.

 

 
Richard: I'm never sure if that does any good. I'm never sure whether that kind of research helps, because most of what you need is right there on the page.

 

 
Yoko Shimada: Working with Richard Chamberlain was wonderful.
He was warm heart person, and looking after me all the time. And yes, I had known him from Dr. Kildare.

 

 
Frank Cardea: He worked under extremely difficult conditions.
He worked with a leading lady who didn't speak a word of English, as talented and wonderful as she was. He worked in the heat of summer, the cold of winter, very primitive stages and conditions. We worked 18-hour days, and the man never stopped smiling. He never once complained. Had there been any other actor, I think 20 years later, we'd still be there shooting.
Eric Bercovici: All the Japanese actors were day players. We could not afford to hire them for the whole film the way we hired, you know Richard and the English actors. And so, the whole schedule depended on their availability, and that included Mifune. We did not have Mifune under contract for the whole film. So, there was a contant negotiation going on as to his availability--what days he could work for us, and what days he could work for the other projects that he was doing at the same time. I got very tight on a few occasions. 
Jerry London: The first time I met him, I was up in the office, up in the studio, and some guy walks in,and I look up, I'm saying, "He looks familiar," but I didn't recognize him because in civilian clothes, he doesn't have that majestic grandeur that Toshiro has, but as soon as he put on that costume, he became not only Toranaga, he becomes a king. The guy is magic. 
Richard: Well, after seeing all those Kurosawa films in which he was just..well...unbelievable. And then on set the first time he went in his samurai gear, he was unapproachably animal. He'd somethimes sit on a little still facing a wall and kinf of just..Kind of growl linke some kind of caged beast. Nobody would go up to him.
Nobody would approach him in his samurai garb except on official business. Nobody would go near him, as far as I know.

 

 
John Rhys-Davies: He was completely in character...you know, whenever he came on. I fact, the only time I ever saw Richard even slightly nonplussed...He came up to me one day. He said, "You know, if Mifune doesn't say "Good morning, "Richard" to me, one of these days"after I've said, 'Good morning, Mr. Mifune' to him, I think I'll hit him." He didn't mean it. Mifune was just matchless.
Frank Cardea: Toshiro was the consummate, I mean, professional and brilliant, brilliant actor. He had more stage presence than anyone I've ever worked with. I mean if you had your back to the stage door when he walked in, you felt him coming in. He was just incredible, and he was...He's a guy who was a god there. It was like working with John Wayne of Japan.
Yoko Shimada: He was so into the role when he was on the set, but sometimes he showed charming side of him.
Richard: Personally, so sweet sometimes, and surprisingly so.
I remember once he was in his samurai gear, and I was like that, but there was a lunch break, and I had something valuable that I wanted to hide and didn't want to just leave on the set. So I stuck it up in the rafters of this set, and Mifune-san was around, and started to laugh, and he laughed and laughed and laughed and said, "You're so Japanese." He said, "That's what the Japanese do" they hide their money and wrap it.  "They don't take it to the bank.
"They don't trust the bank."They hide it in the rafters" or put it under the mattress or they bury it in the ground."

 

 
Eric Bercovici: He was splendid, Toshiro. He was always there, willing to do everything and when there was some kind of confusion about what the Japanese actors would do, he would step right in, Mifune would step right in and says, "No, no, no," and he would tell them what to do. I was till wrting the script and Jerry and Jerry and James went off to London to cast the..all of the English parts.
The Dutch sailors were all cast in England, which was rather interesting. They were off casting, and I was till writing. So that gave us a good idea that the project was going to go ahead. And Jerry and James found John Rhys-Davies in London who played Rodriques who was an absolute gift to the whole project. 
John Rhys-Davies: There are parts, and there are actor-proof parts. We dream about actor-proof parts. Actor-proof parts are parts that even you can't screw up.  Even I can't screw up. 
Jerry London: I feel I discovered John Rhys-Davies 'cause he hadn't really done anything before then. I mean, he was magic. He was magic for the show. And of course, he went on to do all of Spielberg's pictures and everything else. 
John Rhys-Davies: I owe Maude...whatever career that I've had. 
I owe Jerry my career. 
Richard: John Rhys-Davies was extravagant and big. Very savvy. 
Very clever. And very good at stealing scenes. So, you've got to be very careful with him.
John Rhys-Davies: As I studied the script and studied the part and wondered how I would play the thing, I realized that my function had to be the powerhouse--the engin in this piece. I had to come in with twice as much energy as I should've done, say the words twice as fast as I should've done and use that enery to drive the scene forward. That would then give Richard time to underplay for a change, take his time. And that energy would then transfer itself into the next few scenes. I certainly knew that I was onto a good thing, because the very first time I met Bercovici, this then fearsome-looking, bearded, piratical fellow..came bouncing up to me and, you know, he said, "Now, listen, you son of a bitch, you're playing my part, so get it right!" When you're actually playing the writer's favorite part, you're on a pretty safe wicket.
Frank Cardea: The most dramatic casting I got involved in was the leading lady. One of our many production problems was about a week before the start of production, another woman had been cast as Mariko. And subsequent between her being cast and the start of production, she was also a singer. 

 

 
Jerry London: And so we never even worried about that part 'cause we knew we had her. Until... the schedule went out, and her manager said, "Oh, well, we can't work this day, we can't work this." We said, "Why?" Well she's on tour, she's singing. We said, "No, no you don't understand. "We want this girl for six months. It's the biggest part in the picture next to Blackthorne." 
Frank Cardea: So we lost our leading lady the week before production. And we made the dicision not to stop, not to delay production. We couldn't Eric Bercovici and I made a decision early on that nothing would stop the production. It's that old analogy about a shark has to keep moving or he dies. We felt that if Shogun ever stopped, it would never restart. We juggled the whole picture and still we shot a month without a leading lady. 
Jerry London: And then, we were drying up. We had to have her, we still didn't have her. There was nobody. And I mean, at one point, Paramount said, "Well, we'll take an American actress and put her in Asian makeup." And we went, "Oh, that's ...we can't do that."No, it's impossible. The whole picture is over." 
Eric Bercovici: Jerry and I were both looking at videos at night of Japanese actresses, and they kept bringing them to the set. The problem was, we were looking for a Japanese actress who could speak English and we couldn't find any. And there were a number of Japanese actresses we'd met who were very impressive when they said, "Hello. How are you? I'm so glad to be auditioning for this role." And then when we would ask them a question, they would say, "Hello, How are you? I'm very glad to be auditioning for this role."
Jerry London: So, I remember it was, like on a Saturday, and there was, like, three girls in all of Japan left to read. And then, all of a sudden, we hear a Japanese girl  Speaking English that we understood. And we didn't really look at the stage because we were so disheartened we didn't want to look, you know. But we hear this voice and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and it was like two puppets' heads turning and looking over at the stage. And there she was. Yoko Shimada was there. And we hired her.
Eric Bercovici: She worked very, very hard to be able to learn her dialoque in English. And learn her dialoque in Japanese as well.
Yoko Shimada: After audition--three days after--my agent call me and he said, "You're going to do Shogun."I-I was just surprised.
And Jerry London was.... full of energy and spontaneous. And he was always there for me, supporting my acting.
Eric Bercovici: My son, Luca, who was in Japan at the time, became hired by Frank--I must say, not by me--to be her dialoque coach. And he, literally, put every line of English in her mouth.
Yoko Shimada: Luca was my coach, and he was a very hard teacher. Sometimes, he...pull my tongue. "Your tongue is here, not there. Here".
Luca Bercovici: It was important that she knew what it was that she was saying. Yes, she had the Japanese translation, but that sometimes differed from the English script. So it was important that she understood what it was thats he was saying. So we spend a lot of time going over the meaning of the word. So, in the process of doing that, she and I developed a.... a rapport. I mean, for lack of a better word. 
Eric Bercovici: And because he was my son, he had an advantage because he would come to me and say, "She can't say this word. She can't say 'Earth.'" I'd say, "Change it to World." He would go back, he would come back and say, "She can't say, 'World" either." So her dialoque had to be constantly tailored for her. And what words we never managed to get correctly were done in post production. 

 

 
Richard: Yoko Shimada, her emotional depth was just staggering.
And that seemed odd to me in the sense that the Japanese -- in my experience, at least in daily life -- seemed not to be very expressive emotionally. They were friendly and wonderful, but emotionally, rather hidden. So when she came out with these powerful, powerful scenes of deep, deep feeling, I was really, sort of awestruck.

 

 
Jerry London: Damien Thomas had a big part, and he was a real interesting actor and a very sinewy kind of guy. He was lean and kind of angular and kind of angry looking. And he was perfect for the part. 
John Rhys-Davies: He was physically beautiful. He had a good voice. He had... he was a real actor, real actor's intelligence. 
Richard: Damien was sensational, and his command of Japanese which he didn't speak, either--was astounding. He had whole scenes in Japanese. I have no idea how he learned that stuff.
Jerry London: Frankie Sakai was a comedian in Japan, actually. 
He did stand-up comedy. And ...he had a great look, but I don't think he had done too much dramatic work. Yeah, but he spoke perfect English. Understood it, which helped a lot. 
Eric Bercovici: He played Yabu. He played this really fierce man. But he was jolly, funny, always laughing, practical-joking fellow.
We had a wonderful time with Frankie Sakai. 
Jerry London: We tested him, we just put the stuff on him and a couple of scenes. And then we said, "This is him." And luckily, we got him because his look for that part was perfect. And his sense of humor --'cause Yabu has a sense of humor -- really worked.
John Rhys-Davies: The two greatest actors I've ever seen on stage are Laurence Olivier and Alan Badel. Badel had an incandescent enery. 
Jerry London: A classical British actor. Done hundreds of roles, hundreds of big movies. Very famous in England. Had an interesting delivery, an interesting voice.
John Rhys-Davies: I talked to John Gielgud about Badel once. 
He said, "Oh, yes, he joined me and my company" just after the war. "He was a very tiresome young actor, I have to tell you. "You know, he was a very minor member of the company. "Kept sending me notes on my performance. "You know, after each production, each performance, "He would send me notes. But I do agree with you--very, very gifted."
Jerry London: I was very lucky that the cast meshed together so well. When I cast them, I tried to get the individual look for all of them, and they worked together as a team. I was just such a pleasure to work with such pros who came from the English theater.

 

 
Richard: Shogun definitely did have an educational effect on America, educating us about Japan in a most wonderful, interesting way.  And I'm sure some of it stuck because we're still frequeting Japanese restaurants and eating tons of sushi, which we didn't do before. I felt from the very beginning that Shogun was very special and that it was an extremely special opportunity  for me as an actor. "Special"is an inadequate word for the way I felt about it.
It was everything to me. 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Richard: I would do Shogun again in a second if I were 30 years younger ha ha ha. 

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