But more horror was to come when, in 1956, he witnessed his father dying after being hit by a pick-up truck, his trousers catching in a wheel. He married at 21, fathering the first of three daughters, and got work in computer operations at Aerojet General. Some solace was found in the bootleg sake his grandfather made there – the 12-year-old Morita quickly developed a taste for it. And on top of the general degradation in the camps, the young Morita had spent the previous nine years in hospital with English-speaking people – in the camps, everyone spoke Japanese, which he couldn’t. “They were America’s version of concentration camps,” he later said. Upon release though, in 1941, with the war having kicked in, an FBI agent escorted him directly from the hospital to an internment camp, where his parents, having been slung out of their home, were now imprisoned.īy all accounts, Morita’s years at these places were hellish. At two years old he smashed his lumbar and developed spinal tuberculosis, in and out of comas for years, stuck in a body cast from shoulder to knee until he was 11. They settled in Sacramento, California, and their boy Noriyuki was born in 1932. Morita’s parents were from Kumamoto, Japan, itinerant farm workers who arrived in the US in 1912. But threaded in and out of his success was a life littered with turmoil. Having endured a mostly horrendous childhood, he hustled his way into the stand-up circuit in his early 30s, becoming an impressive sitcom star, and then fought his way into The Karate Kid, winning an Oscar nomination for his performance. He’d had a lean few years before that, and a turbulent few decades. The character came late to Morita – he was 50 when Miyagi arrived. “We view Mr Miyagi as a character on our show,” co-creator Josh Heald once said. There are constant references to Miyagi, both verbal and visual, many of them touching tributes, sensitively baked into the story, his mischief and wisdom both intact. Morita died in 2005, but the creators of Cobra Kai have ensured that his presence is keenly felt throughout. It was diminishing returns for the rest but Morita was solid throughout, a wise old man with a broken heart, a selfless, formidable mentor. Morita played Mr Miyagi, the mild-mannered Japanese maintenance man/karate master in four films, beginning with 1984’s charming drama The Karate Kid. Starring the original leads – Ralph Macchio (as cute underdog turned smooth-talking family man Daniel LaRusso), William Zabka (school bully turned middle-aged burnout Johnny Lawrence) and Martin Kove (terrible tyrant turned even more terrible tyrant John Kreese), it’s an exhilarating rejuvenation. Four seasons in and Cobra Kai, the Netflix sequel series that picks up from The Karate Kid films three decades on, is a sleeper smash. The fifth time, we were on a cold, blank outline stage - no sets, nothing, but in costume - but they shoot it this time for real.Nobody – least of all Noriyuki ‘Pat’ Morita – would have predicted Mr Miyagi’s afterlife. They make us do it again, this time in costume in front of the studio heads. … They want to see if there is chemistry. “They bring me in five times,” Morita said. The producer was shocked how good Morita was but still wasn’t sold that the Happy Days actor could hold his own. “That’s the first teeny, teeny, teeny glimpse that hey, maybe I got a shot at something here,” Morita said.ĭuring a preproduction meeting days later, Avildsen popped in the tape while Weintraub was talking, surprising everyone. At the end of the reading, Avildsen asked Morita if he wanted to take his script because he might need it. I want an actor.'”Īvildsen (who died June 16) decided he would take matters into his own hands, so a reading with just the two men was scheduled, which Avildsen recorded. ![]() “Every time my name came up in the casting process, he was adamant: ‘I don’t want a comic. “He wouldn’t even consider me for a reading,” he said. Weintraub hated the idea, Morita explained. Somehow, Morita - previously a comedian whose largest credit at the time was Matsuo “Arnold” Takahashi on Happy Days - was brought up. ![]() It all began when Weintraub and Avildsen found their Daniel in Ralph Macchio but weren’t having any luck with Mr. Ralph Macchio (Still) Dislikes 'The Karate Kid Part III' But Proud 'Cobra Kai' Fleshed Out Dynamite Villain
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