More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story - Snapshots of an Asian-American actor's uphill climb and unhappy ending

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B

The list of celebrities with whom I’ve imbibed isn’t especially long. But I feel differently about one of my favourite anecdotes after having seen the documentary More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story.

I was in Detroit in the ‘80s on the set of a movie that isn’t even mentioned in this rundown of the late actor/comedian’s career. It was the straight-to-video buddy cop movie Collision Course, with Morita and Jay Leno. I am not making this up.

Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio, a.k.a. Mr. Miyagi and Daniel-san.

It was my last interview of the day, and he’d wrapped his last scene. We retreated to Morita’s trailer, where he opened a fridge and tossed me a tall-boy of beer while an assistant rolled a joint. Being in my 20s, not wanting to be rude (and not driving), I accepted his invitation to partake while we talked.

Just another celebrity story reporters trade at bars to keep conversation flowing. But so much of the last act of Morita’s life, as recounted in More Than Miyagi, is informed by severe alcoholism and career self-destruction, I now feel uncomfortable about this previously fond memory.

As we’re shown in this admiring doc by Kevin Derek (exec produced by Morita’s third wife and widow Evelyn Gerrero-Morita), most of Morita’s life was an uphill climb. Childhood spinal tuberculosis left doctors convinced he would never walk. He grew up in a Japanese-American WWII internment camp, and eventually abandoned the relative security of his Japanese parents’ Chinese restaurant (also abandoning his first wife and kids) and traded it for an impossible dream of being an Asian entertainer in a crushingly racist ‘50s America.

Comedians lived hard, and tellingly, Morita began his career represented by Lenny Bruce’s mother, the talent agent Sally Marr. With a trademark soul patch, he was billed as “The Hip Nip.” And to his credit, he managed to turn some stereotypes upside down, showing up on stage with a pidgin accent for the first 20 seconds or so, and then breaking character and saying, “Why am I talking like this? I don’t even speak Japanese!” 

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To be an Asian-American performer in that era meant you were as likely to lose a stereotypically Asian role to someone like Mickey Rooney, Katharine Hepburn or Marlon Brando, as to another Asian. That, I imagine, could drive anyone to drink.

But More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story is the story of a consummate late bloomer. It would be 20 years of working the mikes before he’d get his break as the drive-in owner Arnold in Happy Days.

But getting his big break in his mid-40s was a mixed blessing. When Arnold became a breakout character, he left the sure-thing gig at Happy Days for his own sitcom, Mr. T and Tina, which lasted four episodes, leaving him adrift. 

Even landing Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid was a struggle, with six auditions and a director, John Avildsen, who had an “over my dead body” attitude toward casting a comedian (he was intent on hiring Japanese film legend Toshiro Mifune).

Given the huge shadow Mr. Miyagi cast over the rest of his life, it’s ironic that the bulk of More Than Miyagi’s narrative is about, well, Miyagi. Interviews with The Karate Kid’s Ralph Macchio, William Zabka and Martin Kove figure in the profile, some of them taken on the set of Cobra Kai, the Karate Kid series spin-off that Morita didn’t live to see, though his spirit hovers over it.

Happy Days alumni also reminisce, including Henry Winkler, Don Most, Marion Ross and Anson Williams. They paint a portrait of a generous, fun-loving personality who had tips for all the younger actors who surrounded him onset (hot tip from Morita: If the script calls for you to cry, hold your eyes open until your eyes tear up).

Looking past its nostalgia and unhappy ending, More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story is kind of a time capsule of an era of North American showbiz, and the compromises and struggles that faced people because of their faces.

More Than Miyagi: The Pat Morita Story. Directed by Kevin Derek. Starring Pat Morita, Henry Winkler, Ralph Macchio. Available Friday, February 5 on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, DVD and Blu-ray.