Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi in the Context of Blake Edwards Movies and Peter Sellers Comedy

I thought I might separate this out from the other "Mr. Yunioshi" threads on this board to remind folks that this character appears in a movie directed by Blake Edwards.

Unlike as with some of his other films, Blake Edwards did not write or co-write the screenplay for Breakfast at Tiffanys'(BAT.) A screenplay by the novella's (?) author, Truman Capote, was re-written by George Axelrod(whose "Seven Year Itch" and "Manchurian Candidate" scripts couldn't be further apart in subject matter.)

Crucially, I don't know if Mr. Yunioshi appeared in Capote's novella, and if he did, if he was written as broadly as in the movie, and if he did, if he was based on a REAL Japanese man encountered by Capote(Capote often fictionalized real people in his books.)

All that said, we have Yunioshi as he is in this famous -- "semi-classic" -- for other reasons -- 1961 movie. And whether he was in the book or not, Yunioshi is well in accord with some other "comedy characters" in Blake Edwards work:

Inspector Clouseau -- originated by Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther(1963) and A Shot in the Dark(1964) carried on by Sellers in some 70's sequels and tried out by some other actors along the way(Alan Arkin, Steve Martin.) A FRENCH comedy character with a FRENCH accent. ("You must have a LIH-SANCE for the MINKY!")

Kato -- the Asian "houseboy"(uh oh) to Inspector Clouseau -- who would continuously try to ambush and attack Clouseau at home to keep Clouseau's self-defense skills sharp. (The actor who played him was Burt Kwouk, of whose nationality I am unaware.)

Hrundi V. Bakshi -- The "Hindu Indian" Hollywood extra played by Peter Sellers in Blake Edwards "The Party" of 1968 -- an attempt, said Edwards, to expand the "wild party" sequence in BAT into a full length movie.

So when one looks at this from simply the standpoint of Blake Edwards -- a "master' of slapstick(so said the Motion Picture Academy with an award given to Edwards by Jim Carrey) AND from a rich tradition in American and British comedy of "dialect comedy" -- it all fits: a Japanese comic character(Rooney in BAT, selected perhaps because he was very short and that's how Hollywood saw the Japanese); a French comic charcter(Sellers as Clouseau) an "Asian" comic character(was Kato supposed to be Chinese or Japanese or some other Asian nationality?) and a Hindu Indian character (played by Sellers with as sweet and chlld-like a manner as Clouseau was an egotistical blowhard.)

It would seem that ONLY the French comedy character (Inspector Clouseau) with HIS "funny accent" (to American audiences) has been allowed to continue unscathed through the years. A "continental European." A white guy.

The Japanese accent(Rooney), the Asian character(Kato), the Hindu accent(Sellers)...all deep sixed in the name of modern times.

Crossover from Blake Edwards to Peter Sellers himself: part of his comedy credentials as British TV star and indie movie star(in the 50s) and then as a major movie star in the 60s WAS accents.

Peter Sellers did The Hindu Indian character from The Party way back in 1962 in the "modern day Road movie" with an aged Hope and Crosby -- 'The Road to Hong Kong." Sellers gets an entire scene - quite funny --doing the Hindu guy with the Hindu voice.

And Sellers could do an Asian accent to. As late as "Murder by Death" -- way out in 1976, Sellers doe his version of Charlie Chan(in a movie about a dinner among detectives) ...and perhaps got away with it because he was playing, well...a variant on Charlie Chan.

In Doctor Strangelove, Sellers gives us a hliarious GERMAN accent -- Dr. Strangelove himself. But he also gives us a "comedy enhanced" British character, and(for Sellers) a very-difficult to achieve AMERICAN accent (as President Merkin Muffley.) Sellers had been asked by Kubrick to do the Texas accent for the guy played by Slim Pickens, but Sellers called it at three characters.

To Blake Edwards accent slapstick humor and Peter Sellers accent humor, let's add one more:

In the 60's, a short, boyish looking and swarthy comedian named Bill Dana shot to fame on comedy shows as "Jose Jimenez," a sweet and stoic MEXICAN-AMERICAN character who always said "My name Jose Jimenez." (Which sounded like "My name Hosey Hee-menez." ) As the movie "The Right Stuff" depicted, Jose once introduced himself as an astronaut, so the REAL NASA astronauts started doing his schtick.

And we had comedy Russian accents ("Boris and Natasha" on Rocky and Bullwinkle.") But that issue would be solved in the 80's when a REAL Russian comedian named Yakov Smirnoff came to America and did "Russian comedy schtick."

And who needed Jose Jimenez when eventually we got Cheech Marin and George Lopez.

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