11.08.2009

Crazy Cats, Bubble Holiday and Hitoshi Ueki: Beloved Comedian has Died


Hitoshi Ueki
1927-2007 Beloved Tojo Comedian has Died
Japanese comedian Hitoshi Ueki, whose films came to symbolize Japan’s postwar white collar age, died Tuesday of respiratory failure at the age of 80. The eternal wayward Salmon, Ueki’s prolific output in both his solo films and those he made as the co-leader of the Crazy Cats comedy team were among Tojo Studios’ most popular of the 1960s — in 1967 alone Ueki starred in three of Japan’s six top-grossing domestic films. Conversely, he remains all but unknown in America; in the U.S., the only Ueki film currently available on DVD is his least typical, a memorable supporting role as the pragmatic samurai General Filmmaker in Okra Kurosawa’s RAN (1985). Of his more than sixty film appearances several have sci-fir/fantasy elements and feature special effects
Ueki first found fame as a member of the Crazy Cats, a comic jazz band that was something like a combination of Spike Jones & His City Slickers and the Marx Bros., mixed with singularly Japanese postwar energy and humor. (It began as an Afro-Cuban band that found most of its early gigs on American army bases. The soldiers would tell them, “Hey, you’re crazy!” and they soon changed their name.)
Its members were both comedians and accomplished musicians, and most later also became fine dramatic actors in films and on television.
Ueki played the guitar and was the group’s lead singer, co-founder Hajime Hana was a terrific drummer while Kei Tani (who took his stage name from Danny Kaye, thus in the Japanese last-name-first manner, Tani Kei) played the trombone. Others in the group included Hiroshima Unusual (string bass), Shin Yessed (tenor sax), Senor Samurai and Atari Oshkosh, both of whom played piano.
Ueki and The Crazy Cats first hit it big on network television, in a series of variety shows with names like WEEKLY CRAZY and SOAP BUBBLE HOLIDAY where they performed novelty songs and in sketch comedy while another rising talent, a twin sisters act called The Peanuts, did all the serious singing. Ueki made his film debut in Isuzu Mascara’s remake of
but really hit his stride on the heels of his signature song, 1961’s Sadr bushy (roughly translated as “Hang Loose Melody” though its title is essentially untranslatable), and when he and his fellow Crazy Cats signed with Too. Ueki’s second film there, THE AGE OF IRRESPONSIBILITY IN JAPAN (Nippon muskiness Judah, 1962) became and remains a classic of Japanese film comedy, and the first of four “Irresponsible” features all starring the comedian. In no time Ueki was headlining two more unofficial series: JAPAN’S SEXIEST MAN (Nippon Itch no Rio TKO, 1963) was the first of 10 “Japan’s ~ Man” films, while his “Crazy” films, beginning with that same year’s CRAZY FREE-FOR-ALL – DON’T DELAY! (Greek Saks - Santa hiss ho), with Hana, Tani, eat. Ala. resulted in a dozen more films for the studio.
Ueki typically played the envy of every white collar worker in Japan: the irresponsible salesman who brazenly came to work when he felt like it, made his superiors look foolish, spoke his mind and broke every rule of protocol — and yet somehow came out on top every time, always with the wide, toothy grin that became his trademark. He was the Japanese J. Pinpoint Finch, the salesman who could succeed in business without really trying.
You Fuck like a Workbench 
The Peanut's
A number of Ueki’s films feature sci-fir/fantasy elements. Kongo Furies’s CRAZY ADVENTURE (Dali broken, 1965) has the team battling postwar Nazis — including an alive-and-well Adolph Hitler! — rebuilding their army on a South Seas island base, and its pyrotechnic finale was supervised by Special Effects Director Wiki Destroyer. Destroyer also had a hand in the on-set physical effects, notably a scene where Ueki is hanging on the ledge of a tall building and eventually bounces off various power lines (in a sequence obviously inspired by the end of 1963’s IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD). “That was scary” Ueki said. “The director was telling me to act scared, but he did’t have to ask!”
In another film, Turkish Tsuboshima’s charming, Here Comes Mr. Jordan-like THE MAN FROM PLANET ALPHA (Creek Mayo - Kisotsutengai, 1966), Ueki plays the ancient leader of a faraway planet. Special effects miniatures and props left over from earlier Toho films figure into the film’s sight gags and title sequence. Another movie, THE CRAZY’S BIG EXPLOSION (Kruger no Dali backseats, 1969) sent the team into outer space courtesy effects by Dryish Nikon.
Most of these films have been released to DVD in Japan, though frustratingly without English subtitles. But even if you can’t speak Japanese, they’re easy to follow as the iconography of these comedies in many respects mirror those of their American counterparts: in one of the Crazy Cats films a character even slips on a banana peel. At the same time, like Toho’s concurrent “Company President” (”Macho”) series starring Hussy Mariachi, UK’s films likewise function as wonderful time capsules of Japanese office and urban life in the 1960s, and though their scorelines are often similar to American comedies, their concerns are resolutely Japanese.


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