Been watching Hawaii 5-0 on DVD, up to the first disk of season 2 now.

I'd forgotten how utterly uncaring the studios were at the time toward ethnic casting. 5-0 does a little better than, say, Wild Wild West, since they have a rich pool of Asian & Polynesian locals to draw from in Hawaii. Most of the secondary and tertiary characters were indeed Asian actors. But the trend was still to cast a western actor in makeup when there needed to be a major Asian character in the episode.

So far the silliest (probably just because I'm so used to seeing them in Trek reruns) have been Ricardo Montalbahn and Mark Lenard, in each case as ex-Japanese soldiers in Pearl-Harbor-related episodes.

Montalbahn pulled it off a bit better, since his character in "Samurai" required him only to seem distant and dignified. But seeing Sarek in "To Hell With Babe Ruth" dressed in black ninja pajamas, squinty glasses, with obviously fake eyelids, talking more like a movie Indian than a Japanese, and striking really fake-looking martial arts poses, was almost too much to take! :lol:

None more rediculous than John Wayne as an Asian.

True, dat!

On AMC I just saw Chuck Connors as Geronimo.

He had this special bow that could shoot really fast.

None more ridiculous than John Wayne as an Asian.or Susan Hayward as his captured Tartar bride!

And don't forget the Shat-Man's turn as half-breed twin brothers in White Comanche. The only way to tell the one raised by whites from the one raised by the Comanches was the latter never wore a shirt!

At least when the exquisite Miss Barbara Luna guested as a Japanese girl named Yoko, they didn't put any eyepieces on her. That would have been criminal!