Pat Morita, famous for his role inhappy days and karate kid movies has passed away...
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/...ory?id=1346405
Damm shame, that guys was da man. :bow:
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Pat Morita, famous for his role inhappy days and karate kid movies has passed away...
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/...ory?id=1346405
Damm shame, that guys was da man. :bow:
That's sad. I will miss this guy forever. Always like his character in Happy Days and in the Karate Kid series.
Forever my sensei.
Agreed. I was quite sad to see this. I always enjoyed his work. :bow:
RIP Morita-san. :bow:
My Miyagi is in that great dojo in the sky now
Despite we don't have a majority of intellectual individuals here that are aware of the cinema world, I'm sure that most of us will miss Mr. Miyagi. It's just because everyone here at least once watched Karate Kid in his lifetime ~:)
Wax off sensei, wax off
Parlat cilala, parlat cilala (that was the Turkish dubbing, thanks for helping me to remember it JimBob)Quote:
Wax off sensei, wax off
.
Goodbye Miyagi san. :bow:
.
That's good. Jack would be proud of your eloquence.Quote:
Originally Posted by JimBob
Sayonara, Noriyuki-sanQuote:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Noriyuki "Pat" Morita (June 28, 1932 – November 24, 2005) was a Japanese-American actor best known for the roles of Arnold on the TV show Happy Days and Mr. Miyagi in the movie The Karate Kid, for which he was nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1984.
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Early life
Born in Isleton, California, the son of an itinerant fruit worker, Morita developed spinal tuberculosis at age two and spent the bulk of the next nine years in Northern California hospitals, including the Shriners Hospital in San Francisco. He was for long periods wrapped in a full body cast and was told he would never walk. The boy, often alone and isolated, made sock puppets to entertain himself.
After a surgeon fused four vertebrae in his spine, Noriyuki finally learned to walk again at age 11. By then, his Japanese American family had been sent to an internment camp to be detained for the duration of World War II. The boy was transported from the hospital directly to the camp in Arizona to join them.
For a time after the war, the family operated Ariake Chop Suey, a restaurant in Sacramento, California. Teenage "Nori" would entertain customers with jokes and serve as master of ceremonies for group dinners.
Noriyuki graduated from high school in Fairfield, California and shortly thereafter moved back to the Sacramento area, where he took a job with Aerojet-General, an aerospace company that designed and manufactured rocket engines, including those for the US Navy's UGM-27 Polaris.
It was only after working his way up to head of a computer operations department that Morita, by now a husband and father, and also seriously overweight, decided he had taken the wrong life path. He quit and became a standup comedian.
Comedy and improv
"Pat" Morita, often billed as "the Hip Nip" in his standup act, became a member of the Los Angeles improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings.
TV roles lead to movies
A recurring role as a Korean national on the sitcom M*A*S*H helped advance the comedian's acting career.
Although Morita gained worldwide fame playing a wise karate teacher in The Karate Kid and its sequels, he never formally practiced a martial art and most of his karate scenes in movies were performed by stunt double (and noted shito-ryu karate-ka) Fumio Demura.
Although he had been using the name "Pat Morita" for years, producer Jerry Weintraub suggested that Pat be billed with his given name to sound more ethnic .
Like many Asian American actors, Morita spoke English with a perfect American accent although he was frequently typecasted with a Japanese or Korean accent.
Death
Morita died on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2005, at his home in Las Vegas, Nevada, of natural causes at age 73. Morita will be buried at Palm Green Valley Mortuary and Cemetery. He is survived by his second wife, actress Evelyn Guerrero, and three daughters from a previous marriage to his first wife, Yuki. Yuki and their three daughters were with him at the time of his death.
ichi:bow:
Rest in peace. :bow:
Bummer. Morita was the man.