Miiko Taka, who made her movie debut with a starring flip reverse Marlon Brando in Sayonara, the 1957 Korean Conflict-set drama about “defiant want,” has died. She was 97.

Information of her dying was posted Jan. 4 on social media by a grandson. Particulars of her dying weren’t obtainable, together with her son informing The truestarz by a spokesperson that his household didn’t wish to take part in an obituary.

Taka additionally appeared with Glenn Ford and her Sayonara co-star Miyoshi Umemi within the battle comedy Cry for Completely satisfied (1961), alongside Bob Hope in A International Affair (1963), reverse James Garner (one other Sayonara actor) in Norman Jewison’s The Artwork of Love (1965) and with Cary Grant in his final movie, Stroll Don’t Run (1966), set throughout the Tokyo Olympics.

Directed by Joshua Logan and tailored by Paul Osborn from a 1954 novel by James Michener, Sayonara featured Brando as U.S. Air Pressure fighter pilot Lloyd “Ace” Gruver and Taka as a chic Japanese dancer named Hana-ogi. They fall for one another however face hostility in an period that frowned on interracial romances and marriages.

Logan appeared to solid an unknown after his first alternative for the position, Audrey Hepburn, turned him down. The Seattle-born Taka was working as a clerk at a journey company in Los Angeles when she was employed, regardless that she had no appearing expertise.

In his evaluation for The New York Occasions, Bosley Crowther referred to as her “a flute-like magnificence — a very pretty, serene and soothing impulse.”

The Warner Bros. movie was nominated for 10 Oscars, together with greatest image, and gained 4, with Pink Buttons and Umemi taking the supporting appearing trophies. (Umemi was the primary girl of Asian descent to obtain an Academy Award.)

In 1958, Taka visited Britain for the primary time and was proclaimed “one of the vital thrilling movie discoveries for a few years.”

Miiko Shikata was born in Seattle on July 24, 1925, and raised in L.A. Throughout World Conflict II, she and her household have been despatched to a Japanese internment camp exterior Phoenix.

Taka launched Sayonara to audiences within the trailer, and on the poster, she is “described as an beautiful new Japanese star in James A. Michener’s story of defiant want.” Uncommon for its time, the movie dealt head-on with racism and prejudice and had what many think about the primary onscreen kiss on the mouth between a number one white star and an Asian.

Taka adopted up Sayonara with an look on a 1959 episode of Hawaiian Eye and confirmed up on TV within the Nineteen Sixties on The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Woman From U.N.C.L.E., I Spy and The Wild Wild West.

Her big-screen résumé additionally included the battle movies Hell to Eternity (1960) and Operation Bottleneck (1961), a remake of Misplaced Horizon (1973), Paper Tiger (1975), The Large Repair (1978) and The Problem (1982).

She additionally appeared on the acclaimed NBC 1980 miniseries Shogun, starring Richard Chamberlain.