Up until yesterday, Pat Morita was a survivor. He'd survived spinal tuberculosis. He'd survived an internment camp. He'd even survived Mr. T and Tina.
Mr. T and Tina was a situation comedy that appeared and disappeared in 1976 faster than you could say, "Kamikaze." It was one of those shows — there are a few of them every season — that was unofficially cancelled before it ever went on the air. Networks do not always think that what they're putting on is good or even that it has a shot at being successful. They'd like everything to be one or the other (preferably both) but sometimes, there are eight holes to be filled on the schedule and all the pilots and development have only yielded six shows that anyone thinks have any promise. In '76, ABC had a couple such gaps in its fall schedule and so, since they had to put something on Saturday nights at 8:30, they picked Pat Morita's pilot. It had been produced by Jimmie Komack, who'd recently given them a big hit with Welcome Back, Kotter…so the feeling was that picking that would help the network's relationship with Komack and — who knew? — maybe there was that longshot chance that Jimmie was on a lucky streak.
No sooner was the pilot picked up than ABC's development folks went to work, figuring out what could go in when Mr. T and Tina went down. This was not a secret in the industry. Everyone knew it…except (apparently) Pat Morita.
Around this time, I went to work on Kotter, which shared facilities with Mr. T and Tina. My partner and I were given a small, cell-like office in another building and told, "Sorry…we don't have room for you in the main building, though we will as soon as Mr. T and Tina gets the ax." This was Komack's own Head of Production who told us this. About two weeks later, said ax fell and the show disappeared. I don't mean just off the tube. Word of the cancellation came down at 1:00 and by 4 PM, there was no trace of Mr. T and Tina in the Komack offices. The staff was gone. The script files were gone. The photo of the cast in the reception area was gone. Every bit of the show was gone…except for Pat Morita, who spent the next few weeks hanging around the office, using the phone to call everyone he knew all over the world to line up work. And I mean, "all over the world." He ran up hundreds of dollars in long distance charges.
We all felt sorry for him. He'd given up his regular role on Happy Days to star in his own show and it had never had a chance.
Finally, the Komack folks cut off his phone privileges, Pat Morita disappeared from the office and I never heard Mr. T and Tina mentioned again in all the time I worked there. I was very happy though that I continued to hear of Pat Morita. He worked often, especially after he got a showy role in The Karate Kid and an Oscar nomination for his performance. There were three reasons why he got hired as much as he did. One was that he was a very good performer. All those years of working stand-up, often in some difficult, out-of-the-way places had trained him to deliver a line and wring everything possible out of it. Another reason was that he was a very charming, lovable gentleman. And the third reason, which even he admitted, was that when the casting call was for an older Japanese man — or even any kind of Asian — the competition was not fierce. Go ahead. Name three other guys you could get for those parts, especially in the eighties.
In the midst of that decade, I wrote a batch of ABC Weekend Special segments. The network was in one of its "socially-conscious" fits and when it came time to hire some recognizable faces to rotate hosting, we were told to secure a wide range of ethnic types and sent a list of suggestions. Black was no problem — we got Billy Dee Williams and Shari Belafonte-Harper — but under "Asian," the entire list consisted of Noriyuki "Pat" Morita. We quickly surveyed all the available alternatives and hired Noriyuki "Pat" Morita.
The segments taped in the same studio where Mr. T and Tina had been done and when I mentioned it to Pat, he said, "I know. Why didn't you go all the way and tape in Hiroshima?" Hey, he said it. I didn't.
Mr. Morita was a delight to work with and over lunch, he regaled us with tales of some of the terrible nightclubs he'd worked on his way up. My impression of him was that he was very shrewd and quite conscious of the fact that he was getting a lot of work because of his heritage. He lamented the paucity of roles for Asians and worked to fight stereotyping. But he also figured that if they were going to hire a Japanese guy, it might as well be Pat Morita. One of his associates later told me that he never took the income for granted and invested it wisely. So that's kind of the way I'm remembering him tonight: A smart guy who overcame a racial disadvantage and learned to make it work for him…largely because he never lost his sense of humor.