Several months before Mrs. Bradford and I saw the billboard, Bellinger’s article on the Silent Movie Theater appeared in the L.A. Observer. I read through the entire piece right there at the newspaper dispenser, resting the open pages on the top. To my surprise, I found that while Bellinger described the careers of Cecil DeMille, Harold Lloyd, Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson, and Mary Pickford, he made not one mention of me. He even wrote of some of the less well-known players, like Mae Marsh, Constance Bennett, and Lawrence Gray. But Nakayama wasn’t mentioned at all. I did not know whether this omission had been his choice, or whether a cut had been made at the behest of the editor. It occurred to me that Dreyfus might have had a hand in the matter, since he was very angry when I declined the part in his film. I cannot deny that I was disappointed by my absence from Bellinger’s history. But, along with so many other slights, major and minor, I absorbed it and simply moved on.
The article did have the intended effect of creating publicity for the theater, and, by all accounts from newspapers and from Mrs. Bradford—who once attended with her friend Mr. Weisman—the theater does very good business. One evening, about a month ago, they happened to show my picture The Patron. I know this not because I pay attention to their listings, but because I received a letter from a young film student at USC.
“I have heard of you before in my studies of early film,” wrote Heather Noguchi, “but I’d never seen one of your movies until last night. Your performance was brilliant, and I plan to find as many of your movies as I can. It makes me so proud that there was such an accomplished Japanese actor way back in the beginning of Hollywood. I know it could not have been easy. I can’t thank you enough for your work, which has reignited my love of film—imagine my happiness when I discovered that your address was listed! I don’t want to bother you, Mr. Nakayama. I just wanted to tell you how much I admire your work, and I look forward to seeing more of it.”
This letter was, I must admit, a great pleasure. While I used to get mail from fans on a regular basis, I don’t think I have ever received a letter that gave me more satisfaction than this one. I told Mrs. Bradford about it, and she seemed delighted as well.
“The funny thing is,” I said, “the owners didn’t know anything about me. How did they decide to run that picture?”
“I don’t know, Jun,” she replied, and then she smiled slyly, and I knew exactly where the picture had come from.
Despite my absence from Bellinger’s article, despite my misadventure with Dreyfus, I do not regret my encounters with those two young men, which occurred almost two years ago now. For something good has come out of it, something besides the obvious result of my learning about Charlie—the popularity of the O’Briens’ theater, and the fact that, after decades when they were totally ignored, people seem interested again in silent films. I do wish, of course, that my own contributions were recognized. But as a true lover of the medium in which I worked, it gives me an almost paternal delight to hear that day after day, night after night, people are lining up to see Gloria Swanson, and Rudolph Valentino, and Charlie Chaplin, and John Gilbert, and Clara Bow, and Harold Lloyd, and Mary Pickford. For silent films were more than just a prelude to talkies. They were also an accomplishment in their own right. What our films lacked in sound they made up for with other things— photography, direction, editing, lighting, storytelling, and, finally, acting. The best of the silents were works of subtlety and beauty; of fresh, sometimes exhilarating art. There was a purity to silent films that can never be recaptured in this clamorous age of sound effects and talking. We who made them knew that the most vital parts of stories—as of life— can never be reduced to mere words. We understood that moving images are the catalysts of dreams—more eloquent when undisturbed by voices.
And even though my few years in the public eye were followed by decades of obscurity, I harbor no regrets about my career. I had a brief moment of unbelievable glory—but that is more than most people ever have. Certainly my time in movies could have lasted much longer. And of course I wish that—if only once—I could have portrayed a hero. Yet surely there was something of value in the roles I did play. Surely my very presence on the silver screen was itself some kind of victory. If I could never play adventurers like Fairbanks, or lovers like Valentino, at least I played characters of substance. For it is better—is it not?—to attempt to change things slowly than not to strive for progress at all.
It is true that my career and life might have played out very differently. But consider the fates of my closest contemporaries. Ashley Tyler was murdered, Elizabeth Banks killed herself with drink, William Moran died of a heart attack before he was forty, and Nora Minton Niles went mad. It is hard to claim, when one considers their lives, that what happened to me was so awful.
I remember Elizabeth telling me once that she could never go home to her
