Word: nagata
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Frontier) is an Oriental variety show imported by Steve Parker, travel-happy husband of Cinemactress Shirley MacLaine (TIME, June 22). Ballad-belting M.C. James Shigeta imitates Elvis Presley with accurate Occidental accent, Belly Dancer Rie Taniuchi (34-21-35) oscillates through a Latin American cha cha cha, and the Nagata Kings pantomime a superb slapstick parody of baseball. What was missing from the start, by Vegas standards, was a satisfactory supply of nudes. But by week's end a number called Kyoto Doll was turning nightly into a rousing scene of near rape and samurai swordplay. Naturally, before...
...Bosoms. The man who capitalized most on the foreign imports and touched off the real postwar revival in Japanese moviemaking was Masaichi Nagata, 48, boss of the Daiei studios, who was purged for his World War II propaganda films, but soon after was taken off the purge list. Nagata studied foreign imports to find out what gave them their appeal, then applied what he could to his own products. For Japanese audiences, he decided, the romance of French movies would not do, nor would the sexiness of Italian films. "Unfortunately," says Nagata, "we don't have the bosoms...
...Nagata believes that there should be a U.S. market for three to five topnotch Japanese films a year, and that each should gross $1,000,000. For Japanese moviemakers, this would mean big profits, since their costs are low. Top salaries for stars are about $11,000 a film, extras make 80? a day, and the average cost of a full-length black and white film is only around $63,000 v. $900.000 in the U.S. And, says Nagata: "By showing the Japanese countryside in all its beauty, we can attract tourists and more dollars"-as well as stimulate...