Japanese Actors Remarkable for the Reality of Their Acting; Sussue Hayakawa One of the Screen's Most Polished Villains

Japanese cleverness, Japanese ingenuity and mentality is no secret. In nearly every walk of life where experts are required the land of cherry blossoms has contributed a son or a daughter to do honor to Japan. The motion picture is not an exception, then, in having for one of its most versatile stars a Japanese player.

Sussue Hayakawa of the Lasky company has received the praise of the great American public time and time again for his remarkable portrayals on the screen.

In "The Clue" we sympathized and sorrowed for his distress. He was in the employ of his government, and he sacrificed his life in the performance of his duty. From this heroic role Sussue graduated to that of a polished villain in "The Cheat." So skillful was the characterization he conveyed to the screen we hated and loathed him in this production as much as we had liked him in "The Clue."

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"Alien Souls" brought Sussue's talented little wife, Tsuru Aoki, to the screen with her husband. Tsuru, whose bright, almond-shaped eyes and dark piquant little face captured Sussue two years ago, was educated for a dancer. When she came to this country at the early age of 8 years her relatives decided she was to go back to Japan and astonish her friends and relatives with her American steps. Fate had other plans for the little Japanese lady and landed her into a motion picture studio, where she had continued to please fickle American audiences.

Sussue is a student in facial expression and knows just how to get the best pantomimic effects in his work. Fannie Ward, whose first efforts on the screen were lamentable because of her inability to understand either make-up or camera repose, learned from Sussue just how to get the desired result. From a woman who might claim any age from 40 to 50, which Fannie Ward first registered, she became a young girl not more than 19. It was Sussue who schooled her in the gentle art of screen expression, and to him she owes a big debt of gratitude for helping her overcome seemingly impassable film difficulties.

The Hayakawa family live in the Hollywood picture colony very much like other picture folk. They have an automobile, a bungalow and a dog. There is nothing oriental about this typically western home, with its mission furniture and hard wood floors. The popularity of this little pair is evident from the array of photographs which cover the walls, all of them scrawled in the handwriting of the best-known movie stars in filmland. To Sussue and Tsuru, with our best love, read some of the inscriptions, written in all sincerity, for there are no players in California any more beloved than Sussue and his wee wife.

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The bungalow has enough Japanese pictures and books to make it interesting. There is a well-filled library of Japanese plays, and over the mantel a large panel bearing the actual signature of Admiral Togo. Sussue had a naval career planned for him, and, belonging to an old, honored Japanese family, he looks at these relics of the East often in a reminiscent manner, wondering what might have happened if he had chosen to stay in Japan.

Hayakawa plans some day to return to the spoken drama, for, much as he likes moving pictures, he feels there is a big place awaiting him in the Japan drama. He smiles when asked if he will surely return, for there are those who believe Sussue Hayakawa will take the big name waiting for him and with his wife keep up the reputation of his distinguished ancestors in his own Japan.

[Photo caption]: Sussue Hayakawa, one of the greatest of the cinema's polished villains, and Tsuru Aoki, his talented little Japanese wife.