Trivia for
Sayonara (1957) More at IMDbPro »

• Film debuts of Miiko Taka and Miyoshi Umeki. Umeki, for this debut performance, won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award.
  
  
• Apparently Marlon Brando was not the first choice for this lead. It was offered to Rock Hudson, but he chose to make A Farewell to Arms (1957) instead.
  
  
• The "Matsubayashi Girls Revue" stage shows in the film were performed by the Shochiku Kagekidan Girls Revue.
  
  
• According to Turner Classic Movies, William Holden was originally slated to play Ace Gruver, but left the project to film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
  
  
• Also according to Turner Classic Movies, Marlon Brando insisted on playing Ace Gruver with a Southern accent, against the will of the director and producers. Brando adopted a nondescript Southern accent for Gruver, despite the objections of director Joshua Logan, who didn't think that a general's son who was West Point-educated would speak that way.
  
  
• Audrey Hepburn was offered the role of a Japanese bride opposite Marlon Brando but turned it down. She explained that she "couldn't possibly play an Oriental. No one would believe me; they'd laugh. It's a lovely script, however I know what I can and can't do. And if you did persuade me, you would regret it, because I would be terrible."
  
  
• In 1956, more than 10,000 American servicemen had defied regulations and married Japanese women, as indeed had the novel's author, James Michener.
  
  

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