Irene Tsu

[sidaris]

[Findcandor]

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March 1967 (Photo: Vittoriano Rastelli)

Three cheers for Member "Beutelwolf"; after he began this so-far short thread in 2012, other members have certainly made valuable contributions, but it was Beutelwolf, and his impressive knack for finding the obscure knick-knacks, where we got to see Irene Tsu reduced to her bare essentials. (At least to a mild extent, but there is apparently not much available. Member "Backdoorman" also provided what was great, in his 2015 post, perhaps the only time Ms. Tsu undressed in a film or TV role, which has given me the idea of exploring further; if I follow though, there will be a "Part Two" to my post.)


March 1967 (Photo: Vittoriano Rastelli)

As usual, I was working on another post and needed to dig up a film as reference for that actress, and then Irene Tsu appeared. (In a revealing bikini, to boot.) Naturally, I wished to make a record. This was from the Doris Day adventure-comedy, Caprice (1967). Member "Span4f," as later noticed, did an excellent job with providing screen caps from this movie in his Post #7 from 2015, but I am going to offer my perspective, as well.


With Ray Walston (she plays his secretary) in CAPRICE.

Beutelwolf provided pages from two 1960s men's magazines (at least one was identified as 1967; the other had that '60s feel, too), and I'm always interested in the text of provided articles, as well as the revealing poses. The International Playmen one, from 2015's Post #4, presented "tease" nude shots of the lady (although the reader was treated to some exposed "derriere from the side" — that is, no full-flushed cheeks, alas — in two of the photos) with some commentary which was a bit absurd. (The writer wondered whether Irene had more of a yen — that is, a yuan, not that Irene can make anyone yawn — for either of Chiang Kai-Shek or Mao Tse-Tung. I liked the sub-headline, though: "The Latest Drug Is Called Irene.")


Enchantment in pure form

It was the October 1967 edition of Men Only from 2018's Post #10 that featured not only excellent photos (the portrait above has been cropped from the article and reworked), but more worthwhile written content, which I've transcribed for easy reading:

THE HYPNOTIC MISS TSU

HOLLYWOOD producers are notoriously hard men. It's not easy to melt their rock-hard hearts, to beguile them with beauty, to bring them up sharp in their tracks.
You've got to have something extra—that quality of "le mystique." The hidden persuasive sort of hypnosis to send top men swooning for their cheque books.
Irene Tsu has something. She is IT. IT is she. What is IT? Does the hidden world of the inscrutable Orient light the back of her almond eyes?
Is it the centuries of knowledge of the world's oldest civilisation that captivates her audiences? Who knows — suffice to say that it works.
Irene has hit the jackpot in five feature films and on the stage. British TV viewers have fallen under her spell after performances in "Perry Mason," "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea."



Not that the words above were all that revealing about the woman herself, but nicely got to the heart of the heartthrob. Here was Irene, from Caprice:



Caprice is a tale of corporate espionage (even though they seem to have marketed the film as a James Bond-style adventure; the film reportedly flopped at the box office), as we are kept guessing which of the cosmetics companies the heroine, Doris Day, and the leading man, Richard Harris, are working for. Scientist Ray Walston is credited for having come up with a miracle hairspray that will render other such products obsolete; the spray enables the lady to retain her hair-shape no matter what. Black and white "spy film" is shown at movie's beginning, where Irene Tsu is shown getting wet, only to emerge none the worse for water-wear. It becomes Doris Day's mission to pilfer the top secret formula for a water repellent hairspray.







........
In the last shot, Irene is on a movie date with Michael J. Pollard. Doris sits behind them
to snip a lock of her hair, but Pollard's grabby hand (he wants some "Day" action) mucks
up the plan.

In the film's IMDb page's "Trivia" section, there was this: "In the trailer only, Irene Tsu's bikini bottom comes partially off when she dives into the swimming pool, exposing her rear end. This shot was trimmed by a few seconds in the actual film." Luckily, the trailer was for the having on that site, and there was truth to what was written. In the film, we see Irene from underneath the water as she dives into the pool. She is only in the water for a second, when the shot is cut with the end of her leg being seen (second photo):

...

Yet in the trailer, Irene is seen to be swimming under the water for a few seconds. As with the Coppertone girl, the actress's bikini brief had slid down. Now, how sexy was that?



Irene Tsu as Mrs. Chu; who could picture this dainty woman as a battle-axe?

After half a century in the business (she had an uncredited part as a dancer in the rare Hollywood film featuring a mainly Asian cast, the hit 1961 musical Flower Drum Song), Irene appeared to call it quits by 2012. Yet after an eight year hiatus, the lady returned for three gigs in 2020 (for a TV show, an animated feature, and a short film from 2021). Her last would-be role from 2012 was for the violent video game Sleeping Dogs, described as "Asian-American cop Wei Shen goes undercover in Hong Kong to infiltrate a Triad organization," along with several other familiar Asian-American actors supplying voices. Irene's character was "Mrs. Chu." After the hero brings her a bound villain who had killed her son, Mrs. Chu picks up the old trusty meat cleaver.



Playing "Native Girl" in the Annette Funicello romp, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965),
and sharing a scene with the great Buster Keaton as "Bwana."



Other than playing mahjong with Illya at headquarters in “The Hong Kong Shilling
Affair," a 1965 episode of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Irene had nothing else to do. The
episode also featured Gavin MacLeod and Richard "Jaws" Kiel, pictured in the second
photo with Karen Sharpe (VEF thread). The program cast Ms. Tsu again in 1967.



With John Agar in Women of the Prehistoric Planet (1966).


...
With Elvis Presley in 1966's Paradise, Hawaiian Style. Next, as "Celestial Image"
in the 1974 Chinese period drama Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders, an
ABC-TV movie, reportedly an unusually faithful adaptation of the Robert van
Gulik novel, The Haunted Monastery.



Playing a Mata Hari type of character who lures a defecting South Vietnamese general in
The Green Berets (1968), with John Wayne. The controversial film was made as a "patriotic"
response to the growing Vietnam War protests in the USA, and many were surprised that it
became a box office success.



Ms. Tsu appeared in two episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, in 1997 and 2001.


....
"Master Sculptor" Sir Daniel Winn unveiled statuettes for the Asian World
Film Festival on June 19, 2021 in Beverly Hills, and Irene Tsu was there.
In the second photo, the lady attended the Hollywood Show held at Los
Angeles Marriott Burbank Airport on July 2, 2022, which makes this a fairly
recent image. As other later-day photos of the actress on the internet show
she has gray hair, the hair here must have been dyed. Regardless, most
should agree she is looking pretty good for a female who is pushing eighty.










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[Findcandor]

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I mentioned in my last post from yesterday (above) that I would like to take care of the probably one time Irene Tsu took off her clothes in the way it mattered, in a movie or TV role. I figured if not now attended to, this post may never get done (since there are so many other posts on the planning stage). Again, a tip of the hat to Member "Backdoorman" for alerting us of this very rare Irene nudity, as he did in his post from 2015.



Three the Hard Way (1976) is a fantastic example of '70s exploitation cinema where Jim Brown is on the scene as his lovely girlfriend Shirley Frazier (here's the only post within VEF on this beauty, and turns out I was the author) gets kidnapped, during which he takes a bullet (not that his prowess will be affected in any way afterwards). In order to rescue her, Jimbo recruits two fellow supermen: Fred Williamson (outshining his costars in the acting department) and Jim Kelly.



As I wrote in my post for Smokin' Shirley Frazier, "white supremacists plan to taint the water supply with a chemical that harms Black people" in an extermination scheme. It's been many years since I've seen the film, but while grabbing these frames, I was reminded of how an army of fascists got mowed down, and there's not a mark on our trio of heroes at the finale. (An IMDb commenter counted at least one hundred-and-sixty-six left dead in their wake.)


Note how Tsu took center stage, likely in
deference to her star stature.

The best scene in the film: the heroes can't crack a cracker (henchman Howard Platt) for the information they need, and Williamson calls in his dominatrix pals, the Countess, Princess and Empress (Pamela Serpe, Marie O'Henry, and Irene Tsu, respectively) who ride in on their motorcycles. When they arrive, Empress says: “We’re hungry.” Williamson instructs them: "You’ve gotta leave enough of him so he can answer some questions for us." Naturally, they take off their tops during the pre-interrogation process (this is the rule for female sadists, fortunately for us), and by the time they are through, their victim is reduced to a whimpering wreck.



Of the three, most would agree, and speaking of the ability to turn men into wrecks, Marie O'Henry (below, at right) had the most impressive rack. She had a brief screen career and appears to have disrobed in other ventures as well; except for a name-drop as one among others on a cast list, the sexy actress has sadly been ignored on VEF.



Of the third (also ignored), Pamela Serpe (the tall one), there are a couple of interesting aspects to her, and I intend to prepare a post on the lady for the "Classic American Lesser Known Celebrities" thread. (EDIT: If you are curious, here is the post.)



Now why did Irene Tsu, big movie star compared to the other two, have consented to remove her clothing in this junky (wonderful but junky) film, when she only offered teasing peek-a-boo views (as examined in the last post) in the men's magazines she had appeared in?

...
After the deadly femmes gave him their special working-over, Jim Kelly finds the blubbering henchman
singing as a canary

She was thirty or thirty-one-years old at the time, and maybe the offers weren't as abundant? (Angie Dickinson reportedly said, serving as yet another reason to love her, better to be nude than unemployed.) Probably it was the seventies, where classy actresses left and right had no problem with getting undressed, so Irene may have decided to go along with the permissiveness. (Leading to the question, why she did not shed the clothing in her other roles.)


Cover of autobiography

At any rate, we have to be grateful that this lovely lady allowed for this probable only exception. I leave you with a juicy bit of gossip; Irene wrote her memoirs a few years ago entitled, A Water Color Dream: The Many Lives of Irene Tsu, and one exciting revelation (that publications such as The Daily Mail made sure to report) was her two-year affair with Frank Sinatra, around three decades her senior. Boy, it was good to be Ol' Blue Eyes:



"He had the most incredible blue eyes I’ve ever seen. You just got lost in them. He was so relaxed and charismatic. You just became captivated by him."

An interesting anecdote was in regard to the singer's wedding gift when Irene got hitched in 1971. He asked what she wanted, and then sent her the washer/dryer she asked for, with the note: "All the happiness to you and no starch." (Was that a "no tickee, no laundry"-inspired gag Frankie would have undoubtedly been lambasted for these days?)










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[sidaris]

Green Berets photo

[sidaris]

Older, but still beautiful

[Joszka]

"Caprice", Frank Tashlin, 67.

[rotobott]

Irene Tsu with Pamela Serpe and Marie O'Henry, big caps from Three the Hard Way (1974)