1936 – Akim Tamiroff
The General Died at Dawn
This is the first acting review I’m writing for a film’s villain. Tamiroff played General Yang. True, he was a pretty standard bad guy, a foreign military dictator, who they put opposite the all-American boy Gary Cooper. By today’s standards, his character might have bordered on offensive, as he was such an obvious Chinese stereotype, but 1936 was a different time. As it was, he played the part he was given, and he did it with conviction, so props for that, I guess.
Another thing that the role would have received criticism for today was the fact that Tamiroff was not Asian. He was Armenian-American. But the makeup artists did a pretty good job making him appear Asian. It was mostly in the eyes. But just to make him appear even more evil, they gave him a scar running through his left eyebrow and the fu-manchu moustache. He looked very menacing and dangerous.
I actually think he did a pretty good job with the script he was given, though the character was a bit one-dimensional… maybe two, every now and then. He was just a psychotic leader of a thug army. The way his troops followed him loyally was akin to something like a cult, where they were willing to commit suicide at his orders for causing offense. That was a little scary. But it didn’t happen. That might have been too much for a 1936 audience.
But despite the lackluster writing, Tamiroff gave the character of General Yang a little bit of dimension. He was a tyrant, but through Tamiroff’s acting, I don’t think he thought of himself as one. He may have thought of himself as a nice guy. When he was in control of a situation, he behaved with easy civility, smiling and making jokes… as long as everything went his way. That was well-done. The scene where he is fishing and Cooper was his prisoner, was particularly good.
And then there was his death scene, which took place at dawn, of course. We knew that would happen. It’s in the title of the film. He gets stabbed in the gut a few times by Fred Mertz. His death is slow and drawn out, and Tamiroff milked if for all it was worth. It was a great scene that probably earned him his nomination.