Where Does It Hurt?
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Rod Amateau
Peter Sellers
Jo Ann Pflug
Rick Lenz
Harold Gould
Hope Summers
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Intent on maintaining and increasing the financial success of his private hospital, conniving administrator Albert P. Hopfnagel encourages insurance fraud and forces his surgeons to perform expensive, unnecessary surgeries on unsuspecting patients. When admitting nurse Alice Gilligan, Hopfnagel's girl friend, discovers that unemployed construction worker Lester Hammond, who has come to the hospital for a simple X-ray, owns his own home and can be exploited, she orders a number of costly tests to be run on him. Hopfnagel then schemes with lab technician Nishimoto to convince the hapless Hammond that he is in desperate need of an appendectomy. Meanwhile the city's hospital commissioner, long suspicious of the hospital's financial activities, begins investigating Hopfnagel. When Hammond discovers that his lab report has been altered and he has been operated on without cause, Hopfnagel quickly convinces Alice to seduce Hammond to prevent him from pressing charges. Alice complies, only to discover that Hopfnagel has set up a camera to film her liaison with Hammond. Outraged, Alice retaliates by organizing a wild Mexican fiesta party on one of the hospital floors on the same day of the commissioner's inspection visit. Hopfnagel is dismissed and the commissioner appoints Hammond to remain as a staff investigator. After serving his prison term, Hopfnagel returns to the hospital intent on revenge and pretends to be in need of an appendectomy so that he may later sue for malpractice. Although Hopfnagel arranges his surgery with the corrupt head surgeon, as he is brought in to the operating room, he hears with panic that the doctor has turned over the operation to his completely incompetent brother-in-law who does not know the location of the appendix.
Director
Rod Amateau
Cast
Peter Sellers
Jo Ann Pflug
Rick Lenz
Harold Gould
Hope Summers
Eve Bruce
Kathleen Freeman
Norman Alden
Keith Allison
William Elliott
Jeanne Byron
Paul Lambert
Brett Halsey
Albert Reed
J. Edward Mckinley
Pat Morita
Jack Mullaney
Crew
Del Acevedo
Keith Allison
Rod Amateau
Rod Amateau
Marque Archibald
Ken Borland
Frank Bueno
David Dalzell
Biff Elliot
William S. Flannigan
Bonnie Godfrey
Mike Haller
David Hawks
Bill Lasky
Monroe "jockey" Liebgold
Roger Mace
Cal Maehl
Ross Maehl
Mickey Mann
Brick Marquard
Big John Marwick
John Mcdonald
Tony Mora
Ned Moss
Susan Perkins
Stan Rabjohn
Bud Robinson
Josef Schaftel
Bill Schwartz
Dave Smith
John Speak
Frank Tauss
Duane Toler
Doddie Warren
Dick Wimpy
Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Pat Morita (1932-2005)
He was born Noriyuki Morita on June 28, 1932 in Isleton, California. The son of migrant fruit pickers, he contracted spinal tuberculosis when he was two and spent the next nine years in a sanitarium run by Catholic priests near Sacramento. He was renamed Pat, and after several spinal surgical procedures and learning how to walk, the 11-year-old Morita was sent to an internment camp at Gila River, Arizona, joining his family and thousands of other Japanese-Americans who were shamefully imprisoned by the U.S. government after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
His family was released after the war, and Morita graduated from high school in Fairfield, California in 1950. He worked in his family's Chinese restaurant in Sacramento until his father was killed in a hit-and-run accident. He eventually found work as a data processor for the Department of Motor Vehicles and then Aerojet General Corporation before he decided to try his hand at stand-up comedy.
He relocated to San Francisco in 1962, where at first, there was some hesitation from clubs to book a Japanese-American comic, but Morita's enthusiasm soon warmed them over, and he was becoming something of a regional hit in all the Bay Area. His breakthrough came in 1964 when he was booked on ABC's The Hollywood Palace. The image of a small, unassuming Asian with the broad mannerisms and delivery of a modern American was something new in its day. He was a hit, and soon found more bookings on the show. And after he earned the nickname "the hip nip," he quickly began headlining clubs in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
Morita's stage and television success eventually led him to films. He made his movie debut as "Oriental #2," the henchman to Beatrice Lilly in the Julie Andrew's musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). Although his role, complete with thick coke-bottle glasses and gaping overbite, was a little hard to watch, it was the best he could do at the time. Subsequent parts, as in Don Knott's dreadful The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968); and Bob Hope's lamentable final film Cancel My Reservations (1972); were simply variations of the same stereotype.
However, television was far kinder to Morita. After some popular guest appearances in the early '70s on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Morita landed some semi-regular work. First, as the wisecracking, cigar chomping Captain Sam Pack on M.A.S.H. and as Ah Chew, the deadpan neighbor of Fred and Lamont Sanford in Sanford & Son. His success in these roles led to his first regular gig, as Arnold Takahashi in Happy Days. His stint as the owner of the soda shop where Ritchie Cunningham and the Fonz hung out for endless hours may have been short lived (just two seasons 1974-76), but it was Morita's first successful stab at pop immortality.
He left Happy Days to star in his own show, the critically savaged culture clash sitcom Mr. T and Tina that was canceled after just five episodes. Despite that setback, Morita rebounded that same year with his first dramatic performance, and a fine one at that, when he portrayed a Japanese-American internment camp survivor in the moving made for television drama Farewell to Manzanar (1976). After a few more guest appearances on hit shows (Magnum P.I., The Love Boat etc.), Morita found the goldmine and added new life to his career when he took the role of Miyagi in The Karate Kid (1984). Playing opposite Ralph Macchio, the young man who becomes his martial arts pupil, Morita was both touching and wise, and the warm bond he created with Macchio during the course of the film really proved that he had some serious acting chops. The flick was the surprise box-office hit of 1984, and Morita's career, if briefly, opened up to new possibilities.
He scored two parts in television specials that were notable in that his race was never referenced: first as the horse in Alice in Wonderland (1985); and as the toymaster in Babes in Toyland (1986). He also landed a detective show (with of course, comic undertones) that ran for two seasons Ohara (1987-89); nailed some funny lines in Honeymoon in Vegas (1992); was the sole saving grace of Gus Van Zandt's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993); and starred in all of the sequels to The Karate Kid: The Karate Kid, Part II (1986), The Karate Kid, Part III (1989), and The Next Karate Kid (1994). Granted, it is arguable that Morita's career never truly blossomed out of the "wise old Asian man" caricature. But give the man his due, when it came to infusing such parts with sly wit and sheer charm, nobody did it better. Morita is survived by his wife, Evelyn; daughters, Erin, Aly and Tia; his brother, Harry, and two grandchildren.
by Michael T. Toole
Pat Morita (1932-2005)
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
A March 1970 Daily Variety news item announced that director Rod Amateau's first novel, The Operator (co-written with Budd Robinson), which was to be published that year in the United Kingdom, had been optioned by London-based producer Art Cooper. Shooting was set to take place in the United States, and Paul Burke, Ian MacShane and singer Jack Jones were mentioned as possible stars. Amateau had worked with producer Josef Shaftel for an earlier Cinerama release, The Statue.
A May 1971 Daily Variety news item announced that British company The Hemdale Group was financing Shaftel's production of Where Does It Hurt? and that the film was still to be shot completely in the U.S, but Hemdale was not listed in any other source, and the extent of their participation in the released film has not been determined. Although a August 30, 1971 Hollywood Reporter news item announced that Amateau and co-producer Bill Schwartz had "signed" Rosalee Berman as the picture's associate producer, filming had been completed by that time, and the extent of Berman's contribution to the picture, if any, has not been determined.
During production, a August 3, 1971 Daily Variety item noted that the Screen Extras Guild, protesting the "reverse-runaway production" aspect of the U.K. production being filmed in the U.S., picketed the film while it was shooting at Producers Studio. Modern sources add the following actors to the cast: Dodie Warren, Beverly Moore, Lynn Cartwright, Jackie Russell, Richard Hoyt, Steve Mitchell, Ed Begley, Jr., Joe Corey, Mark Evans, Jimmy Cross, Anitra Ford, Lenore Kasdorf, Paul Gleason and Uschi Digard.
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1972
c Eastmancolor
rtg MPAA R
Released in United States Winter January 1, 1972