Aizome Kyouko

TETSURO TAMBA (1922-2006)
LEGENDS OF...

Tamba was once stopped by the police for driving too fast. When asked to show his driver’s license, he explained hastily “I don’t need a license. I am a G-Man!” Tamba was then starring in the action TV show G-MAN 75…

Tamba once showed up for work at a Japanese studio. He was told that he wasn’t scheduled to shoot anything that day. It turns out he was supposed to be at a rival film company instead. I’d like to think the speeding incident happened that same day as he hurried to the other location.

While working on his brief but memorable late night TV talk show TAMBA CLUB, the elderly Tamba would sometimes ask members of the female staff in the most polite way possible, “I’m sorry but…did I fuck you?”

Tamba once bragged during an interview about having sex with a beautiful girl. The interviewer recognized the name and told Tamba that she was actually a he. His response, “I didn’t know that.”

Comments

[J.L. Carrozza]

Sounds like you could make a list of Tetsuro Tanba facts every bit as interesting, if not more so, than the Chuck Norris ones. The main difference would be that the Tanba ones are actually true.

[Patrick Macias]

Yeah, except that Tamba told me about the Connery incident himself, so I can't categorize it as a "legend." I'll start work on a full length "Dinner With Tamba" post as soon as these maids leave me alone.

[Dan Yuma]

Aha, I'm a stranger in these parts and had followed an external link directly to the earlier farewell to Mr. Tamba, so I didn't know you knew him, so the Great Spirit World stuff ain't gonna be news to ya. (The hilarious anecdotes above underline something I thought I remembered but wasn't sure I was right about, but now it sounds congruent: I did read someplace that Tamba was quite insistent that a full sex life was a vital ingredient of the Great Spirit World, though I'm fairly sure it was not mentioned in the one movie about it that I did see.)

I'd be curious to know if Mr. Tamba ever told you that he supposedly rescued Mie Hama from being fired from the 007 movie (her English being not up to snuff), by telling Connery that if that happened, she'd of course have no choice but to commit suicide. Connery intervened and her role was switched with Akiko Wakabayashi's. (I got none of this firsthand, all from one or another Connery biography from the 80s.) I tend to doubt that Hama would actually have knocked herself off, but if the story's true, it shows a canny awareness on Tamba's part that Connery and the producers would be just naive enough about the Japanese to fall for it.

[wall]

I've just been letting everything wash over me recently. So it goes. What can I say?

[Lee]

I haven't gotten anything done lately. Not much on my mind recently. I just don't have much to say right now. My mind is like an empty room.