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Mickey Rooney's turn as Holly's bucktoothed, squinty-eyed Japanese landlord, Mr. Yunioshi, is routinely called out for its promotion of negative Asian stereotypes. Swapping Rs for Ls, myopically bumbling around -- it's a bizarre attempt at racism-laced physical comedy. Check out this video for a less time-consuming example.

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That's racist.

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Explaining the choice to cast Rooney in the role of a person of Japanese descent and having him play it so broadly, director Blake Edwards reasoned in a documentary on the making of the film, "At that time it was perfectly OK," but, he admitted, he wished he hadn't in retrospect. Considering the Mr. Yunioshi storyline is basically nonexistent in the book, it seems like a pretty egregious error. But not everyone is so hard on Rooney's portrayal. When asked about it after the movie was dropped from a public screening in Sacramento, California, Rooney talked about how much fun he had doing it and also said:

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Never in all the more than 40 years after we made it -- not one complaint. Every place I've gone in the world people say, "God, you were so funny." Asians and Chinese come up to me and say, "Mickey, you were out of this world."

For additional proof that the uproar was over nothing, his eighth wife, Jan, helpfully mentioned that the couple were "married in Hong Kong and love Chinese art, food, culture, and medicine" and said the role was "meant to be fun." Wheee!