Lou Frizzell

Lou Frizzell was a popular young music and drama teacher at Manzanar who went on to a career as a character actor on stage and screen after the war.

Louis F. Frizzell was born in Missouri on June 10, 1919, to Louis F. Frizzell, Sr. and Eula Marie Tedrick Frizzell. His father worked on the Frisco Railroad. The family moved to Los Angeles, where the elder Louis worked as a gardener, and the younger Lou graduated from Eagle Rock High School. He went to Los Angeles City College and UCLA, graduating with a B.Ed. degree and a music teaching credential. He also sang in Raymond Paige's radio choir and acted in various local plays, including starring roles in two productions by UCLA's University Dramatics Society, Kickerbocker Holiday and The Warrior's Husband , in 1941. ^[1]

Intending to become a teacher, Frizzell's first job was at Manzanar as a music and drama teacher. Upon his arrival in September of 1942, he taught courses at the high school and adult school. He immersed himself in the life of the camp, directed an a cappella choir and band/orchestra that performed at numerous camp functions and serving as a judge in talent contests, as a board member of the Manzanar YMCA and as an accompanist to various solo performers. In the summer of 1943, he also filled in as supervisor of the Community Activities Department, while also leading the high school choir and orchestra in spring and summer performances that the Manzanar Free Press called "a success from every standpoint" that drew "two full houses which included visitors from as far as 50 miles away." In January 1944, he co-directed the senior play "Growing Pains," with Rosie Maruki, prompting the Free Press to refer to him as the the "'what can't he do?' genius of Manzanar." ^[2]

Perhaps the highlight of Frizzell's time at Manzanar was the production of his original operetta, Loud and Clear , performed by Manzanar High School students, that opened the new auditorium in June 1944. Written by Frizzell before the war, the plot has to do with a group of college students who learn that a wealthy donor has pulled funding because he "believes the school to be infested with subversive elements," which threatens to close the school. The students' fund raising solution ends up creating as many problems as it solves. The show included nineteen musical numbers. The show was advertised to the surrounding community, and many bought tickets, causing a shortage of seats. The administration decided to displace Issei parents to seat the locals. Learning about this, the cast threatened to strike, but Frizzell convinced them to go with the show. The performance received a rave review in the camp newspaper the next day, with the pseudonymous reviewer calling the score "in our opinion favorably comparable to hit-paraders." ^[3]

Frizzell and the high school choir and orchestra continued to perform at a wide range of events for the remainder of Manzanar's life. He also mentored singer Mary Kageyama , known as the "Songbird of Manzanar," composing an original song for her, accompanying her piano, and overseeing a recording session with her. The choir presented its final concert, "Looking Backward," in May of 1945. In June, as Manzanar's schools closed for the final time, Frizzell took out an ad in the camp paper expressing his "sincere thanks for the many, many, kindnesses shown me during my stay at Manzanar and for the many pleasant memories I shall take with me." ^[4]

His Manzanar experience proved to be a turning point for Frizzell. A decade later, he told a reporter that Manzanar "was an exciting experiment in a ploughed-up desert, and when it ended in 1946, I knew I could never go back to a routine teaching job." He headed to New York, intent on trying to break into theater. Visiting the Theatre Guild, he learned that they would soon be casting replacements for the groundbreaking hit musicial Oklahoma! on Broadway. He auditioned and was hired. "I had been in New York a week, and I was in the reigning Broadway hit," he told the reporter. He would remain the New York and environs for the next two decades, appearing in numerous Broadway and off-Broadway shows and doing Summer Stock theater in various Eastern resorts, resisting the urge to go back home and return to teaching. A biography from a 1962 program states the Frizzell had played over seventy-five leading roles. ^[5]

In the mid-1960s, Frizzell moved back to Los Angeles. While continuing to act in various stage productions, he built a career as a character actor in film and television, scoring recurring roles Bonanza , Owen Marshall , Alice , and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman . He also had a memorable small role playing himself in the landmark television movie Farewell to Manzanar , despite being over thirty years older than he had been while at Manzanar. ^[6]

Frizzell was remembered warmly by many of his students and kept in touch with some of them. Sumiko Yamauchi recalls him coming to visit former Manzanar incarcerees living in Seabrook Farms, New Jersey after the war, while playing in a Broadway show. She called him "one of us," someone who "was there at the baseball games, he was there at the dances, and he not only was there at the dance, he used to dance with the kids." Marian Uyematsu Naito recalled visiting him with other former incarcerees at his home in Eagle Rock. "So there was a difference between a music teacher and someone who really loved us" recalled Bruce Kaji. "He got young people to do stuff they never would have done had they lived outside of camp." ^[7]

Lou Frizzell died on June 17, 1979, at the age of sixty, in his Hollywood apartment. His papers were donated to UCLA. In 2007, Brian Maeda, the brother of one of Frizzell's students, made a film about Frizzell at Manzanar, The Music Man of Manzanar , that includes re-enactments of students performing parts of "Loud and Clear." ^[8]