6
Popular Culture Review
last year of The Monkees’ original run. Desi Amaz, an actor, musician, and
businessman, and in many ways an exceptional role model, was one of only two
identifiably Latino men on television at that time. The only Asians to be seen
outside of representations of Japanese war criminals, or the “Five Chinese
Brothers” in the K-level cartoon of that name, were Bruce Lee as the comic
book sidekick Kato in The Green Hornet, and the venerable cook Hop Sing in
the western Bonanza. Not until 1969 did Miyoshi Umeki, the Oscar-winning
actress, play Mrs. Livingston in The Courtship o f Eddie’s Father—and Mrs.
Livingston was a maid. Native American characters, not always played by actual
Native Americans, appeared in Westerns which gave no hint as to what real
Native American history was. One might also mention that women were
uniformly wives and mothers, and that openly gay characters were unheard of,
although the occasional “camp” character appeared on a talk or game show, and
that these trends mirro