Kaori Nara Turner, the 92-year-old makeup artist who became the first Japanese makeup artist to win an Emmy Award, appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on May 8th. She revealed details about meeting her American husband, who was also a makeup artist, in Hong Kong, and their wedding on a ship, which was witnessed by the great star Steve McQueen.
After the war, she worked as a dancer in her teens. She met her husband while dancing in Hong Kong. Her husband was involved in film production as a makeup artist. She says that she used to perform at the nightclub her husband frequented. After filming was finished, he would come out for drinks, and eventually he started coming every night, and things happened (we got married). She recalls that he was a kind person who was okay with anything.
When she told director Robert Wise, known for "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music," who was directing a film her husband was involved in, that she was getting married, he suggested, "Let's do something so wonderful on a ship." "We were filming on a ship, and he held our wedding ceremony there," she said. Steve McQueen was the witness. "He was a mischievous little guy, but a good person," she described him.
The condition for their marriage was that she wouldn't give up dancing. When she said, "Even if I go to America, I'll still dance," her husband accepted it, saying, "That's fine." "Immediately after getting married, I performed in a show in Las Vegas. Back then, there weren't many Oriental dancers, so I benefited from solo dancing," she says.
However, she suffered a serious injury on stage and retired from dancing. To clear her head, she accompanied her husband on an overseas shoot, but they were short on makeup staff. Kaori, who had been doing her own stage makeup as a dancer, ended up helping out, which led to her joining a makeup artist union.
