Miyoshi Umeki (梅木 美代志, Umeki Miyoshi, or ミヨシ・ウメキ Miyoshi Umeki; May 8, 1929 – August 28, 2007) was a naturalized American actress and standards singer. She was best known for her roles as Katsumi, the wife of Joe Kelly (Red Buttons), in the 1957 film Sayonara, as Mei Li in the 1958 Broadway musical and 1961 film Flower Drum Song, and as Mrs. Livingston, the housekeeper of Bill Bixby's and Brandon Cruz's characters, in the TV series The Courtship of Eddie's Father. She was a shin Issei or post-1945 immigrant from Japan. She was a Tony Award- and Golden Globe-nominated actress and was the first (and, as of 2015, the only) Asian woman to win an Academy Award for acting.

Biography

Her first marriage, to television director Frederick Winfield "Wynn" Opie in 1958, ended in divorce in 1967. The couple had one son — Michael H. Opie, born in 1964. She married Randall Hood in 1968, and her son's name was changed to Michael Randall Hood. The couple operated a Los Angeles-based business renting editing equipment to film studios and university film programs. Randall Hood died in 1976.

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