Patrick Adiarte, an actor known for his roles across the screen and stage in the ’70s and ’80s, has died aged 82.
Adiarte’s niece Stephanie Hogan told The Hollywood Reporter he succumbed to pneumonia in a Los Angeles area hospital on Tuesday April 15 local time.
The actor was known most for his roles on M*A*S*H and the Brady Bunch.
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He made a brief appearance when the Brady family went on vacation to Honolulu in the fourth season, with Adiarte playing a construction gofer who gives the kids a tour before the kids discover a potentially cursed tiki idol and chaos ensues.
In M*A*S*H he played Ho-Jon, the orphaned Korean houseboy who helped Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre in seven episodes of the first season, with the character later presumably leaving to attend medical school in the US.
Adiarte had even bigger roles in Broadway, joining the cast of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s fabled The King and I in 1952 starring Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence, where he played one of the royal children.
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He also featured in the film adaption in 1956, taking on the role of Prince Chulalongkorn, the son of Rita Moreno’s Tuptim. He formed a bond with Brynner, who reprised his role in the film, and would come to consider him a surrogate father.
The same thing happened with his turn on 1958 musical Flower Drum Song which was directed by Gene Kelly, playing the Americanised second son Wang San and singing You Be the Rock, I’ll Be the Roll with Pat Suzuki. Adiarte later returned for the 1961 film.
It was on an 1958 appearance of NBC variety show Omnibus where he and Gene Kelly had promoted the production by demonstrating how tap dancing had evolved over the years, with the legend proclaiming, “If there’s gonna be another Fred Astaire, I think it might as well be Pat.”
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Adiarte also had a number of other roles in productions such as High Time, The Enchanted Nutcracker, John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!, and on TV in It Takes a Thief, Ironside, Bonanza, Hawaii Five-O and Kojak.
He recently taught dance at places like Santa Monica College.
Adiarte did not have an easy start to life. Born in Manila on August 2, 1942, he was imprisoned by the Japanese on the island of Cebu at age two in February 1945 during World War II, along with his then-five-year-old sister Irene and his mother Purita.
He and his sister were burned when the Japanese lobbed grenades at them as they tried to escape. One month later, their father, who was a captain for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was killed.
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The family made it to New York in 1946, but that didn’t stop the threats of deportation, until 1956 when the actor landed his role in The King and I and then-Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy helped lobby Congress to grant the three American citizenship.
Adiarte later wed actress Loni Ackerman in 1975, with the pair divorcing in 1992. After his sister’s death in 2016, he is survived by his niece and nephew, Michael.
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