ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 3, 1997 TAG: 9704030059
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON POST
Tanaka, 86, died of a stroke Wednesday in Tokyo, the city that his monster destroyed in its 1954 debut.
Often, it is the lot of creative souls to be eclipsed by their world-shaking legacies. Who remembers the man who invented television? Who remembers the guy who discovered Lana Turner at the Schwab's soda fountain in Hollywood? Such was the fate of Tomoyuki Tanaka, one of the creators of the biggest movie star of all time: Godzilla.
Tanaka, 86, died of a stroke Wednesday in Tokyo, the city that his radiation-breathing reptile smashed to bits in its 1954 film debut, ``Godzilla, King of the Monsters.'' Since then, the towering creature went on to star in 22 films - many of them extraordinarily awful, all of them campy good fun.
Tanaka was the chairman of Japan's Toho Co., which produced the Godzilla films. He - and longtime Godzilla director Ishiro Honda - had the idea to make a cautionary tale for the Atomic Age. The first Godzilla movie was a rather sober, black-and-white, allegorical film. Godzilla, a survivor of a dinosaur species called Godzillasauras, is mutated into one big lizard by South Pacific A-bomb testing.
Godzilla was a mad-as-hell Gulliver among the Lilliputians. His influence can still be seen: In the opening credits of ``Beavis and Butt-head Do America,'' the two animated idiots are transformed into fire-breathing giants, crashing through a city.
In the sensitive '70s, Godzilla turned into a sort of planetary watchdog, protecting the Earth and his son from evil aliens. But box-office revenues plummeted. No one wants to see a caring, nurturing Godzilla, least of all a kid.
In 1985, Tanaka brought back a testy Godzilla with another nuclear parable.
``The theme now is the same as before,'' he said at the time. ``The main difficulty is the control of nuclear weapons because man made them and controls them and man can't be trusted.''
LENGTH: Short : 48 linesby CNB