Steve Parker, husband of Hollywood star, and con man extraordinaire in Japan

TOKYO — Steve Parker was one of the more memorable individuals I interviewed in my long career in journalism in Japan. He was one of the first Tokyo denizens I met when I first arrived in the city in the early 60’s — introduced to him by a mutual acquaintance at the popular night club Club 88 — and he was, according to Corky Alexander, the  “unofficial mayor” of the American community in the city at the time, a community which numbered some 7,000 American residents — not counting the U.S. military which in any event largely confined itself to the outskirts of the city.

Steve Parker was a theater and film producer who was married to the actress Shirley MacLaine. As he liked to tell people, he was born in Germany (in 1922), and as the son of a State Department official, he had grown up all over the world. He said he had been a paratrooper during World War II who spent much of his time in New Guinea, during which time he developed an interest in the theater, helping to organize shows, before being sent to Hiroshima immediately after Japan’s surrender.

After the war he moved to New York where he struggled as an actor, but met and married rising new star MacLaine, appearing in the hit musical, “The Pajama Game” on Broadway, the couple relocating to Los Angeles as her career took off. Tired of being known as Mr. Shirley MacLaine, he moved to Japan in 1956, and the two maintained a Trans Pacific — and famously open — relationship for nearly 30 years.