Patrick Adiarte, Actor in ‘The King and I,' ‘Flower Drum Song' and ‘M*A*S*H,' Dies at 82

Yahoo

18-04-2025

Patrick Adiarte, the Philippines-born dancer and actor who appeared in The King and I and Flower Drum Song on Broadway and the big screen and had a recurring role on M*A*S*H, has died. He was 82.
Adiarte died Tuesday in a Los Angeles-area hospital of pneumonia, his niece, Stephanie Hogan, told The Hollywood Reporter.
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When The Brady Bunch went to Honolulu for a family vacation in a three-part episode that kicked off the fourth season of the ABC series in 1972, Adiarte played a construction gofer who gives the kids a tour before they meet with all kinds of chaos after Bobby (Mike Lookinland) discovers a small tiki idol that could be cursed.
Adiarte also was a popular dancer on the 1965-66 NBC musical variety series Hullabaloo, where he began a short-lived singing career with the pop tune 'Five Different Girls.'
In 1952, Adiarte joined the Broadway cast of Rodgers & Hammerstein's fabled The King and I, starring Yul Brynner and Gertrude Lawrence, as one of the royal children, then toured with the production across America.
When the musical was adapted by 20th Century Fox in 1956, he graduated to the role of Prince Chulalongkorn, the son of Rita Moreno's Tuptim. Brynner starred in the film as well, and Adiarte would consider him a surrogate father.
For Flower Drum Song, also from Rodgers & Hammerstein and directed by Gene Kelly, Adiarte was cast in 1958 as the wise-cracking, Americanized second son Wang San, and he sang 'You Be the Rock, I'll Be the Roll' with Pat Suzuki as the nightclub performer Linda Low. He then returned for the 1961 Universal film that starred Nancy Kwan and James Shigeta.
M*A*S*H fans know Adiarte as Ho-Jon, the orphaned Korean houseboy who assisted Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) and Trapper John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers) on seven episodes of the first season (1972-73) of the CBS series. His character presumably leaves to attend medical school in the States.
Patrick Robert Adiarte was born in Manila on Aug. 2, 1942. He, his sister, Irene, and their mother, Purita, were imprisoned by the Japanese on the island of Cebu in February 1945 during World War II. Irene, then 5, and Patrick, then 2, were burned when the Japanese lobbed grenades at them when the family tried to escape.
A month later, their father, working as a captain for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was killed.
In June 1946, the family came to New York through Ellis Island so that Irene could have what would be the first of several surgeries to remove the extensive scars on her face caused by the grenade fire.
While the Adiartes faced threats of deportation, Patrick (and his mom, as a dancer) would wind up in The King and I. (With the help of Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy, Congress finally granted the three American citizenship In February 1956.)
After his stage work in The King and I, Patrick studied at the Professional Children's School, where his classmates included Liza Minnelli and Marvin Hamlisch.
While promoting Flower Drum Song in 1958 with an appearance on the NBC variety show Omnibus, he and Kelly demonstrated how tap dancing had evolved over the years, with Kelly proclaiming, 'If there's gonna be another Fred Astaire, I think it might as well be Pat.'
Kelly also helped him get a job dancing on Italian television for about a year.
Adiarte played the college student T.J. Padmanagham in the Blake Edwards-directed back-to-school comedy High Time (1960), starring Bing Crosby, Fabian and Tuesday Weld, then was another prince in a 1961 ABC adaptation of The Enchanted Nutcracker, starring Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence.
Later, he would show up in the Shirley MacLaine-starring John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! (1965) — he portrayed a Middle Eastern Prince and son of Peter Ustinov's character — and on episodes of It Takes a Thief, Ironside, Bonanza, Hawaii Five-O and Kojak. More recently, he taught dance, including at Santa Monica College.
Adiarte was married to singer-actress Loni Ackerman from 1975 until their 1992 divorce. His sister died in 2016. In addition to his niece, survivors include his nephew, Michael.
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