Stardom is a morbid enterprise, and the life of its luminaries always has a tacit alliance with their expiration date. Often, fame intensifies upon death, as the deceased has no way to speak for or against their mythologization, usually against the backdrop of tragedy. Because the modern star was born in Los Angeles, and because of the tendency for their deaths to receive such lurid, scandalous attention, it follows that the city’s morticians and forensics experts undertake a larger-than-life mission themselves, profiling and putting to rest secrets of the flesh never before placed under such scrutiny. Placing one such person under a similar spotlight, Ben Hethcoat and Keita Ideno’s debut documentary feature illuminates the life and times of Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, Los Angeles’ erstwhile Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner from 1967 to 1982, and the subject of no little controversy himself.
Having largely receded from public consciousness, Noguchi nonetheless remained in the service long after his eventual demotion; in the wake of an especially contentious ruling involving the demise of actress Natalie Wood, the charges against the coroner amounted to such acts as moonlighting and the disclosure of sensitive information. This was not his first time: after his autopsy of Robert F. Kennedy, when Noguchi had proposed that the fatal shot had come not from Kennedy’s assassin but possibly as friendly fire, his attempt to seek funding for his understaffed department was rebuffed by Lindon Hollinger, the then-chief administrative officer, who instead levied accusations of incompetence and mismanagement. These episodes, framed as instantiations of Japanese-American discrimination, constitute the organizing principle around which Hethcoat and Ideno’s narrative coalesces. Noguchi’s own background as an immigrant who passed over an internship with Johns Hopkins in favor of one at L.A.’s Orange County General Hospital; his marriage to his nurse Hisako, who was herself interned at a relocation camp during World War II; and his political influence, not least in the Japanese United in the Search for Truth (JUST) lobby formed to protest his charges — these, by and large, are faithfully recounted in Coroner to the Stars.
The film’s titular moniker was first adopted during Noguchi’s time, and in some ways still refers uniquely to him; having presided over the post-mortems of Marilyn Monroe, Sharon Tate, William Holden, and such other celebrities, Noguchi drew admiration for what many saw as his cool-headedness, just as he did ire. Charged with sensationalizing his reports — no less by Frank Sinatra — and shaped perhaps by his own popular persona as reflected in Jack Klugman’s eponymous character from the medical drama Quincy, M.E., Noguchi strove, whether actively or subconsciously, to resist the distinct but related stereotypes bestowed on him. Neither the “perpetual foreigner,” with his eminence in America’s medical field, nor the “model minority,” evinced through years of quiet but firm confrontation with his adversaries, the good doctor purports to “tell it like it is” in a business flecked with the impulse to do otherwise. The same might not be said of Coroner to the Stars, whose hagiographic leanings veer into an occasionally boilerplate treatment of its protagonist, particularly in its somewhat self-righteous portrayal of Noguchi’s persona. Then again, with the 98-year-old as its living, breathing subject, the film’s recourse to testimony does seem, on the whole, riveting enough.
Published as part of Slamdance Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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