Dali House

Charlie Chan films were, for an earlier generation than mine, compelling B-watching at the bijou, even if they never had the hefty following that the cowboy series pulled. By the time they were being slathered on TV when I was growing up, their amusement value lay in the quasi-oriental trappings and their sheer black-and-white shlockiness. They could be pretty funny too.

I was recently admiring some of the movie posters with a smirk on my face and decided to read up about the people who made these films, rediscovering with strange satisfaction that not one of the actors who played Charlie was Asian.

Well, there was one, eventually: His voice on the 1970s Saturday morning cartoon series “Charlie Chan and the Chan Clan” was provided by Keye Luke, who had played Lee Chan, Charlie’s #1 son, in the first batch of movies and later appeared in the “Dr Kildare” films and then the “Kung Fu” TV show. He, at least, was of Chinese descent. See the rest.