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.

The characters came from the novels of Earl Derr Biggers, wrote the first — “House Without A Key, Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police Department” — in 1925, based on an idea he got while on vacation in Hawaii years earlier. He read a newspaper article about a Chinese detective named Chang Apana and thought the idea was, um, novel. Readers agreed.

Biggers wrote five more books, all of which became movies but for one that landed on Broadway in 1933, the year he died. Twentieth Century Fox built up Charlie Chan from a minor character into a hero in the 1930s and early ’40s before Monogram Studios had a go at keeping him alive on a tiny allowance until 1949.

Charlie travelled the world solving cases, usually with #1 or #2 son in tow for comic relief. Occasionally the boys actually helped “Pop” as he tackled such villains as Boris Karloff, Leo G Carroll and Cesar Romero, all the while learning from his wisdom: “Only very brave mouse makes nest in cat’s ear.”

The Charlie Chan who I and most people liked best was the original. Warner Oland sure didn’t look or sound Swedish to me when he was poking around the docks evoking ancient Chinese wisdom: “Patience and mulberry leaf make silk shawl.”

But that’s what Oland was, born Johan Vernerolund in Sweden, migrating as a child to the US and by 1912 playing heavies in the silent pictures. He was Al Jolson’s father in “The Jazz Singer” and, even after launching the Charlie Chan role, appeared in “Shanghai Express” with Marlene Dietrich and “The Painted Veil” with Greta Garbo.

“Jack” Oland, as his friends knew him, spoke several languages and studied philosophy, classical music and art, and he loved to drink. He walked off the set one day in 1937, got on a boat to Sweden and died there of bronchial pneumonia the following year.

Sidney Toler was his reincarnation, a Missouri horse-breeder’s son who’d already made 50 films, had acted as well as written on Broadway and was a gifted baritone opera singer. Before Chan he’d appeared in “Blonde Venus” with Dietrich, “Spitfire” with Katherine Hepburn and “Our Relations” with Laurel and Hardy.

Toler was killed by intestinal cancer in 1947, struggling right to the end to complete his last Chan film. As Charlie said: “This is unexpected — like squirt from aggressive grapefruit.”

When Oland sailed out, Keye Luke found himself superseded by #2 son Jimmy, played by Victor Sen Yung. Both he and Toler made their debuts in “Charlie Chan in Honolulu”, but Yung vanished for a while during the Monogram days, then showed up for Toler’s last three pictures, then was in five of the six Chan movies starring Roland Winters, this time playing #2 son “Tommy”! Yung went on to play Hop Sing, the family cook on “Bonanza”.

There was a lot of sibling rivalry in the scriptwriters’ room. Also in “Honolulu” was Layne Tom Jr as #2 son Tommy. He’d earlier played the young Charlie Chan in “Charlie Chan at the Olympics”, then played another son named Willie in “Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise”.

Benson Fong was in several of the Toler Monogram pictures as #3 son Tommy, and was joined in “Charlie Chan in the Secret Service” by a sister, Iris, by Marianne Quon. In “Charlie Chan in Black Magic”, another of Charlie’s daughters, Frances, was played by an actress whose name really was Frances Chan.

Then there was #4 son Eddie in “The Jade Mask”, played by Keye Luke’s realbrother Edwin.

World War II ended the confusion for Fox, but Monogram provided the shark for Toler to jump, and by the time Roland Winters took over the role, it had no limbs left at all. But you know what Charlie says: “Every man must wear out at least one pair of fool’s shoes.”

“Do not wave stick when trying to catch dog.” But if it’s more information you want, wave your mouse at CharlieChanFamily.com, which has a cantankerous setup but loads of pictures, or CharlieChan.net, which isn’t very lively lately but has soundbites.

There are websites that get into the movies’ racial stereotyping (black as well as Asian), but that’s no fun, and Charlie’s just about goofy fun. in this case, when it comes to race, “Charlie Chan at the Race Track” is as far as I want to go.