SOURCE: "Charlie Chan for Rent," in The Armchair Detective, Vol. 22, No. 4, Fall, 1989, pp. 359-64.

[In the following essay, Godfrey surveys the numerous films featuring Charlie Chan.]

As they went out, the third man stepped farther into the room, and Miss Minerva gave a little gasp of astonishment as she looked at him. In those warm islands, thin men were the rule, but here was a striking exception. He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty step of a woman. His cheeks were chubby as a baby's, his skin ivory tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanting. As he passed Miss Minerva he bowed with a courtesy encountered all too rarely in a work-a-day world, then moved on after Hallett.

"Amos," cried Miss Minerva. "That man—why he—"

"Charlie Chan," Amos explained.… "The best detective on the force."

And so one of the most popular detectives of all time entered public consciousness and began his celebrated multimedia career. The year is 1925, the book, The House Without a Key, the first of six to be written by Earl Derr Biggers (1885-1933), an Ohio-born journalist and Boston-based drama critic, recently transplanted to New York.

This was not Biggers's first literary success. He had produced Seven Keys to Baldpate (1904) which had been turned into a Broadway success for entertainer George M. Cohan. A later book, The Agony Column, had placed him firmly in the mystery-suspense genre and provided him with the financial wherewithal to move to Pasadena, California, then a paradise of orange blossoms and pitasporin trees at the edge of the desert.

It was during his residency here in 1919 that he decided to take a trip to Hawaii, where he became enchanted by the then unspoiled charms of Honolulu. During this vacation, he kept abreast of police cases in the local paper and particularly the work of two native police officers, Chang Apana and Lee Fook.

With an agreement in hand for the serialization of his next novel in the Saturday Evening Post, he returned home and began a tale of a murder set in Honolulu. Biggers was an acute and astute observer of popular tastes. True to the convention of the time, a young couple was at the center of the plot, caught up in the investigation. Chan does not appear until the seventh chapter and then stays very much in the background as the young male visitor from Boston, who is learning about love (circa 1920), takes a central role in the investigation under his paternal guidance. The book moves leisurely but certainly. By modern standards, it is bland entertainment, but it was a considerable success for the Post and for Bobbs-Merrill, who rushed it into print. Chan quickly emerged as a popular fictional character, not surprisingly in this time of Mah Jong and chinoiserie. Biggers was immediately set to work on another work, The Chinese Parrot, which appeared the following year.

Pathé, the French-based film company operating in the U.S., gobbled up the film rights to The House Without a Key, which they made into a silent serial with Japanese-born actor George K. Kuwa as Chan, who appears late in the film, and, as in the book, creates a backdrop for romance amid the murder. It was a small role, but it was a start. A rival studio, Universal, won the bidding for the rights to the second book, which they filmed, again as a silent, in 1927, with Kamiyama Sojin, another actor of Japanese ancestry, as Chan. He was more important to the overall mystery but still supported the central romance, which served as a vehicle for two of the studio's contractees.

Behind That Curtain was the next Chan from Biggers's pen, and Fox Studios bought it immediately and filmed it with dialogue, using English actor E. L. Park as Chan. In stills, Park looks more like Erich von Stroheim than anything Biggers devised. The restructured plot was intended as a showcase for Warner Baxter, the popular actor who would soon win an Academy Award for his starring role in The Cisco Kid. Park was billed last and came on late. Interestingly, Boris Karloff was cast as a servant. Nobody was yet thinking of a series.

That did not occur until 1931, then Fox suddenly woke up to the realization that it had a hot property on its hands as it began work on Charlie Chan Carries On. It searched for a bigger name than Park's to portray the Hawaiian detective and settled on Warner Oland (1879-1938), a Swedish-born actor who had appeared on screen as an Oriental convincingly enough to impress the casting people. Oland was moved up to third billing, and the romance was pared down to support the mystery.

More than any other actor who portrayed Chan, Oland fit the description and temperament of Biggers's creation. The public response to him was enthusiastic. Fox bought up the rights to the earlier books and refilmed them with Oland now top-billed as Chan. When they had run through the books (Biggers died of a heart attack in 1933 after completing six), original plots were commissioned which eventually took Chan to Egypt, Shanghai, Paris, London, Monte Carlo, and the Berlin Olympics.

Oland took the role to heart and spoke of himself in Chanese as Chan. In 1935, he made a personal appearance tour of China, where he was reportedly well received.

In Charlie Chan in Paris, the first of the original stories, film adapter and mystery writer Philip Macdonald came up with a son-assistant for Charlie. The first was to be Keye Luke, a Cantonese-born artist and technical adviser at the studio on Chinese settings. He had some experience before the camera in small parts. Lee Chan was a variation on the young amateur detectives Chan had supported in the early books. Although young and enthusiastic, he was also thoughtful and respectful. Later, as the series progressed, the Chan sons would become more doltish.

Oland was, by many accounts, a heavy drinker whose health was fast deteriorating. While he was encouraged to stop drinking by the Fox production people, some of his directors felt that he gave a better performance with a few drinks in him. What seems to be methodical and purposeful deduction was often Oland groping for his lines under the influence of alcohol.

In 1937, the studio merged with Twentieth Century, and the Chans were assigned to the B-unit. Production values, writing, and acting noticeably deteriorated. Oland was failing badly. His marriage had crumbled. His concentration was shot. His characterization was now too soft and slow. In the midst of filming Charlie Chan at Ringside, he began to disappear for several days at a time. The studio put him on suspension. Weeks later, police found him wandering the streets of Los Angeles, confused and disheveled. Fox finally woke up to how serious his problem had become. Oland was hospitalized and dried out. A reconciliation was effected with his wife. Shooting was rescheduled.

It was too late. While vacationing in Europe, he developed pneumonia and died.

Ringside was rewritten to accommodate Fox's other series detective, Peter Lorre's Mr. Moto, and released as Mr. Moto's Gamble late in 1938. Keye Luke was kept in as Lee Chan. It was a strange hybrid.

The studio lost no time shopping around for a new Chan. At one time, J. Edward Bromberg, who had figured in Charlie Chan on Broadway, was expected to take over. Instead, they chose Missouri-born Sidney Toler (1874-1947), a character actor with a string of solid but minor credits. Wisely, some attempt was made to pick up the pace of the plots.

The refurbished series led off, rather successfully, with Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1939). Luke had declined to return without Oland. The now obligatory role of sonassistant was assigned to Victor Sen-Yung (a.k.a. Sen Yung), a chemical salesman who had wandered into films on a lark.

Oland had been so firmly identified with the part that many feared Toler would flop. In fact, he performs well in these earliest films, less honeyed and serene than Oland, but efficient and enthusiastic, and, judged by a rereading of Biggers's first novels, equally plausible. Unfortunately, Sen-Yung, who would appear in eighteen of the films, was more clearly juvenile comic relief than Luke had been. Yet, given this handicap, he was enjoyable.

World War II changed things. Popular tastes were running to Nazi spy thrillers and Mrs. Miniver. Twentieth Century-Fox cancelled the Moto series because of political happenings in the Pacific. Chan seemed likely to follow. The final scripts had become formula work and the sets hand-me-downs from other productions. Critics began seriously complaining of Toler's "wooden performances." After a cancellation and reprieve, Fox dropped Charlie Chan.

But moviegoers were not deprived of the Oriental detective. Executives at Monogram Studios, the king of the Poverty Row operations, picked it up. Monogram made no secret that budget was all-important. They re-used scripts with minimal rewriting. Their costume department seemed to come off the rack at Woolworth's. The distribution system was tightly wound and aimed at rural, unsophisticated audiences. There was a big difference between a "B" production at Fox and even something "big" at Monogram. Several film historians have contended that Monogram was incapable of making anything decent. It is hard to find an example to refute that claim.

As Toler had departed Fox with a guarantee that he would return if the series were revived, Monogram Studios brought him back, giving him new Number Three Son, Benson Fong, later a successful restaurateur. Fong was agreeable, if slow; the most Americanized of Chan's screen sons. (There had been one or two appearances by other offspring, including two actresses as Number One Daughter.)

Monogram also added black comedian Mantan Moreland as Chan's chauffeur, Birmingham Brown. In fairness to Moreland, who had an excellent knack for physical comedy, he should not be held responsible for the racially degrading, low-brow, feets-do-your-duty, fraidy-cat material he was handed by his writers. It had appeal then in the South where a large part of Monogram's audience was concentrated, but today it is liable to produce more squirms than laughs.

The Monogram quickies were cheap in every sense of the word. The sets looked like cardboard. The scripts were short and swift, filled with wild schemes and fantastic murder devices. The supporting actors often performed as if they had learned their craft from a correspondence school course. But these films were popular enough to keep the series going for another seven years. Toler, allegedly another heavy drinker who honed his characterization on a bottle, became slower and more expressionless as the series progressed. By The Trap (1946), he was shuffling through the part with no discernable vitality at all. Even given Monogram's failings, this last film was a painful documentation of the series's decline. Within a year, he was dead, but Charlie Chan carried on.

Bad as they had become, the Chan films were Monogram's biggest moneymaker and the studio was struggling for survival. With rising costs of production and the threat of television on the horizon, Monogram was finding that no matter how cheaply it made them, it just could not make films cheaply enough. Audience tastes had been sophisticated by wartime experiences, and the crudeness of these Poverty Row offerings appealed to fewer and fewer moviegoers.

A replacement for Toler was an urgent necessity, and they wasted no time in coming up with Roland Winters (1904-1985), a Boston-born journeyman stage actor from New York. It was a remarkable choice. He did not look Chinese at all. He did not even try. He would look straight into the camera and squint, and that was his Chinese characterization. But he was lively, the youngest Chan to date, and he was available. Monogram could not afford to wait.

He was rushed into a remake of Mr. Wong in Chinatown from the studio's pre-war ersatz-Chan series with Boris Karloff. Those films had been extremely crude, but Monogram's desperate executives saw no reason not to retread the scripts for the new Winters films. The Chinese Ring (1946) was shot with as few changes as possible. The sets were the same. Even the lines were the same. Sen-Yung, who returned, was given some of the girl reporter's speeches. What had looked far-fetched and crude in the earlier film was no better in this one, but Monogram did not seem to care.

Where Toler had been blunt, Winters was brusque. The beloved Charlie Chan epithets that Warner Oland had emoted with such globular flair were reduced to a dismissive "So much for so much."

When Monogram finished looting the Wong scripts, it started in on some old Westerns. The Shanghai Chest (1948), the third and perhaps best (or least dreadful) of the Winters half dozen, came from such a source. So did the increasingly dire Mystery of the Golden Eye (1948) and Feathered Serpent (1948), which followed. Keye Luke was brought back to join Sen-Yung for Serpent and stayed on alone in support for Sky Dragon (1949), the last film made on the Monogram lot. Ironically this film, from an original story line, was carried by a list of competent supporting actors: Elena Verdugo, Noel Neill, Milburn Stone, and Lyle Talbot were all headed into television in the next decade, where Winters himself turned up supporting Verdugo in the CBS sitcom Meet Millie.

It was finally television that put Monogram out of its misery.

And yet these films should not be completely dismissed. They were among the first features sold to television, where I initially ran into them in the mid-'50s. I particularly recall The Scarlet Clue with Toler (1944), set in a radio station, which featured an ingenious, if far-fetched, method of disposing of victims. I could not walk into an elevator for a month afterward. Forced to do so, I ran to the back and clutched the railing for dear life.

Moreland and Benson Fong were pure comic relief. Viewed without prejudice, their humor looked silly but harmless. It wasn't racial, it was just clowning. One was black, the other Oriental. They weren't types, they were just funny individuals. Viewed today, these films can still be seen as unsophisticated introductory detective fiction for children, though even a child will discern that the Fox stuff is better.

Chan's career continued on radio, where he was played by a number of actors, most notably Academy Award winner Ed Begley. Then, in 1958, he turned up on television as the hero of a half-hour television series, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan. J. Carrol Naish, a well-accomplished character actor with an impressive list of film credits, played Chan. James Hong played Number One Son Barry Chan, again mostly for comic relief.

Naish made a serious attempt at playing the celebrated detective, a marked improvement over Winters, whose portrayal had the aura of a party prank without the warmth. Naish was most effective being malicious, and a certain hardness stubbornly clings to his Charlie Chan.

But the finishing stroke was delivered by the scripts, which were unimaginative even by the television standards of the time. There was too little mystery, compounded by settings that were often bare and dull. The series was not renewed.

By the '60s, Charlie Chan was in eclipse. The books were out of print and the films lay largely unavailable. Charges of racial stereotyping were raised in earnest, and in anger, about the characters. Asian-American activists found offense in the chop-suey dialogue and pseudo-chinoiserie.

In 1968, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held a retrospective of the Chan films that was startlingly successful. Universal began making a TV film called Happiness is a Warm Clue (originally titled The Return of Charlie Chan), but it waited nine years for American exposure. It was not racially offensive, just weak. Ross Martin, the versatile actor who had played Robert Conrad's partner on TV's Wild, Wild West, appeared as Chan in this mystery about a wealthy Greek tycoon. There were several offspring, but no revival.

Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen showed up in theaters in 1981, holding out the promise of Peter Ustinov as Chan. San Francisco activists were vehement in their protests, disrupting the filming, then picketing the openings. They denounced the racial misrepresentations and demanded a Chinese-American actor be given the chance to play Chan. They probably felt vindicated when they saw the results. The script was amateurish, the direction jokey, and the acting an embarrassment. Curse was a miserable dud. Ustinov seemed unstirred by the challenge of Chan, offering a weak variant of his Poirot. His Number One Grandson was ineffectually played by Richard Hatch, late of the TV series The Streets of San Francisco. His Chinese ancestry was one of the script's jokes, but no one was laughing. Audiences stayed away in droves.

Early in 1989, Key Video, the archive branch of CBS/Fox, announced their intentions to release some of the Fox Chan films. Again Chinese-American protests were heard. But Fox went ahead. The result was the Charlie Chan Collection, a selection of seven films with both Oland and Toler marketed in the same fashion as the Rathbone/Holmes series of the previous year. Each is packaged in a colorful slip-case with a foldout cover that details the mystery and outlines the suspects.

For a new generation of mystery buffs, these cassettes offer a first exposure to one of the legends of detective fiction. Five of the six novels had once appeared in a bargain omnibus edition which is now out of print. The Mysterious Press has reprinted all six titles in paperback, but a check of local outlets in the Los Angeles area finds them all but unavailable except at a few mystery bookshops, perhaps a fault of the distributor, or of the book buyers themselves.

This collection is not the first release of the Chan films on videocassette. The Winters films and some of Toler's Monogram series were briefly available from Allied Artists before its bankruptcy six years ago. These were among the first videocassettes on the market, and they disappeared before VCRs caught on as home entertainment. One of the Toler Monogram pictures, Black Magic, remains available on a number of the bargain video lines, as Meeting at Midnight, the retitling required to distinguish it from Orson Welles's 1949 foreign-made Black Magic about the magician Cagliostro. When the Welles film slipped into the public domain, bargain videotape manufacturers confused it with the Chan film and released it in error. The other films are still protected by copyright.

Coincidentally, another video firm, King Bee, has released several compilations of the Naish Chan television shows on cassette. You can now hold a Charlie Chan mini-retrospective in your own living room.