CHARLIE CHAN’S SECRET

US, 1936, 71 minutes, Black and white.
Warner Öland, Rosina Lawrence, Charles Quigley, Henrietta Crosman, Edward Trevor, Astrid Allwyn, Herbert Mundin, Jonathan Hale.
Directed by Gordon Wiles.

This is an entertaining entry into the Charlie Chan films, money always playing an important role in most of them but this time the focus on Spiritualism.

The plot concerns the sinking of a ship, the seeming disappearance of a young man coupled with his announced return from the dead. He is wealthy and his surviving means a great difference to relatives, spiritualists and the legal manager of the estate.

The matriarch, played by Rosina Lawrence, a commanding presence, has invited Charlie Chan to help in the investigations. She devotes a lot of her time and wealth to studying Spiritualism, even to having a seance with a professor and Carlotta, his medium assistant. During the seance, the main members of the family as well as the lawyer present, and a knife is thrown at the seeming presence of the allegedly surviving son.

There are two young daughters of the mother, one of them attracted to a newspaper man who finishes up assisting Charlie Chan (his son is not present in this film though there are some verbal references to his American slang), the other daughter engaged to a dashing young man with a moustache! There is also a caretaker who is not only suspicious but bears a grudge because his daughter had been infatuated with the son who was responsible for her death.

A lot of questioning, a lot of mixed motives, a lot of cooperation and standoffishness. Then, suddenly the matriarch is shot through a window. Charlie and the journalist and a lot of time working out where the sniper could have fired from, going to a church steeple and finding a rifle set up with a mechanism for firing connected to the spire bells.

In all the investigations there is the butler, played by Herbert Mundin (a British character actor who was killed in a road accident soon after at the age of 40) and, playing the fearful butler for plenty of laughs. Then a vase is shattered by a bullet when the bell tolls.

The decision is made to have another seance with everybody sitting where they were at the original one, the matriarch appearing. A knife is thrown, as with the previous seance, but it is only an image projected of mother and she appears, alive.

The professor on Spiritualism has been under suspicion and arrested, especially when details of the setup in the house are fraudulent and revealed. However, Carlotta is innocent and she agrees to restage the seance. The caretaker is accused but he is innocent. Ultimately, it is the dashing young man with the moustache who is after the money (though, at one stage, it looked as though it was the lawyer).

Somewhat sympathetic to Spiritualism but also exposing the factory in some detail.

CHARLIE CHAN FILMS

Charlie Chan was the creation of novelist Earl Deer Biggers, creator of the popular novel Seven Keys to Baldpate (adapted for the stage in the early 20th century and the plot of many films of the same name and variations). Biggers saw the beginning of the popularity of the films of Charlie Chan in the silent era but died at the age of 48 in 1933, just as the series with Warner Land was becoming more popular.

20th Century Fox was responsible for the early Charlie Chan films with Warner Oland and gave them more prestigious production values than many of the short supporting features of the time. After Oland’s death, Fox sold the franchise to Monogram Pictures with Sidney Toler in the central role. They were less impactful than the early films. There were some films later in the 1940s with Roland Winters in the central role.

The films generally ran for about 71 minutes, and similarities in plots, often a warning to Charlie Chan to leave a location, his staying when murders are committed, displaying his expertise in thinking through situations and clues. He generally collaborates with the local police who, sometimes seem, characters, but ultimately are on side.

Warner Oland was a Swedish actor who came with his family to the United States when he was a child. Some have commented that for his Chinese appearance he merely had to adjust his eyebrows and moustache to pass for Chinese – even in China where he was spoken to in Chinese. And the name, Charlie Chan, became a common place for reference to a Chinese. In retrospect there may have been some racial stereotype in his presentation but he is always respectful, honouring Chinese ancestors and traditions. Charlie Chan came from Honolulu.

Quite a number of the film is Keye Luke appeared as his son, very American, brash in intervening, make mistakes, full of American slang (and in Charlie Chan in Paris mangling French). Luke had an extensive career in Hollywood, his last film was in 1990 been Woody Allen’s Alice and the second Gremlins film.

Quite a number of character actors in Hollywood had roles in the Charlie Chan films, and there was a range of directors.

Oland had a portly figure and the screenplay makes reference to this. His diction is precise and much of the screenplay is in wise sayings, aphorisms, which are especially enhanced by the omission of “the� and “a� in delivery which makes them sound more telling and exotic.

There was a Charlie Chan film the late 1970s, Charlie Chan and the Dragon Queen with Peter Ustinov in the central role.