CHARLIE CHAN BROADWAY
US, 1937, 70 minutes, Black-and-white.
Warner Oland, Keye Luke, Joan Marsh, J.Edward Blomberg, Douglas Fowley, Harold Huber, Donald Woods, Louise Henry, Joan Woodbury, Leon Ames, Marc Lawrence.
Directed by Eugene Ford.
This is the second last of the Charlie Chan films starring Warner Oland. Charlie and his son Lee, Keye Luke enthusiastic and making rash judgements as usual, are arriving in New York from Europe and plan to go immediately to San Francisco and home to Honolulu.
They encounter a sinister character on the ship who is searching a woman’s cabin. They come to the woman’s help – and she uses them on their return to port to hide something in their luggage. She has some notoriety, connections with gangsters in the city.
Charlie is to be feted with a dinner by the New York police, the chief played energetically by Harold Huber (who was to portray the police chief in Monte Carlo in the next film). In the meantime, there are two eager journalists trying to get stories and photos, the editor of the paper who seems suspicious in some ways. There are also the gangsters at a club with an exotic dancer who has separated from the sinister man seen earlier and taken up with one of the gangsters.
The woman returning from Europe has a diary and plans to expose the criminals. She is then found murdered. So is the sinister man who was searching. Once again, there are all kinds of clues, many lies, quite a number of suspects.
The film uses the device of having all the characters assemble in one room with Charlie Chan cleverly exposing the criminal – who is rather unexpected, the eager young journalist, played by Donald Woods, who has been blackmailing the criminals and who would be exposed if the diary were to become public.
Not so much the Broadway of the theatre but echoes of the Broadway and the gangsters of writers like Damon Runyon.
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.
