CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS
US, 1937, 71 minutes, Black-and-white.
Warner Poland, Kathryn DeMille?, Pauline Moore, Allan Lane, Keye Luke, C.Henry Gordon, John Eldridge, Layne Tom Jr, Jonathan Hale, Frederik Volgeding.
Directed by H.Bruce Humberstone.
This is a very entertaining contribution to the Charlie Chan stories. It opens in Honolulu with some experiments about radar guided planes, the pilot being knocked unconscious and the plane stolen. Watching the experiment are the inventor, the owner who has bought the invention, a rival. Further investigation shows that a workman has been killed, that there is a mysterious woman who has gone to the United States by plane. Needless to say, Charlie Chan is invited in to investigate.
This is a spy drama of the mid 1930s, focusing on Germany with no mention of Nazism, but the spy ring seeming to be international, beyond Germany. But, with a focus on Germany, 1936, it means there is attention to the Olympic Games in Berlin. And, not only that, Lee Chan is swimming in competition. There are complications with the Olympic team, especially with one of the athletes, a poll vaulter, and his girlfriend, all from Honolulu.
As with all the other international Charlie Chan stories, there is a focus on the police chief, this time very much old school, exemplifying German efficiency and courtesy.
There are complications on board the ship with the athletes, the villainous femme fatale (Kathryn DeMille) concealing the invention in a camera and trying to recuperate it from the athlete’s luggage. There are mysterious agents, including the supervisor at the Games Village women’s dormitories.
More and more complications, the finger pointing at the owner and his mysterious behaviour, the revelation of the head of the spy ring and his inviting Charlie Chan to a box at the Olympic Games – giving a chance for some footage, processions of athletes, an American relay with the group cheering on Jesse Owens and the final swimming with Charlie Chan’s Number One Son.
Number One Son gets into all kinds of mixups, undercover detection, getting clues when it is all too late – as well as frequently offering aphorisms with a comment that his father would say something like this. In the Honolulu sequences, there is a little boy son who is emulating his older brother.
Buildup to a confrontation, the would-be owner acting in a sinister way, the actual owner vindicated as well as the athlete, and the villain turning out to be the inventor wanting to make money exploiting the invention by stealing it and selling it.
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.
