CHARLIE CHAN IN PANAMA
US, 1940, 67 minutes, Black-and-white.
Sidney taller, Jean Rogers, Lionel at will, Mary Nash, Send Young, Caine Richmond, Lionel Royce, Jack LaRue?, Addison Richards.
Directed by Norman Foster
By this time, Sidney Toler had made the character of Charlie Chan his own, distinctive presence and bearing, manner of speaking, always with the Chinese aphorisms, his family – and his second son, Jimmy (Sen Yung) always finding himself present to help with the investigation as well as often unwittingly sabotaging it. (There is an explanation of how he actually got from California to New York and then to Panama where he stupidly took photos of military installations and found himself in prison.)
By 1940, the Charlie Chan films were topical in terms of World War II, City in Darkness being a story of the occupation of Paris and unmasking saboteurs.
While the entry of the US into World War II was still almost 2 years off when this film was made, there is a military alertness, especially risks to sabotage in American ships being photographed by fifth column agents and the blowing up of the ships passing through the canal.
The film gets its characters together rather neatly, a group deciding not to sail through the canal but to fly by flying boat to Panama. One of them is an undercover British agent who goes to his contact, an owner of a shop which sells Panama hats – who turns out to be Charlie Chan in disguise. The man is poisoned by a cigarette and collapses, Charlie being arrested, taken to jail where he encounters his son. He is taken to the governor and they discuss the presence of a mysterious saboteur conclude that the saboteur was one of the passengers on the flying boat.
There is a very suspicious doctor who insists on carrying his own baggage with experiments on animals for bubonic plague. There is a mysterious Egyptian who owns the shop across from the Panama hat shop who sells cigarettes. There is also a dashing young naval engineer who is attracted by a singer at a nightclub managed by a rather dashing gigolo-looking proprietor. She in fact is a refugee from Czechoslovakia after the annexation. There is also a novelist from London. And, for a distraction, as well as some comic touches from a spinster teacher from Chicago who is wanting to let her hair down by travelling to Latin America, Miss Finch.
The thought does go through the mind that she in fact could be the villain because she acts in such a way that she could not be. There is another murder, Jimmy getting tangled by visiting rooms and being threatened. The time for the ships to go through the canal is getting very pressing.
There is something of a climax inside a vault in the local Cemetery, owned by the Egyptian, which also has a workshop under the tomb. In the meantime, a Panamanian transports the nitroglycerine to the site for the explosion. He comes to the cemetery but is pursued and shot – and it turns out that he is the nightclub proprietor. Meanwhile Charlie Chan, Jimmy and Miss Finch have spent hours trapped in the vault.
Finale, as usual, all the suspects in the site for the explosion with Charlie Chan so that eventually the villain will reveal where the nitroglycerine is. In fact, it has all been discovered but Charlie wants the villain to incriminate not himself, but herself, for it is indeed, Miss Finch. A similar plotline was used for Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944).
Quite an entertaining mystery.
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.
