CHARLIE CHAN AT THE WAX MUSEUM
US, 1941, 63 minutes, Black-and-white.
Sydney Toler, Sen Yung, C. Henry Gordon, Marc Lawrence, Joan Valerie, Marguerite Chapman.
Directed by Lynn Shores.
The setting for this Charlie Chan mystery is a bit more exotic than usual, not only a wax museum, but a wax museum about crime, even including a statue of Charlie Chan himself.
The film opens in court with a callous criminal, played by Marc Lawrence (who was to play criminals for the next 40 years or more), condemned to execution but escaping from the court, hiding out in the Museum, the proprietor an expert in plastic surgery and preparing to alter his face. There is a complication about other criminals and executions, the theory that a notorious criminal had escaped the gallows, was still alive, and the target of the man condemned.
The device to get Charlie Chan to the wax museum is for the manager of the Museum to propose a radio broadcast between Chan and a German expert. Chan’s son Jimmy is also at hand. There are complications before the broadcast, setting up the caretaker to pull a switch at the time that Chan is to be killed, the special chair being set aside for him. Jimmy is also investigating around the Museum and discovering basements and trapdoors.
There is a reporter on the job encouraging Chan to go to the broadcast. There is also the boss at the radio station. As it happens, the German professor sits in Chan’s chair and is killed. There is all kind of action and activity throughout the Museum, secret passages, dungeons, statues… It is also complicated by the wife of the falsely executed man coming with her lawyer to wreak vengeance.
It turns out to be the radio manager who is the disguised villain!
Good Charlie Chan entertainment.
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.
