Hypnotising Charlie

From MEETING AT MIDNIGHT. I must say, I don’t think I like Sidney Toler’s Charlie Chan. He wears too much eye makeup. Viewed in this light, the casting of Swedish Warner Oland in the role actually makes a kind of demented sense: Oland’s Swedish eyelids actually have a kind of oriental shape, without the need of makeup artistry. Toler, of largely Scottish ancestry, doesn’t have the same nordic slant. He also overdoes the supposedly Chinese mannerisms, and has a truly unpleasant smile, in contrast to Oland’s attractively cherubic grin, which he produces at regular intervals with zero sincerity.

Yuck!

The highlight of the film, which revolves around faked seances and hypnotic fluid, is Frances Chan, playing Charlie’s daughter, Frances Chan. Frances had appeared in Mr. Oland’s opus CHARLIE CHAN’S GREATEST CASE in 1933, playing the youngest Chan daughter. Here she gets promoted to lead girl, with her slightly amateurish charm and eagerness highly reminiscent of Number One Son Keye Luke’s performance style, and her ’40s dresses looking fashionable all over again.

And that, alas, was more or less the end of her career.

That Man Chan

This can only be a preliminary report, as I’ve just watched three of the approximately nine billion CHARLIE CHAN movies produced by 2oth Century Fox, and none of the eighty trillion made by Monogram. Fox churned out their Chans until star Warner Oland (the Swedish Chinaman) had a nervous breakdown and then died and was replaced by Sidney Toler (the Scots-American Chinaman) who followed the series over to Poverty Row studio Monogram, continuing to work on it until he too died.

Those things’ll kill you!

The films I watched were CHARLIE CHAN IN LONDON, CHARLIE CHAN IN SHANGHAI and CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS. They all had variations in their treatment of the series concept, as well as both similarities with and differences from the MR MOTO films produced concurrently at Fox.

Similarities, apart from the basic concept of an oriental detective played by a white European in yellowface — both ‘tecs spend a lot of time on ocean liners. I know it was a major way a lot of folks got around, and both investigators are globe-trotting kinds of guys, but this got kind of ridiculous. Chan was on ocean liners in two films, and delayed a trip in order to be in LONDON, whereas in one MOTO (I think it was THANK YOU) the little guy barely seemed to get ashore.

Also, the characters are essentially polite. This seems to be a stereotypical reading of the Eastern character, but it’s not necessarily an inaccurate one. It only applies to certain situations, though — one can’t really describe a lot of Japanese military behaviour in WWII as “polite”. But the characters, though stereotyped, are utterly positive. No messing about with tragic flaws here, the guys are super-smart, nice, always on the side of right, and unfailingly gracious. Admittedly, Moto does tend to kick the crap out of people, but only in self-defense and the pursuit of justice.

As I said before, Chan’s stories tend towards the whodunnit, and Moto’s are more like capers, with all kinds of crimes going on. This means they don’t need to spend time setting up complex crimes to be solved, but can begin with Moto already running about in disguise and getting up to all kinds of hi-jinks. The Chan films, as befits their portly, middle-aged hero, are more sedentary and sequential. Also, Chan isn’t such a loner — he’s a family man with twelve kids, various of whom appear to assist or interfere with Chan’s investigations.

The key son is KeyeLuke, as Number One Son. Luke is a real Chinese-American, somehow spring from the yellowface loins of the Nordic Oland, which is kind of weird. It could be argued that this casting is somewhat racist in itself, since the genius Oland is white and the blundering Luke is oriental. But he only blunders because he’s young, there’s no suggestion that he’s inherently dim. Teenagers were always a bit dopey in classic-era Hollywood films, since the films were made for everybody, not just teenagers like today, so they didn’t have to flatter adolescents. Anyhow, Luke is certainly more dignified than the characters played by the likes of Pat Wayne in John Ford films. He’s also allowed to have a normal teenage sex drive, spending most of SHANGHAI on the phone to his girlfriend. This struck me as fairly progressive for a minority character in a film of this era.

As an actor, Luke isn’t at this point as relaxed and solid as he became in later performances, but he’s great fun. It’s a performance of wide-eyed enthusiasm comparable to Burt Ward’s Robin in the Batman TV show. Play-acting and make-believe rather than realism.

I was quite touched by the little moments of sentiment the filmmakers’ always take care to insert — while Chan is gently scornful of most of No. 1 Son’s efforts at detection, there’s an underlying affection and unforced sweetness. I don’t find this kind of thing in most contemporary popular culture products. The old NANCY DREW movies have it too.

The most striking of the three films I saw was CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPIC GAMES, mainly because it turned out to be the Berlin Olympics. You know, in Nazi Germany. So that explains why a Chinese detective can be seen mooching around the background of Leni Riefenstahl’s OLYMPIA. I always wondered.

(Adding to the historic nature of the story, Charlie travels to Germany on the Hindenburg.)

Of course, the film eschews all politics. Charlie clashes gently with the local police detective, who’s a bit dumb and arrogant, but has a good heart. In general, he’s treated far better by the Nazis than he was in London in CHARLIE CHAN IN LONDON (Brit attitudes to Chan include superstitious fear among the lower orders, and supercilious disdain among the toffs). The movie is a great example of Hollywood’s appeasement of the Reich. At one point the characters drive under a banner, which has clearly had a giant swastika optically removed — but it’s uncertain if this was done for the original release, or to protect modern sensibilities. If the latter, it’s kind of a disgrace.

I enjoyed the three films and look forward to seeing more. They may just be escapist time-wasters, but there’s plenty of entertainment and historic interest to be had from them, and Oland and Luke are both very charming. I’m assuming, as the series progresses, Mr. Chan will find himself up against Nazi agents at some point, and he can make up for his strangely amicable attitude to those guys earlier on.

What’s going on here?

Two Wongs

“Punning on Chinese names is a low form of wit.” ~ Clive James (writer, broadcaster and low wit).

DAUGHTER OF SHANGHAI (1937) is one of two Anna May Wong films directed by French emigré Robert Florey in Hollywood. I saw the second collaboration, DANGEROUS TO KNOW, at the Museum of the Moving Image, I think, on a trip to New York, where it was playing as part of a Wong retrospective (AMW is being rediscovered and reappraised a fair bit these days). I remember it being decent enough, with a few imaginative directorial flourishes.  While DANGEROUS is a fairly sombre, noir-styled crime drama with Wong playing second banana to Akim Tamiroff, who was being seriously groomed as an exotic leading man (!), DAUGHTER is more in the way of a romp.

Wong is Lang Yin Ling, daughter of an antiques dealer murdered by people-traffickers, (a topical plot, but this sombre start scarcely darkens the proceedings) who vows revenge and sets about tracking down the boss of the outfit, first travelling to the South Seas or somewhere, working as a hooch dancer so she can infiltrate the racket. Meanwhile, cop and obvious romantic interest Philip Ahn has inveigled his way into the outfit by getting a job on the crook’s boat. Complications ensue.

Better known, perhaps, as Master Kan in TV’s Kung Fu.

For a minor-league film, this picture has a pretty great cast. Dependable surly Charles Bickford, youthful Anthony Quinn and Flash Gordon himself, Larry “Buster” Crabbe, play malefactors. Wong’s fellow graduate of the Sternberg glamour academy, Evelyn Brent, is a moll. Louise Brooks once observed that E.B.’s approach to acting was to stride into a scene, plant her feet wide apart, and stand with her hands on her hips, and that Sternberg made her great by softening her with feather boas and keeping her from striking poses. Well, she decidedly backslid after Sternberg.

Two-fisted fellows. Never has a hyphen been more important than in that last sentence.

Favourite supporting player was John Patterson Frank Sully, whom I’d never heard of, who plays a cauliflower-eared Irish ex-boxer working as a chauffeur to Mrs. Big, Cecil Cunningham (Cecil is a woman), who turns out to be a swell guy. Actually, there are lots of NICE PEOPLE in this film, I immediately liked it for that reason. For some reason, they weren’t boring, even if they weren’t brilliantly written. They were just nice.

While no masterpiece, DAUGHTER gets a shot in the arm once we get to Bickford’s sleazy rum joint, the Home Cafe (which is it?). Florey suddenly gets inspired, skewing the camera, laying on the atmos thick and lurid, and thronging the frame with characterful extras.

After this sequence the film lapses into a solid, entertaining third act with plenty of fisticuffs (poor Philip Ahn seems seriously winded by the end), and a coda featuring untranslated Chinese dialogue between our two lovebirds and some quips for Patterson. “By the time you get out of jail my grandchildren will be collecting my social security cheques.”

DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON, made six years earlier, is a silly Fu Manchu movie with Wong playing the daughter of the crime lord, here rendered chubby by Warner Oland, better known as Charlie Chan. For some reason Swedish actors were considered ideal to play orientals in Hollywood. The story, a travesty of Sax Rohmer’s racist pulp Daughter of Fu Manchu (itself something of a travesty) gives Wong an incomprehensible character trajectory from conscience-tortured avenger of imagined wrongs, to sadistic villainess. Threatening to disfigure the blonde heroine with acid, unless her boyfriend mercy-kills her first, is the one moment of zesty sadism comparable to Myrna Loy’s lip-smacking turn as Fah Lo See in MASK OF FU MANCHU (she was a popular Fah Lo See). The dialogue is by the esteemed Sidney Buchman (MR SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON), and he’s clearly trying for SOMETHING, but the results are pretty ungainly and risible. “Death shall first waken Petrie from sleep, and then end his lingering horror with a slow knife.”

Sessue Hayakawa (THE CHEAT, BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI) is romantic interest (Wong’s films either shrink in terror from the spectre of miscegenation, or deflect it by attempting to provide suitably ethnic partners), struggling somewhat with his dialogue. He never once confuses an “L” with an “R” sound, but it seems to be absorbing all his concentration to avoid it. He’s rigid with strain at all times: “He’s terrifying!” exclaimed Fiona during his love scene.

Enjoyable supporting thespage comes from the pleasingly named Harold Minjir, as an effete English Comedy Homosexual, who actually saves the day in the end. This seems to have been Minjir’s biggest ever role (he was actually American-born), in a bit-part career that saw him typed as hotel clerks, couturiers and secretaries. Shadowplay salutes his fey heroism!

Wong herself is dependably dignified, which is part of why she’s being honoured these days. As an actress she’s adequate, but her waif-like figure, strong and noble features, and surprisingly deep voice with its unusual enunciation make her a striking presence, and that typical solemnity makes her warm smile more surprising. Maybe her uniqueness as a Chinese-American star in that period, and the dignity with which she always performs, are what make her so sympathetic, in addition to her natural charisma. Even when she plays a villain, I’m on her side.