|
|
Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 4, No. 3 |
|
|
 |
 |
CHARLIE CHAN Please Stand Up? |
Don't go by the cinematic
versions of Inspector Chan
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Ask most mystery fans to describe Charlie Chan and they'll probably say he's a tall, rather stout Chinese sleuth who wears a Homburg hat, speaks English haltingly, and quotes so many Chinese proverbs that you think he's an advance man for Confucius. Most fans probably also will tell you Charlie works for the federal government, aided by his reckless "No. 1 son" and a black valet named Birmingham Brown, who seems to be afraid of virtually everything.
And if the mystery fan you're asking also happens to be Asian, you may hear an added line of description: "He's also an insult to our race!"
These familiar Charlie Chan cliches surely were responsible for making him one of the most popular fictional detectives of the 20th century. And they're probably also the reason for the decline in public interest in him over the past quarter century.
There hasn't been a new Charlie Chan movie since "Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen" in 1981--a box office disaster that drew hordes of Asian pickets for the casting of Englishman Peter Ustinov as Charlie, if not for the film's general incompetence.
All the Chan mystery novels are currently out of print and TV has shown little interest since J. Carrol Naish, the star of radio's "Life with Luigi," played Chan in a forgettable syndicated series of the 1950s and the enitre "Chan Clan" turned up in a kids' cartoon series. To even suggest a revival of interest in Charlie Chan now seems absolutely futile in this era of rampant political correctness.
Which is kind of sad, in my opinion, since most of those objectionable characteristics were added to the Chan legacy by the movies--and do not appear in the six Charlie Chan novels published by his creator, Earl Derr Biggers, between 1925-30.
Biggers was a Harvard-educated Ohio native, a former newspaperman whose greatest success before Chan was "Seven Keys to Baldpate," a 1913 mystery novel that George M. Cohan turned into a rousing Broadway success. (It also has been filmed several times.) While vacationing in the Hawaiian islands in 1919, Biggers concocted Charlie Chan after reading an account in a Honolulu newspaper of the exploits of Chang Apana, a real-life Asian detective with the Honolulu P.D. He introduced Chan in "The House Without A Key" in 1925 and he was an immediate success.
In the mid-1920s, it probably seemed a fresh and original idea to create a fictional Chinese-American detective to serve as the hero in a series of traditional "cozy" mysteries in the tradition of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, the Belgian-born sleuth from Agatha Christie, then a newcomer on the mystery scene.
I'm guessing it also seemed like a very positive thing to create a Chinese detective hero at a time when Sax Rohmer's insidious Chinese master criminal, Dr. Fu Manchu, was painting a very nasty picture of Asians in book after book and America's pulp magazines so frequently featured lurid covers showing Asian villains torturing pretty white women, who usually were wearing very little clothing.
The movies took immediate interest in Charlie Chan and he came to the screen in 1926 with a Pathe serial version of "The House Without A Key." That film no longer exists. Five of Biggers' six Chan novels were filmed as quickly as the books were published and the final book, "Keeper of the Keys," became a Broadway play in 1933--the year Biggers died of heart disease at age 48.
It's a common mistake to believe Charlie Chan never was played on screen by Asian actors. That's not true: The first screen Chan was Japanese actor George Kuwa, followed by another Japanese, Sojin, who played Chan in a silent version of "The Chinese Parrot." E.L. Park played Chan in the first talking picture version of a Chan novel--Fox's "Behind That Curtain," a 1929 film that occasionally turns up on Fox's cable network in the wee hours of the morning.
 |
the real Honolulu police detective used as the model for Chan; at right, Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan. |
 |
In "The House Without A Key," Chan is not the leading detective on the case, but is actually the bright assistant to Detective Captain Hallett, his superior on the Honolulu P.D. Though his English isn't exactly perfect, he certainly doesn't talk like a guy who just got off the boat. He expresses a few phrases of Oriental philosophy, but not as heavy-handedly as he did in the movies of the 1930s and 1940s.
Here's how Biggers described him in his first appearance in that novel: "He was very fat indeed, yet he walked with the light dainty step of a woman. His cheeks were as chubby as a baby's, his skin ivory tinted, his black hair close-cropped, his amber eyes slanted."
In effect, the Chan we first meet is not tall, though overweight. His style is very Sherlockian because he observes things closely and notices details others miss. He has none of the arrogance of either Holmes nor Poirot, however, and, in fact, is constantly reminding those around him how "humble" he is, in both talent and attitudes.
In all six novels, Chan continues to work for the Honolulu P.D., though he's occasionally "loaned out" to other departments. He rises to the rank of Inspector midway through the six-novel canon. In none of the original Biggers mysteries is he aided by any of his many children--I think the count finally reaches at least a dozen children--nor does he ever have anyone faintly resembling Birmingham Brown working for him.
However, he works in close tandem with Inspector Duff of Scotland Yard in one novel and after Duff is murdered in "Charlie Chan Carries On," Chan takes over Duff's case (more than halfway through the novel) and solves it with the help of a most interesting assistant of his own--Officer Kashimo of the Honolulu P.D., an agressive young Japanese who idolizes Chan. The idea of a Chinese having a Japanese sidekick must have knocked readers of both races for a loop, considering the long-established friction between those two ethnic groups. Kashimo is portrayed as astute and resourceful, albeit a big impulsive. His over-enthusiasm for helping Chan even inspires him to stow away on a cruise ship to follow Chan, in defiance of his orders from their superiors in Honolulu. He may have been the inspiration for the many ambitious "No. 1 son" characters in the long series of movies about Chan.
Biggers' Chan is very much a family man and constantly longs for his home on Punchbowl Hill in Honolulu, especially when he's away, helping solve a mainland case and his wife is about to deliver their latest child. There are references to his older children, who are attending university classes, but no suggestion any of them will ever head for careers as detectives.
Though I'm not Asian, it seems to me there is little to complain about in terms of racist depictions in the Biggers novels. To be sure, some Caucasian characters display racism toward Chan, but, after all, this was common reality in the 1920s and it seems clear to me that Biggers was trying to underscore this racism while also showing us how well respected Chan is by most of the Caucasian characters.
Because Charlie is older and doesn't especially cut a very romantic figure, he doesn't figure in any romantic nonsense. No white femme fatales try to seduce him and, in fact, he seems oblivious to their charms. Biggers presents him as an asexual figure, leaving the romance to the young Caucasian men and women who often appear as Chan's clients or trusted allies in the books.
In "Behind That Curtain," Chan works with a female assistant district attorney who has to deal with sexist attitudes from some of the men around her. She also suspects Chan doesn't approve of a woman doing that kind of work and she may be right, based on the clues Biggers gives us. However, when she openly says she doubts if Mr. Chan approves of her, Chan answers in typically inscrutable fashion: "Does the elephant disapprove of the butterfly? And who cares?"
Reading between the lines, Chan seems to be poking fun at his own obesity (the "elephant" reference) while paying tribute to the woman's beauty (the "butterfly" reference), yet the gist of his comment is that he considers her irrelevant--not exactly high praise.
In "The Chinese Parrot" (1926), we learn that Charlie used to work as "number one boy" for a wealthy Caucasian woman at her mansion on the beach before choosing to pursue a law enforcement career. Yet he bears no resentment to his former employer and, in fact, seems steadfastly loyal to her. In "Keeper of the Keys," Chan has to deal with a much older Chinese servant who kowtows to his white master in embarrassing fashion. Chan frequently reminds us how old-fashioned Ah-Sing, the servant, has remained while so many other Chinese who live in the states are now much more "American."
On the whole, the Charlie Chan of the six Biggers novels is a man worthy of respect for his solid ethics, his clean and decent lifestyle and his brilliance as a detective. Because he's a fat guy who seldom gets "physical" with crooks, he may not be the ideal heroic figure some mystery fans have come to expect, but he's certainly a little more macho than Poirot, the fussy Belgian, or Nero Wolfe, the American couch potato sleuth.
Chan began to evolve in a less favorable direction after the movies began to grind out films about him in the early 1930s, starting with "Charlie Chan Carries On," starring Swedish-born Warner Oland as Chan. That film and three more of the earliest Oland films are now considered lost, but "The Black Camel" (1931), based on one of Biggers' better Chan novels, still survives. In that film, set in Honolulu, Chan is trying to solve a murder on the set of a movie filming on location in Hawaii. Chan is astute and still resembles the Charlie of the novels.
But Fox began to dream up its own stories after Biggers' death and in "Charlie Chan in Paris" (1935), the first "No. 1 son" character was added in the person of Chinese-American actor Keye Luke. The character became very popular and helped push the Chan films toward developing a strong humor element that almost never let up.
Before he died, Keye Luke told me he was aware many Asians didn't like the idea of a Swede playing the Chinese detective, especially since all his children were played by authentic Asians. However, Luke didn't resent the casting nor did he feel the films were racist. He felt they may have been a bit naive, but were worthy films that presented a Chinese-American hero at a time when there were no others on screen--and gave lots of Asian-American actors like himself careers in Hollywood.
(Luke had one special claim to fame in that regard: When Boris Karloff left his starring role in the Monogram "Mr.Wong" detective series, Luke stepped in and played the Chinese detective in "Phantom of Chinatown" (1941), the final film in the series.)
Warner Oland died in 1937 and the part passed to another Caucasian, Sidney Toler, in 1938. When Fox dropped the series and it was picked up by lolw-budget Monogram, Toler continued to play Chan, but bug-eyed black comic Mantan Moreland ("Feet, don't fail me now!) was added as valet Birmingham Brown. The films that followed were not very racially sensitive and probably created most of the negative vibes about the Chan films that finally began to surface in the 1950s. Another Caucasian, Roland Winters, took over the role in 1947 and finished out the original series with "The Sky Dragon" in 1949.
By that time, Charlie Chan had become nearly a stooge for broad comedy players, hardly ever spent any time in his home port of Honolulu and had succumbed to an avalanche of cliches, including the "roundup" of suspects for Chan's disclosure of the real killer in the final reel.
I don't miss those threadbare Chan films, but I do think mystery fans are being deprived of the presence of one of the past century's greatest detective characters. A smart producer would find a charismatic Chinese actor to play a politically correct Charlie Chan, who might go back to the basics that originally appealed to Earl Derr Biggers when he read about Chang Apana.
Can you imagine what it
must have been like to rise to prominence as a Chinese police
detective of great renown in 1920s Honolulu, that melting pot
of the Pacific? What an exciting story that might be in the right
hands! What an amazing turnaround that might be for the now sadly
diminished reputation of the immortal Charlie Chan.
© 2003 by Ron Miller.
The Ron Miller caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The drawing
of Charlie Chan is from the cover of the 1974 Bantam paperback
edition of "Behind That Curtain."
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
teaches "The World's Greatest Detectives," an adult
education course at Western Washington University in Bellingham,
Washington.
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |