Re-enter Charlie Chan?

By Arturo R. García

As Angry Asian Man noted this week, the images of Warner Oland playing Charlie Chan are associated with a side of Hollywood’s “Golden Age” it would prefer nobody remember. Oland, who played Chan in was arguably the face of Yellowface in the 1930′s, playing not only the “Honorable Detective,” but Fu Manchu in another film series. But a forthcoming book has renewed interest in both the character and the men who brought him to both the printed page and the silver screen.

Yunte Huang’s Charlie Chan: The Untold History of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous with American History tells the story of Chang Apana, a detective with the Honolulu Police Department who was the inspiration for Chan. As detailed in a review of the book by The New Yorker, Apana – son of a Chinese immigrant father and a native Hawaiian mother – was allegedly “discovered” in 1924, when novelist Earl Derr Biggers noticed his name in an arrest record in a Honolulu newspaper. Within two years after Chan’s first appearance, Huang writes, Chang was being called “Charlie Chan” around Honolulu. But the detective’s job went beyond the usual police beat:

One of Chang’s jobs was to capture lepers, for forced transport to a leper colony on the island of Molokai, to die. Hawaiians called leprosy mai pake, “Chinese sickness,” because it came to the islands in the eighteen-thirties, and appeared to have arrived with the Chinese. Chang got that scar above his right eye while trying to capture a Japanese man who had contracted leprosy and who, armed with a sickle, refused to be sent to Molokai, on a journey over what came to be called the Bridge of Sighs.

As the Chan book series became successful, movie adaptations were inevitable. Yet Chang, according to his nephew, Walter Chang, never profited from serving as the inspiration for the character, though Biggers did allegedly make at least one effort, trying to get Chang a part in a Chan film, which would have paid 500 dollars. Chang refused.

The book also explores the life stories of both Oland, who played Chan in 16 films before passing away in 1937, and Huang, who joked to The New York Times that he has “an alphabetic destiny,” which began unfolding with his journey to the U.S. from his native China: “I was pretty desperate to get out of the country,” he said. “And the University of Alabama was the first school I looked up.”

In revealing the history behind Charlie Chan, though, Huang’s book might revive interest in another character commonly associated with stereotypes, Fu Manchu, who was also played by Oland in four films. The Times article mentions that in a meeting with a Chinese publisher over possibly reviving Chan in that country, the publisher expressed more interest in a Fu Manchu project. And Phillip from You Offend Me, You Offend My Family offers up a scenario where both characters can return to the silver screen in modern times – but without Yellowface:

We all know that China is the emerging superpower of our time and that could provide the foundation of the story. Charlie Chan (a.k.a. Chow Yun Fat) is a modern Chinese detective using all the advanced technology and skills at his disposal to solve his cases while trying to mend his estranged relationship with his Chinese American son. Fu Manchu (a.k.a. Ken Watanabe — yes, I know he’s Japanese but he’d be perfect) is the head of a powerful Chinese corporation out to use his vast resources to destroy the Western civilization (while mourning the murder of his son by an American corporate rival which sets his plan for vengeance in motion) and the only person who can stop him is, of course, Charlie Chan.

Now that sounds like a film I’d watch.