Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Charlie Chan would have needed no introduction to anyone with any pop culture knowledge. Chan was the creation of author Earl Derr Biggers, whose first claim to fame was a 1913 novel called Seven Keys to Baldpate. It was adapted for the stage, became a hit, and was filmed several times. But Biggers found more fame as the creator of Charlie Chan, a Chinese detective who worked for the Honolulu police department. Six novels were published before Biggers' untimely death in 1933 at the age of 49. (Pictured below is a reprint of the first novel, The House Without a Key.) The Chan property exploded in popularity on the silver screen, with some fifty films made between 1926 and 1949. In the beginning, they were high-level B-films in terms of budget and actors, but they were treated like A-films and made a great deal of money for Fox. Eventually the budgets dropped and the series was taken over by Monogram, a B-movie studio, but they still remained popular enough that one or two films a year were released.
When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, the Chan movies were run frequently on television, especially on weekend afternoons. Like the Sherlock Holmes movies that Basil Rathbone starred in over the same time period, I saw them as basically interchangeable, and they played more like episodes of a TV show. Most adhered to a formula which involved Chan traveling somewhere, on a vacation or a visit to a friend, and getting involved in a murder investigation (sometimes his friend was the murder victim). In most of the movies, one of Chan's adult sons accompanied him, offering assistance but usually being more of a hindrance than a help—the phrase "number one son," which is how Chan often referred to his son, was an oft-used pop culture saying. (Below is Victor Sen Yung as Jimmy Chan.)
Three actors played Chan: Warner Oland (until his death in 1938), Sidney Toler (until his death in 1947) and Roland Winters (in the last six films of the series). All three actors have their fans, though I think Oland was the most closely associated with the series—after his death, the budgets shrank and the movies started looking and feeling like cheapies, even though they were still very entertaining. Though there was a 50s TV series, there were no more movies (except for a lame and campy film in 1981), but their constant presentation on TV, including a Saturday morning kids' cartoon show in 1972, kept the character alive for a while.
In 2003, Fox restored their library of Chan movies, ran them on their cable channel, and released them in DVD boxed sets. They proved to still be popular, but by this time, the films had become controversial, accused of being racist, or at least steeped in racism. It wasn't so much the character of Chan that caused problems—he did speak in a somewhat halting English, parodied beautifully by Peter Sellers in Murder by Death, but he always outwitted not just the bad guys but the white good guys, often cops, who mocked him or underestimated his abilities. The real problem was that none of the three actors who played Chan were Asian. They all wore varying versions of "yellowface" makeup to make them look like the stereotype of a Chinese man. What is overlooked in current-day complaints about the films being racist is that in the 30s and 40s, there were no Asian stars in Hollywood. The Chan sons and other Chinese supporting characters were played by Asian actors, but there were no bankable Asian stars to play leads. To compound the problem, most of the later movies featured a stereotyped Black sidekick character who often conformed to degrading stereotypes. (Below is Oland as Chan with co-star Boris Karloff in Charlie Chan at the Opera.)
I can completely understand people today being offended by the portrayal of Chan in the classic era and choosing not to watch the films. But I have remained a fan over the years. All three of the Chan actors wore their stereotypes lightly and I don't find the intentions or the results of the portrayals to be racist. (The books are even less so.) Some Chan fans bemoan the fact that no one is making Chan movies these days. I think even if a Chinese actor played the part, there is a thick patina of stereotyping and potential offensiveness that could not be diluted, and the film would have to be comic or satiric. The Chan movies, to some degree, have been victims of cancel culture, as they are not run much anymore on TV—even TCM doesn't show them. However, they are available in various ways: DVDs, streaming services, YouTube. Every Charlie Chan film that was made (except for a handful of early ones that are lost) has been released for home video and they are still for sale. I stand in the middle when folks start yelling about this issue. Many members of a Charlie Chan fan group I belong to on Facebook (mostly older white people) bitch up a storm about the idea than anyone can find them offensive, unable to put themselves in the shoes of Asian (or progressive) viewers. On the other side are offended viewers who would be OK with the films being suppressed. I would argue that, in the main, they are not racist, even if the production structure behind them was. As for me, I own them all and watch them frequently, though I would never share them with people who didn't know what they were getting into. Below is my complete Chan movie collection.
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