Charlie Chan Carries On is not the first movie in
which Charlie Chan appears. There was a ten-part serial and a couple of other
movies where Chan was a secondary character. Charlie Chan Carries On is the first film where he played the main
role and audiences responded well to the film. Warner Oland, a Swedish actor,
was brought in to play Chan. Whitewashing was a film industry practice, casting
white actors in non-white roles. Oland would be one of a series of non-Asian
actors to play Chan. This is more than a little ironic as Earl Derr Biggers,
the writer who created Charlie Chan, had a great dislike for the prevalent
Yellow Peril stereotype. He was inspired to create Chan after reading about two
detectives of Chinese heritage working on the Honolulu police force. He wanted
to create a character opposite the Yellow Terror stereotype, an honorable Asian
working on the side of the law, not against it. The irony of whitewashing would
become nearly embedded in the Charlie Chan character as the overly prolific use
of ancient proverbs. Chan became a stereotype of the slow acceptance of the
Asians by the hypocritical practice of social representation. It wasn’t a
perfect process, but it did prove to be highly successful. There are over forty
Charlie Chan movies. There was a prolific period when comics, radio, and
television shows featured this popular detective. There were even other Asian
detective movies that resulted. Mr. Moto and Mr. Wong
each supplied a series of mystery movies. And while the implementation of these
movies, featuring clever heroes from Asian countries, was far from perfect,
they did broaden the American psyche, even through and after WWII that the only
true threatening peril is that of racism. As to Charlie Chan Carries On, it is sadly a lost film: well, sort of.
Studios would often create a Spanish version of the same movie using the same
sets and many of the same leads, but instead of dubbing, they would cast
Spanish-speaking actors. Irony rears its head again—the only way you can watch
one of the earliest whitewashed Charlie Chan films is via the Spanish version,
reading English subtitles.
