Tag: Charlie Chan

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Misinformation, Please: Earl Derr Biggers, Rex Stout, and Charlie Chan’s Sons

Earlier today, I added a few titles to our movie database, a list I try to keep up to date so as not to lose track of our collection. Yesterday, the fifth and final Charlie Chan box set arrived in the mail, containing the seven last entries into the 20th Century Fox series. Among them are some of my favorites: Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum, Castle in the Desert, and Dead Men Tell. Ever since I discovered these movies on German television—in German, mind you—I have been inordinately fond of the much-traveled sleuth, no matter how ramshackle to politically incorrect his vehicles.

As I shared here a few years ago, I never enjoyed a close relationship with my father, long since departed, and the Chan pictures somehow made me, an introvert teenager, long for the kind of bond grown-up sons number one and two maintained with their gentle and generous pop. Charmed by the series, I picked up Earl Derr Biggers’s Chan novels . . . and was greatly disappointed.

Biggers, whose Seven Keys to Baldpate was being presented on the Lux Radio Theatre on this day, 26 September, in 1938 (as already discussed here) may have been the father of Charlie Chan, but the brainchild, like Frankenstein before him, was passed around so often and given so many transformations that few recalled or bothered with his origins. After the author’s death, there followed such a long line of foster parents that hardly any of the family traits and characteristics can still be traced in the child. Shown above, for instance, is radio Chan Ed Begley (in a picture freely adapted from its source).

Some folks, though, remember. One of them was mystery writer Rex Stout. On this day in 1939, Stout appeared on the quiz program Information, Please! (discussed here) and, along with his fellow panelists, was called upon to answer a number of mystery related questions. In a task posed by a listener from Morristown, Pennsylvania, the panelists were to name heroes of crime fiction who were aided in their detective work by their fathers, their offspring, and their secretaries.

Clearly, this was a subject of which mystery writer Rex Stout could be expected to be familiar. Sure enough, the father of Nero Wolfe was quick to identify Ellery Queen’s paternal helpmate. “I’d hate to ask you to mention the actual titles of books by one of your rivals,” host Clifton Fadiman remarked, “but could you name, er, one or two of Mr. Queen’s books?” He should have said, Messrs. Queen, of course; but never mind.

At any rate, a straight answer from the competitor was not forthcoming, aside from the sly reply “The Adventures of Ellery Queen,” the title of the radio series based on the character but not penned by its creators.

When it came to naming a crime-solving father being assisted by his son, Stout shrouded himself in silence. It’s a “series of books,” Fadiman assisted, that had been successfully adapted for the screen. “Charlie Chan,” fellow panelist Carl Van Doren replied. “Quite right,” said Fadiman. To be sure, the word “assisted” is rather questionable; for, as Chan remarked in Murder over New York (also part of the abovementioned collection), “many cases would have been solved much sooner” had son Jimmy not insisted on getting involved.

Fadiman was ready to move on; but Stout voiced his disagreement. “Pardon me, Mr. Fadiman,” he interjected, “not in any of his books was he aided by his son, except that his son laced up his shoes or something for him.”

“That’s a help,” said the host, brushing aside the objection without giving it any consideration. “Korrektur bitte,” Chan’s German alter ego might well have protested, however mildly. Stout was right. The father-son relationship was created for the movies so as to give the rather austere Chan his Watsonian sidekick.

And very glad I am for this infidelity and the wayward child thus begot. “Does anyone help Nero Wolfe in your own series of stories, Mr. Stout,” Fadiman inquired. “I do, pretty often,” he quipped, missing out on a chance to give Archie Goodwin his due. Not long after the Information, Please broadcast, at a time when even Charlie Chan was enlisted into the Secret Service, Stout turned “lie detective” to expose the misinformation, spread through enemy propaganda, in a series titled Our Secret Weapon.

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Eran Trece for Dinner; or, A Spanish Lesson with Charlie Chan

Well, “gracias, muchisimas!” Thanks to some last-minute planning on my behalf, I’ll be off on a trip to sweltering Madrid, starting next Wednesday. It will be my first visit to continental Europe since I left my native Germany for New York City in 1990; and it has been even longer since last I’ve traveled to a country whose primary language I neither speak nor comprehend. Although I lived just below Spanish Harlem for many years and the majority of my students at City University colleges were Hispanic, I never picked up more than the odd word or phrase. Indolence and impatience aside, my main excuse is that I was too busy appropriating English and promoting it as a common language, the thorough knowledge of which would benefit all who choose to live in the United States.

These days, resisting such study—and missing out intellectually and economically as a result—is being celebrated as multiculturalism, I suppose. Aware that I would miss out on Spanish culture unless I made a valiant if belated effort to train my tongue linguistically as well as culinarily, I popped in a DVD last night and watched Eran Trece. What better introduction to a foreign language than a lesson delivered by a Spanish re-interpreter of an American conception of the aphorism-peppered speech of a Chinaman! Charlie Chan, that is.

Eran Trece (1931) is the Spanish version of Charlie Chan Carries On, a copy of which has not yet resurfaced. It was produced in the early days of the talkies, when recasting rather than dubbing was being explored as a means of broadening the market for English and American films after the end of the silent era threatened to fragment the movie industry and diminish the potential of major studios like 20th Century Fox to generate global box-office successes. It was a costly enterprise that dubbing soon made redundant.

For anyone who has been exposed to dubbed films and the consequent muffling of cultural differences, the advantages of recasting will be readily appreciated, even though it meant that international audiences did not get to see the well-trained stars of Hollywood or Elstree, unless these performers were multilingual. Claudette Colbert, for instance, acted in both The Big Pond and its French version Le Grand Mer (1930).

Restaging also demanded a few rewrites to make an originally American or British film more intelligible or palatable to the international audience. For instance, when remarking upon a photograph of Chan’s many-headed family, characters in the original are reminded of Birth of a Nation, whereas the Spanish commentators liken it to a soccer team; apparently, not all silent movies translate quite so easily either. Eran Trece certainly has some Spanish blood in it; and even though much of it is spilled, the scenario includes a cheerful party scene with a fiery musical interlude that does not appear to be matched by the American original.

I neglected to mention that the copy I screened did not have English subtitles; so, being only vaguely familiar with the novel I read ages ago in a German translation, I availed myself of the scenario for the missing American film version, which is being shared online by the most generous and kindly guardian of the Charlie Chan Family Home. It was one of the most curious cinematic experiences I had since attending a MoMA screening of the fragmentary British-German coproduction of The Queen Was in the Parlor (1927), a silent film (neither scored nor accompanied by piano) . . . with Danish titles.

So, did I learn any Spanish last night? Well, not really, apart from Charlie’s frequently reiterated “Gracias, muchisimas”; but I’m sure I’ll remember the folly of this odd encounter with the Oriental hombre when confronted with the task of deciphering the dinner menus next week.

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Charlie’s Chance; or, How Not to Blog

Blog like hothouse flower: Must blossom for anyone. That is how the incomparable Charlie Chan might have expressed my present dilemma. I am not at all pleased with the previous entry into this journal. Rather than sharing what I love, I exhausted myself, and, no doubt, the good will of others in a tiresome, impersonal rant. I had wanted to make that in which I delight relevant to those unfamiliar or reluctant to catch on to it by availing myself of a prominent, topical hook; but instead of writing about the wit of satirist Fred Allen, my favorite US radio writer-comedian of the 1940s, I ended up going on about the latest foray into UK television by Jerry Springer, whom I despise.

It is quite easy to write a diary (if you have learned how to be honest with yourself and have come to terms with the level of intimacy you can handle when writing about your innermost thoughts); but once they are being made public, those private thoughts are expected to matter to others. They must have a purpose other than self-indulgent expression.

What I am still struggling to reconcile in this journal is the public and the private, being at once intimate and out there. That is, I have not yet assumed a persona I can trust at the microphone as I broadcast these thoughts from home. Those who seek fame or monetary gain are generally quite sure of themselves and their chosen medium. I, who have nothing to lose but face am less self-assured. Only of this I am certain: I want to write what I know best and love most. Do I care whether anyone else shares whatever views I express? Would I like any of those anyones to let me know? Sure I would. Still, the telling must come first.

“Little things tell story,” as Chan reassuringly put it. I am very fond of the man, whom I first encountered on German television when I was in my early teens. Back then, I felt envious of his No. 1 son (and all his numerous offspring). I did not have a close relationship with my father; so, the sleuthing, world-travelled “Oriental” with the gentle touch and a houseful of kids became a guardian to fantasize about.

Today, in this politically corrected and lawsuit-controlled climate, Chan doesn’t have much of a chance as hero and model. role model or heroic figure (a talked-about Lucy Lui project notwithstanding). In his prime, he was loved even by the Chinese, although no fellow countryman portrayed him on the screen. His wisdom, delivered in what is known as Chanograms, blossomed for anyone.

Yes, Charlie Chan was once again on my mind this week when I came across and purchased the Chantology DVD set (pictured)—which is what makes my reference to him topical and relevant to me. Whether it matters to anyone else—whether anyone cares to know or share—is another matter, a mystery as yet unsolved.

I think I now know how not to blog. I am just not sure yet how . . .