[PREV - CHANG_APANA]    [TOP]

MOVING_CHAN

                                             July 22, 2015

                                             A version of this was
                                             published here:

                                               http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/07/26/1405780/-Chinatown-Tour

It did not take them long to start attemping to make
movies using the Charlie Chan character, but the first to
really feature him (and the first with any success) did
not come out until 1931 after most of the books had been
written.  This is the series of films that most of us
think of when we think "Charlie Chan" (for years they
were the most popular mystery movies), where Chan was
originally played by Walter Oland and then by Sidney
Toler-- notably both white guys (though Oland claimed
some Mongolian ancestry).  In later years this was one of
the factors that led to a revisionist take on the Charlie
Chan character as having a less-than positive influence
on racial attitudes.  My take: this is a case where
context means everything-- in 1926 (or 1931) Charlie Chan
was a big improvement in American racial attitudes,
though later arguably we all got stuck on that image, and
really needed to learn to get past it.

The Chinese-American actor Keye Luke, who played Number
One Son in the movies was having none of this revisionist
take, and Yunte Huang quotes him pointing out the
obvious: "They think it demeans the race... Demeans! My
God!  You've got a Chinese hero!"

One of the things I didn't pick up on until reading this
book is that Keye Luke is the man who went on to play
"Blind Master Po" in the 70s television series "Kung-Fu".
That's just an astoundingly beautiful piece of trivia:
Keye Luke played opposite the first and the last of the
great yellow-face roles.


--------
[NEXT - STEPIN_FETCHIT]