I love mysteries. From
unsolved true crimes, to unexplained phenomena, to a good, old-fashioned
whodunit, there’s something in my psyche that needs to solve the puzzle, crack
the code, and find the answer. Even as a
young Unimonster, I loved shows like Mannix,
and Cannon, and Kojak. Clue was my favorite
board game. And nearly every weekend
would feature at least one old mystery movie on the afternoon matinees. Any mystery movie would do, but my favorites
were the iconic detectives of the ‘30s and ‘40s—The Thin Man movies, featuring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick
and Nora Charles; the Basil Rathbone Sherlock
Holmes movies, with Rathbone as the great consulting detective and Nigel
Bruce as his companion and biographer, Dr. John Watson; and Charlie Chan,
played for several studios by Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and Roland Winters. They were, in the words of a character from Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939),
“… whodunit celebrities.”
The Murder-Mystery genre of the 1930s was one of the
decade’s most popular, with everyone from the biggest of the big studios to the
poorest of the Poverty Row producers wanting to get in the game, and they all
wanted their own signature detective. There
was Philo Vance, Bulldog Drummond, James Lee Wong, Mr. Moto, Michael Lanyard,
and Simon Templar. All had their
adherents, but none matched the popularity of the big three series.
The first, and inarguably the greatest, of the great
detectives was Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first private consulting
detective. Created by Sir Arthur Doyle,
a London physician with a struggling practice which left him a great deal of
free time to write, Holmes made his debut in the novel A Study in Scarlet, first published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in 1887.
By the time of Doyle’s death in 1930, he had written fifty-six short
stories and four novels describing the adventures of his most popular creation. The character was first adapted for the
screen in 1900 (though the film wasn’t registered for copyright purposes until
1903), a mere thirteen years after his debut.
That film, Sherlock Holmes Baffled,
was not only the character’s first appearance on the screen but was the first
instance of a Detective film. Only
thirty seconds in length, the film dealt with Holmes failed efforts to stop a
burglar who can appear and disappear at will, while stealing a sack full of the
detective’s belongings.
Though many actors have portrayed Holmes on-screen in the
one hundred and twenty-one years since that initial appearance (in fact,
Guinness World Records lists Sherlock Holmes as the most portrayed literary
human character in film and television history), none save Jeremy Brett have
become so intimately connected to the character as has Basil Rathbone.
In fourteen films made between 1939 and 1946,
two for 20
th Century Fox in 1939, and the remainder for Universal, Rathbone
so perfectly essayed Doyle’s detective that for succeeding generations he
was Sherlock Holmes.
Nigel Bruce’s version of Holmes’ friend and
companion Dr. John Watson, on the other hand, bore little resemblance to the
literary character, but the on-screen chemistry worked so well that it’s hard
to fault Bruce’s acting.
The success of Doyle’s literary creation inspired an entire
genre of fiction, the Detective story.
While Holmes had many imitators, few enjoyed the popularity of Earl Derr
Biggers’ Charlie Chan. Modeled on
Honolulu Police detective Chang Apana, Chan first appeared in the novel The House Without a Key, though he
wasn’t a central character in the narrative.
He was featured in five more novels by Biggers, the last being 1932’s Keeper of the Keys. Beginning in 1926, a series of films were
released starring various Asian actors in the role of Charlie Chan. However, in all these Chan was merely a
supporting character, and none of these films were successful, either
financially or critically.
Then, in 1931, Charlie
Chan Carries On was released by 20th Century Fox, and marked
several milestones in the Chan filmography.
It was the first film in which the Chinese Detective was the central
character. It was the first time that
Chan had been portrayed by a white actor, Warner Oland. And most importantly, it was the first
successful film about Charlie Chan.
Oland would portray Chan in sixteen movies for Fox before
his death in 1938. His last film, the
unfinished Charlie Chan at the Ringside,
was hastily rewritten as Mr. Moto’s
Gamble, the third entry in Fox’s Mr. Moto series. Following Oland’s death, Fox cast Sidney
Toler to continue as the inscrutable investigator. He would play Chan in no fewer than
twenty-two movies, with the first being Charlie Chan in Honolulu,
released in 1938. Eleven of these would
be for Fox, but when the studio virtually dissolved its B-picture division in
1942, ending its Charlie Chan series after Castle in the Desert, Toler
bought the film rights from the Biggers estate, and made eleven more Chan
pictures at Monogram. Monogram Pictures
Corporation was one of the more successful of the “Poverty Row” studios, though
even the best of these could hardly compete financially with a major studio
such as Fox. Toler’s first appearance as
Chan for Monogram was 1944’s Charlie Chan in the Secret Service,
produced on a budget of $75,000, roughly half of what Fox’s budgets ran.
Though Monogram’s production values were found lacking in
comparison to those of 20th Century Fox, there was no let-down in
entertainment value, and the quality of the productions did gradually
increase. But as the Monogram Chan films
improved, Toler’s health rapidly declined.
Twelve films in two years, eleven of them as Charlie Chan, took a heavy
toll on Toler. In addition, his final
three movies came after he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer, which affected
his ability to perform on screen. His
final appearance, in 1946’s The Trap, had his sidekicks Jimmy Chan and
Birmingham Brown (Victor Sen Yung and Mantan Moreland) carrying the bulk of the
action. Toler died of cancer in February
1947.
Following his death, Monogram cast Roland Winters in the
role of Charlie Chan, with his first appearance coming in The Chinese Ring,
released in December 1947. He would play
the detective in six films, with the last being 1949’s Sky Dragon,
bringing to a close a series that spanned nineteen years, three actors, and
included an incredible forty-two movies.
At the opposite end of the scale from the B-pictures from
Universal, Fox, and Monogram was the entry of Hollywood’s biggest player into
the Celebrity Sleuth genre. M-G-M was
the unquestioned king of the Hollywood studio scene, and it made sense that,
when they purchased the rights to Dashiell Hammett’s just-published,
best-selling mystery novel The Thin Man, that the finished film would be
a top-notch production. With William
Powell and Myrna Loy as the husband-and-wife high society sleuths Nick and Nora
Charles, M-G-M had a box-office hit, one that would spawn five sequels. Unlike Universal, or Fox, or Monogram, which
put their Detective films out with the efficiency and rapidity of an assembly
line, M-G-M spaced the Thin Man films out, with the last, Song of the Thin
Man, released in 1947.
These were some of my favorite movies when I was young, back
when Saturday afternoon matinees were staples of the television schedule, each
series for reasons of its own. And now,
fifty years later, my admiration for them is even deeper. As a child, it was the spooky atmosphere of
the Sherlock Holmes films, or the sarcastic banter of Sidney Toler’s Charlie
Chan, or the action and comedy of the Thin Man movies that had me hooked.
But now, as an adult, I see so many layers to these films
that too often are derided as B-grade “popcorn” movies—as though that were a
bad thing. Now, I can see the chemistry
between Powell and Loy, the easy, comfortable way they interacted, the
affection and attraction their characters showed for one another that had
audiences convinced they were a couple in real life (they weren’t). I can appreciate the variations of the
actors’ performances in the Charlie Chan role; the gentle wisdom of Warner
Oland, the exasperated sarcasm of Sidney Toler, even Roland Winters, the least
effective of the three, brought a more energetic, active style to the
character. And I can understand why, to
generations of fans, Rathbone is Sherlock Holmes.
These movies are still favorites of mine for the same reason
as so many of the movies I love; indeed, so many of the topics upon which I
expound in this space. It’s because of
the sense of nostalgia that they inspire within me. Nostalgia for a better time in my life, a
time when my personal happiness was a far simpler objective to achieve. A time when happiness meant a dollar bill in
my pocket, a good movie on the TV, a new comic book to read, and a new model
kit to build.
Some things never change.