Charlie Chan, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Rooney, and Me

Warner Oland as Charlie Chan. (Photo from Charlie Chan Family)

I grew-up watching Charlie Chan Theater every Sunday afternoon on Denver's Channel Two (KWGN). I know he is considered politically incorrect today because he was portrayed by white actors but when I was a kid I never even noticed. I did notice that there were two Charlie Chans though. Most of the movies shown were with Sidney Toler as Charlie but every once and a while they would show one of the Warner Oland movies.

I preferred Warner Oland over Sidney Toler because Toler seemed to have a mean-spirited glint in his eye that made him very scary to me. And I preferred Charlie's "number one son," "Lee" (Keye Luke), over "number two son," "Tommy" or "Jimmy" (Victor Sen Yung), depending on which movie you are watching. Lee was impulsive and a little naive but at the same time anxious to help his father while Tommy was impulsive, also anxious to help his father, but a bit of a buffoon. I am not really a fan of physical comedy unless it is being done by one of the three masters- Buster Keaton, Lucille Ball, and Jennifer Saunders.

I got The Charlie Chan Collection Vol. 1 & 2 (Warner Oland) for my birthday and I have watched the first six (1934 to 1936) already. It is interesting to watch how fast the technical quality of sound improves in those few years. The first one is a bit claustrophobic and set in various rooms, like a stage play, but by 1936 the camera is no longer locked down and even allowed to leave the studio for some of the scenes.

These movies also give you a look at some actors at various stages in their careers:

Two actors at the start of theirs- Ray Milland in CC in London (1934) as Geoffrey Richmond and Rita Hayworth (billed as Rita Cansino) in CC In Egypt (1935) as Nayda.

An actor at the height of his- Boris Karloff in CC at the Opera (1936) as Gravelle. Frankenstein (1931) had made him a well known man by this time.

An actor on the downward side of his popularity- Francis Ford in CC at the Circus (1936) as John Gaines. Francis Ford had also been a silent movie director and by the time he appeared in CC at the Circus he had been in 337 films as an actor and directed another one hundred seventy-four.

You never know who is going to show up in a Charlie Chan movie. In CC in Egypt it was Lincoln Perry, an actor better know as Stepin Fetchit. He plays a man named "Snowshoe" who is a stereotypical, shiftless, child-like black man. In our more conscious times, watching him is cringe inducing. He moves slowly, thinks slowly, reacts slowly, and talks slowly and indistinctly. All symptoms of children who have suffered brain damage from severe malnutrition. As I watched I wondered why this bothered me more that a white man playing an Asian. With Charlie Chan I think "that was just the way it was back then" but that explanation doesn't work with this embarrassing performance.

I remember watching propaganda cartoons from World War II on television as a child. I did not see anything wrong about Bugs Bunny fighting Japanese soldiers who all were portrayed as having yellow skin, wore coke bottle thick glasses, had buck-teeth, and spoke broken English. They were cartoons. I knew real Japanese soldier were not like that any more than real rabbits were like Bugs Bunny. Now, of course, I can see just how racist these cartoons really are.

Still from Bugs Bunny Nips The Nips (Photo from Cartoon Research)

But by the time I was eleven-years-old I totally understood why Mickey Rooney playing a stereotypical Asian man in Breakfast At Tiffany's was not funny. I remember the first time he appeared on screen as Mr. Yunioshi and being confused as to why he was even there. Each time he reappeared on the screen he was less and less funny. It got to the point where I just wished he would go away. This performance has not aged well either. I saw Breakfast At Tiffany's on TCM a few years ago. It had been so long since I had last seen it I had forgotten Mickey Rooney was in it at all. When he first appeared I was shocked. It was like cutting into a cake and having a cockroach crawl out. I got up and turned the TV off.

Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast At Tiffany's. Notice resemblance to Japanese soldier in above photo. (Photo from Think Quest)

So, why does Mickey Rooney, the cartoons, and "Snowshoe" bother me while Charlie Chan doesn't? Well, except for Charlie Chan, because all of these characters are negative, stereotypical images of Asians and African-Americans and, especially in the case of Mickey Rooney's role in Breakfast At Tiffany's, the people making these things should have known better.

I look at Charlie Chan and see a man who is smarter that everyone else, who is respected by the men in his field, who pretends to be what bigoted people think he should be (all those corny Chinese sounding aphorism) so they will underestimate him. By doing this he can slip under their radar and do his job. He is the precursor to Lieutenant Columbo.

So when the next volume of The Charlie Chan Collection comes out I will buy that too. These movies are fascinating as movie history and cultural history. They are also very entertaining with their simplistic plots and view into a world that no longer exists and at the same time never existed anywhere but up there on the screen . But I will only be buying the Warner Oland Charlie Chan movies. The rest they can keep.