The Nones of Charle Chan: In Honolulu

Note: We take a break from Our Fave Lawyer to examine Sidney Toler’s debut as Charlie Chan. This B-movie has earned praise for warm family dynamics, fast pacing, and Toler’s engaging, lighter touch in the title role. Critics note the mystery often takes second fiddle to broad humor, exotic animals, and comic antics, offering dated stereotypes that make us post-moderns groan. But is has a nostalgic charm for hardcore readers who watched these movies when the family TV got only a half-dozen channels. 

Charlie Chan in Honolulu
1938 / 1:07
Tagline: “The New Chan Thriller you've been Waiting for!”
[internet archive]

Teenager Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung), the #2 Son of the famous Chinese detective, aspires to be a detective and so does his tween brother Tommy (Layne Tom Jr.). All of Charlie Chan’s thirteen kids, in fact, are positively American in their brainpower, ambition and high spirits.

In contrast, the movie-goer doubts the intelligence of a culprit who murders a courier in the confines a tramp freighter. But despite the fact that only six passengers were aboard, the victim receiving a payment of $300,000 in cash was shot dead. And the money goes missing.

Jimmy impersonates his father to get on the ship and investigate the murder-robbery. His brother Tommy tags along to get in on the action. Both boys forget their mission and their rivalry for their father’s attention and praise when they are scared brickless by the zoo animals that are lightly supervised by the comic relief zookeeper Al (Eddie Collins).

The studio spent money on the sets so all the well-lit sets are convincing. This is a lucky decision since most of the action occurs on the freighter, not at all in picturesque Honolulu like the beautiful 1931 Chan movie The Black Camel. Also convincing as a prop was Dr. Cardigan’s (George Zucco) apparatus for keeping alive the brain of executed master criminal Chang Ho-Pin.

Zucco, as always, totally convinces us movie-goers he is a mad psychiatrist as he uses calipers to measure heads for further study of the subject’s criminal tendencies. The cowardly zookeeper not being Mantan Moreland or Stepan Fetchit is surprising, making us relieved movie-goers wonder how the casting director missed that trick. Eddie Collins, a “funny mouth noises” kind of burlesque comedian, is most well-known for voicing Dopey in Snow White and Her Seven Boyfriends.

This outing was Sidney Toler’s first as the famous detective. As for mannerisms and physical quirks, Toler's presence is substantial in the obligatory white suit, with minimal gesturing, upright posture, and deliberate movements. He conveys the speaker is a non-native speaker of English by not replacing sounds (like d for th), but through rhythm of speech, by minimizing the ups and downs of American English. Toler also brings an amiable if sly sarcasm in word and facial expression to the character, as if the tough detective has no illusions about the world. Smilingly, he lets Jimmy and Tommy twist in the wind when their impersonation is revealed, as if to learn them a lesson in patience and restraint they won’t soon forget.

The Thirties expressions are cool “tough egg” for a person who is secretive, guarded, aloof, or reserved, “stir-bug’ for a person made crazy by incarceration and a “sneak-out” for a secret departure. Ditto for some of the inevitable proverbs with the stand-out being “When money talk, few are deaf.”

Recommended for the atmosphere and non-stop action.

Perry Mason 123: Capitalism in the Dock

Note: Erle Stanley Gardner advocated for justice, particularly for marginalized groups. He defended poor Chinese and Mexican immigrants early in his legal career. He founded the Court of Last Resort in the 1940s to help people who were wrongfully convicted or unable to get fair trials. These actions suggest a strong belief in individual rights and due process, for personal liberty, for accountability, against exploitation of the vulnerable, against abuse of state power. His series hero Perry Mason is the hero fighting the impunity of the rich, the corruption of the powerful, and the flaws of the criminal justice system.

Capitalism in the Dock: Perry Mason and the Price of Greed

Erle Stanley Gardner was no naïve cheerleader for capitalism. He probably believed it offered the widest berth for individual ambition, but his Perry Mason novels are clear minded examinations of the dark side of capitalism. Look beneath the roiling Mason plot and you’ll almost always find money as the shark stirring up the water. Stock manipulations, contested wills, insurance fraud, blackmail, embezzlement, and inheritances are Gardner’s leading players. Crimes come out of fear of loss: missing out on a money making opportunity or looking irrelevant or powerless or foolish due to a loss of status, etc.

Why this fixation on financial chicanery? Because Gardner took for granted the American nervous system. His stories pulse with the anxiety of a culture that worships wealth yet fears loss more than death, pretending money can buy happiness but knowing it can’t. Mason debuted in 1933, a year after the worst year of the Great Depression. Stressed readers knew fortunes could evaporate overnight, knew it was stupid to base happiness on what’s easily lost but did it anyway. Gardner’s villains are rarely Perry and Dick-type outcasts. They’re brokers, heirs, executives, respectable players who discover to their dismay that somebody smarter and more ruthless is always out there. Their desperation is familiar: the terror of losing money and status, the temptation to cut corners, the risk-taker’s faith that cleverness and luck will outrun accountability.

Enter Perry “Man of No Illusions” Mason, who accepts the system as it is. In the early novels, he barely stirs until the scent of big money wafts into his office. His genius lies in understanding the contradictions of a society that proclaims hard work and equal opportunity while enthroning profit as if there were no rules and admiring leaders with the ethics of buccaneers. The courtroom becomes Gardner’s platform, a stage where the social order, though shaken by the conspirators of unchecked capitalism is theatrically restored. The formula comforts. Yes, the system grinds and squeaks. Yes, it indulges the covetous. But a brilliant advocate can still make justice take up a sword against greedy malefactors.

Time passes, however. Today’s reader barely flinches. A forged will? A crooked stock deal? These seem crimes as bucolic as tractor joyrides and stealing crops beside the algorithmic labyrinth of modern financial skullduggery – social media grift, pushing addiction buttons for user data and ad revenue, crypto four-flushing, kleptocracies, scam industries that rely on human trafficking and modern slavery. Gardner’s financial crimes belong to an age when capitalism was personal, when fortunes hinged on smiles, handshakes, and signatures in blue ink. Not servers and signed PDFs.

Still, the novels endure among we happy few. They are morality plays for a society that believed in rules even as it mocked them. Given they no longer stoke outrage, they remain reminders of uncomfortable American truths.

The Kalends of Charlie Chan: At the Olympics

Note: Taking a break from Our Favorite Lawyer, this fast-moving  B‑movie mystery is set against real 1936 Berlin Olympic footage. It blends espionage, familial warmth, and old-school exoticism. Critics praise its pacing and period intrigue, yet deplore dated stereotypes and Warner Oland’s yellowface.  Entertaining but be prepared to make the usual allowances.

Charlie Chan at the Olympics
1937 / 1:11
Tagline: “Murderous Spies invade Olympic Games!”
[youtube]

This above-average Charlie Chan movie leans more toward espionage thriller than traditional whodunit. Set at a U.S. airbase near Honolulu, the plot revolves around foreign agents attempting to steal a device capable of remotely controlling aircraft. Their scheme escalates when they hijack a test plane and silence the pilot permanently.

Honolulu police enlist detective Charlie Chan (Werner Oland) to dismantle the spy ring. The pursuit spans continents: Lee Chan (#1 Son, played by Keye Luke) sails aboard the Manhattan liner, while Chan travels on the Zeppelin Hindenburg – the same airship that had a rendezvous with Destiny in New Jersey  in 1937. The film incorporates authentic footage from the Berlin Olympics, including Jesse Owens’ historic relay performance, though marred by the voice-over: “Look at that boy run!” The climax delivers genuine suspense and a satisfying reveal.

While the use of yellowface is rightly criticized today, Oland offers one of his stronger portrayals of Chan. The character’s defining trait - unflappable self-control - emerges through his courteous interactions with allies and adversaries alike. When Lee is kidnapped, Chan’s paternal concern feels authentic and moving.

The film opens ironically with Chan passing his annual physical with ease. In reality, Werner Oland died in 1938 at age 58, weakened by chronic alcoholism and COPD aggravated by smoking.

European Reading Challenge #2

I read this for the European Reading Challenge 2026.

The Fall - Albert Camus

This is a novel of confession, a monologue from a man who shouts into the abyss, not expecting any reply. Jean-Baptiste Clamence, once a respected Parisian lawyer, now wanders the bars of Amsterdam, recounting his descent with the clarity of one who has lost faith not only in others but in himself.

His crimes are various. A road rage incident, a woman poised to leap into the Seine - he did nothing. And in doing nothing, he became something else: not a coward, not a villain, but a watcher. A man who sees too clearly the absurd theater of daily life, the endless posing, the judgments, the masks. He is not defiant, not repentant. He is ironic. Detached. Silent. Not a monster but an imp, assenting to beliefs that don’t do him any good.

To mistake Clamence for Camus is to miss the point. The narrator is not the author’s mouthpiece but his warning. Clamence is what happens when one lives without authenticity, without responsibility. For us hardcore readers - especially those hardened by work and literature, tempted by postmodern games - Clamence is a cautionary figure. He reminds us that thoughts, words, and actions - inaction too - are not abstractions. They have weight. They leave marks.

The title The Fall is not merely personal. It is historical. It evokes the collapse of complacencies and illusions after the Great War and The Slump and the Second World War, the revelation of what humanity is capable of under pressure - internal, external, ideological, economic, social. Camus, in this slim novel, delivers philosophical ideas concisely.

Some critics call The Fall Camus’s greatest achievement. It is certainly his most intimate. In awarding him the Nobel Prize in 1957, the world recognized not just a writer, but a man who understood that the modern soul, stripped of its certainties, must still bear the challenge of freedom and the consequences of silence.

Japanese Literature Challenge 2026

I read this for the Japanese Literature Challenge 19.

A Man – Keiichiro Hirano

In this 2018 novel, the titular man lives under someone else's name and identity. Using that alias, he marries a divorced woman and leads a happy life in provincial Japan, but after he dies in a logging accident, his widow discovers he was using a false identity.

The story unfolds as the widow and her Tokyo lawyer explore the mystery of who her husband really was. The plot explores some deep questions, such as the adequacy of pessimism as a general guide to life; the formation of identity through ageing, trauma and memory; and the fear of death versus death’s inevitability making mundane life sweeter (or not: "Stop whatever you're doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won't be able to do this anymore?” asks Marcus Aurelius).

Hirano’s lawyer hero is a middle-aged guy with existential anxiety. Hirano also refers to the music in the background, from Billy Preston in the 1970s to Japanese pop stars. These tendencies will make us hardcore readers call to mind Haruki Murakami. However, Hirano is more interior and philosophical, probing how identity is constructed and performed in a social milieu. Hirano’s people are seeking clarity about their own authenticity so they can fulfill their obligations to other people. Murakami's people are intentionally opaque, blank, or emotionally flattened and they drift rather than evolve.

This story seems highly promising, but it's actually a bit haphazard. The reveal unfolds too slowly and the flashbacks don't seem deftly structured. The pseudo-private detective lawyer solves the mystery not through investigative methods or clever deductive reasoning or a dramatic confession, but through sheer chance.

Nevertheless, it's a fairly enjoyable story. The central themes of identity and trauma are present throughout. Hirano makes heartening points about the solace of reading serious fiction. Hirano skillfully captures the way powerful emotions make themselves known in the body, which readers into mindfulness meditation will connect with. He provides informative digressions about how an event like the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 challenges a sclerotic Japanese bureaucracy to make more difficult the lives of vulnerable people in need of help.

Perry Mason 122: TCOT Bigamous Spouse

Note: This 1961 novel (65^th  out of 86) first appeared in a version in The Saturday Evening Post - abridged because despite what the old folks say, back then patience was not a virtue. And once again, we have a brilliant time-shift twist where everyone nails the murder time… just kidding, they all get it spectacularly wrong for reasons that sound good, but are actually terrible, as Mason proves.

Perryism RE Values Formation & Negative Visualization: It’s more than being loyal to your clients. It’s being loyal to the basic principles of justice. And when you’re trying to do that, you have to take it on the chin once in a while - or at least be ready to.

The Case of the Bigamous Spouse - Erle Stanley Gardner

Gwynn Elston sells kiddie books door to door in the days before going on somebody’s porch would get you shot. One day she knocks on the door of Franklin Gillett. The man’s kid looks like Felting Grimes, husband of Nell - Gwynn’s best friend and housemate. Then she sees Gillett’s photo. Same face. Same guy? Gwynn goes home uneasy.

Felting starts asking questions about her day. Too many questions. Later, he hands her a drink that tastes wrong. Bitter. Gwynn figures she’s in trouble. She calls Perry Mason. Perry tells her to keep quiet and stay sharp 

Trouble doesn’t wait. Felting Grimes takes a bullet. Dead. Lt. Tragg and DA Burger smell blood and line Gwynn up as the shooter. Perry warns her: don’t talk. Talking never helps. But cops lie. They tell her she can go home if she spills. She spills. She’s kept in custody. Surprise.

Nell Grimes isn’t just a wife - she’s a fighter. In Gardner’s world, lots of women aren’t shrinking violets. Nell swings her heels at Perry in a car. Could take an eye out. Gwynn’s no pushover either. She’s a working girl who knows how to handle wolves and mashers. Gardner liked women tough.

The case drags Perry and Della Street up to a mountain town. Gardner slows down, sketches two locals: an undertaker with dry humor and a poacher who blushes around Della. Nice touch - Della feels her loyalty to Perry in a quiet moment. Gardner could do that in two lines.

Late career Gardner still moves time like a pro, but you start wondering: after all these years, was Gardner writing the novels with the idea they would be adapted into an episode of the TV show? This one was in fact an episode in Season 7.

I read it. Glad I did, for its plot and storytelling. Proud to be one of the last Gardner fans still above ground. This one’s fine.

  

Perry Mason 121: The Women of Cool & Lam

Note: This fan gets the feeling that Erle Stanley Gardner wrote the Perry Mason novels in order to meet the payroll but had fun writing the Cool & Lam books. The Cool & Lam novels have deeper characterization and more vivid scene setting. I don’t much like comparing so I will leave it by saying the Cool & Lam stories hinge on the comic interplay between oil Bertha and water Donald while Mason novels usually just rise to droll.

The Women of Cool & Lam

Bertha Cool smashes the china shop of the hard-boiled genre like Charles Ruggles in If I Had a Million. Private eye novels usually feature lean, tight-lipped men and sultry femme fatales. Bertha blows up these detective novel stereotypes: overweight, middle-aged, mercenary, inflexible, and indifferent to lady-like ways.  She dresses well and wears expensive jewelry to please herself, couldn’t care less about male-gazey expectations concerning deportment or docility.

She’s the boss, hiring disbarred lawyer Donald Lam as her underling and cutting deals with clients on her own terms. Bertha is well-aware she has a narrow skill set but she possesses supreme confidence in her own realism about the basic motives: love and hate, lust and money. Bertha doesn’t take men too seriously because they are too easy to manipulate and too liable to get carried away by petty emotions and stupid urges.

Gardner’s depictions of women with agency don’t stop with Bertha. His Cool & Lam women – clients and suspects – manipulate others to conceal their ambition. An heiress feigns helplessness while plotting like Machiavelli (Beware the Curves); a playgirl weds a codger for her financial security but fondly indulges his kicks in his twilight years (Some Women Won’t Wait); a savvy city woman is determined nothing and nobody will interfere with her freedom (Some Slips Don't Show). These independent women indirectly suggest nothing replaces having self-respect and thinking for one’s self and clear goals are useful to have in a society merciless to the ignorant and passive.

In a genre that usually puts men center stage, Gardner’s women invite readers to question the extent to which virtue and vice are anything more than conventions to deal with the economic realities that our culture imposes on all of us.