Movies List
TV Show List
Yellowface: Asian Whitewashing and Racism in Hollywood

as Charlie Chan (archive footage)

2019
Charlie Chan at the Olympics

as Charlie Chan

1937
Charlie Chan at Monte Carlo

as Charlie Chan

1937
Charlie Chan at the Opera

as Charlie Chan

1936
Charlie Chan at the Circus

as Charlie Chan

1936
Charlie Chan at the Race Track

as Charlie Chan

1936
Charlie Chan's Secret

as Charlie Chan

1936
Werewolf of London

as Dr. Yogami

1935
Charlie Chan in Egypt

as Charlie Chan

1935
Charlie Chan in Paris

as Charlie Chan

1935
Charlie Chan in Shanghai

as Charlie Chan

1935
Shanghai

as Ambassador Lun Sing

1935
Charlie Chan in London

as Charlie Chan

1934
The Painted Veil

as General Yu

1934
Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back

as Prince Achmed

1934
Charlie Chan's Courage

as Charlie Chan

1934
Charlie Chan's Chance

as Charlie Chan

1932
The Black Camel

as Charlie Chan

1931
The Big Gamble

as Andrew North

1931
Dishonored

as Colonel von Hindau

1931
The Drums of Jeopardy

as Dr. Boris Karlov

1931
The Vagabond King

as Thibault

1930
The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu

as Dr. Fu Manchu

1930
Dangerous Paradise

as Schomberg

1930
The Studio Murder Mystery

as Rupert Borka

1929
The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu

as Dr. Fu Manchu

1929
Chinatown Nights

as Boston Charley

1929
The Jazz Singer

as Cantor Rabinowitz

1927
Old San Francisco

as Chris Buckwell

1927
Don Juan

as Cesare Borgia

1926
Warner Oland Warner Oland

Birthday

1879-10-03

Place of Birth

Nyby, Västerbottens län, Sweden

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Warner Oland (born Johan Verner Ölund, October 3, 1879 – August 6, 1938) was a Swedish-American actor most remembered for playing several Chinese and Chinese-American characters: the Honolulu Police detective, Lieutenant Charlie Chan; Dr. Fu Manchu; and Henry Chang in Shanghai Express. His family emigrated to the United States when he was 13. He pursued a film career that would include time on Broadway and dozens of film appearances, including 16 Charlie Chan films. After several years in theater, including appearances on Broadway as Warner Oland, in 1912 he made his silent film debut in Pilgrim's Progress, a film based on the John Bunyan novel. As a result of his training as a Shakespearean actor and his easy adoption of a sinister look, he was much in demand as a villain and in ethnic roles. Over the next 15 years, he appeared in more than 30 films, including a major role in The Jazz Singer (1927), one of the first talkies produced. Oland's normal appearance fit the Hollywood expectation of caricatured Asianness of the time, despite his having no definitively proven Asian cultural background. Oland portrayed a variety of Asian characters in several movies before being offered the leading role in the 1929 film, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. It was the first onscreen portrayal of the Fu Manchu character in film. Oland continued to appear onscreen as an Asian, probably more often than any other white actor in the history of cinema. In Old San Francisco, Oland played an Asian unsuccessfully impersonating a white man. Oland was the first actor to play a werewolf in a major Hollywood film, biting the protagonist, played by Henry Hull, in Werewolf of London (1935). Once again, Oland's character was Asian. A box office success, The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu made Oland a star, and during the next two years he portrayed the evil Dr. Fu Manchu in three more films (although the second one was purely a cameo appearance). Firmly locked into such roles, he was cast as Charlie Chan in the international detective mystery film Charlie Chan Carries On (1931) and then in director Josef von Sternberg's 1932 classic film Shanghai Express opposite Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong. The enormous worldwide box office success of his Charlie Chan film led to more, with Oland starring in 16 Chan films in total. The series, Jill Lepore later wrote, "kept Fox afloat" during the 1930s, while earning Oland $40,000 per movie. Oland took his role seriously, studying the Chinese language and calligraphy.
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