Movies List
TV Show List
Miracle on 34th Street

as Mr. Gimbel

1973
Follow That Dream

as Judge

1962
Blue Hawaii

as Fred Gates

1961
Cash McCall

as Gen. Andrew Danvers

1960
The Iceman Cometh

as The General (Piet Wetjoen)

1960
Jet Pilot

as Col. Sokolov

1957
Bigger Than Life

as Dr. Ruric

1956
So Big

as Klaas Pool

1953
Inside Straight

as Alexander Tomson

1951
Raton Pass

as Sheriff Perigord

1951
The West Point Story

as Harry Eberhart

1950
Between Midnight and Dawn

as Leo Cusick

1950
Killer Shark

as Jeffrey White

1950
Captain Carey, U.S.A.

as Manfredo Acuto

1950
Sierra Passage

as Sam Cooper

1950
Malaya

as Bruno Gruber

1949
A Dangerous Profession

as Jerry McKay

1949
Sky Dragon

as Charlie Chan

1949
Cry of the City

as Ledbetter

1948
Docks of New Orleans

as Charlie Chan

1948
The Golden Eye

as Charlie Chan

1948
Shanghai Chest

as Charlie Chan

1948
The Feathered Serpent

as Charlie Chan

1948
Kidnapped

as Capt. Hoseason

1948
The Chinese Ring

as Charlie Chan

1947
Roland Winters Roland Winters

Birthday

1904-11-22

Place of Birth

Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Biography

Roland Winters (born Roland Winternitz) was an American actor who played many character parts in films and television but today is best remembered for portraying Charlie Chan in six films in the late 1940s. Monogram Pictures eventually selected Winters to replace Sidney Toler in the Charlie Chan film series. Winters was 44 when he made the first of his six Chan films, The Chinese Ring in 1947 and ending with Charlie Chan and the Sky Dragon (also known as Sky Dragon) in 1949. His other Chan films were "Docks of New Orleans", "Shanghai Chest", "The Golden Eye" and "The Feathered Serpent". He also had character roles in three other feature films while he worked on the Chan series. Yunte Huang, in Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, noted differences in the actors' appearances, especially that Winters' "tall nose simply could not be made to look Chinese." Huang also cited the actor's age, writing, "at the age of forty-four, he also looked too young to resemble a seasoned Chinese sage." In contrast to Huang, Ken Hanke wrote in his book, Charlie Chan at the Movies: History, Filmography, and Criticism, "Roland Winters has never received his due ... Winters brought with him a badly needed breath of fresh air to the series." He cited "the richness of the approach and the verve with which the series was being tackled" during the Winters era." Similarly, Howard M. Berlin, in his book, Charlie Chan's Words of Wisdom, commented that "Winters brought a much needed breath of fresh air to the flagging film series with his self-mocking, semi-satirical interpretation of Charlie, which is very close to the Charlie Chan in Biggers' novels." After the series finished, Winters continued to work in film and television until 1982. He was in the movies So Big and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, played Elvis' father in Blue Hawaii and a judge in the Elvis film Follow That Dream. He made appearances as the boss on the early TV series Meet Millie as the boss and the courtroom drama Perry Mason. In one episode of the Bewitched TV series, he played the normally unseen McMann of McMann and Tate. He also portrayed Mr. Gimbel in Miracle on 34th Street in 1973.
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